Published: 9/13/2016 4:19:22 PM
Garret Ean of Concord held sidewalk chalk, not a campaign sign, outside the city’s Ward 6 polling place Tuesday afternoon.
And the self-identified anarchist wasn’t advocating for a candidate, but rather a moment of introspection.
His chalk message: “Do you even know these people?”
Ean said the voting process is overly glorified, and in most cases, voters will choose among people they barely know.
“Whoever wins doesn’t determine what’s right from wrong. It just determines what the majority of people voted for,” he said. “I’d like to see this process be ignored and be understood to be just pointless and not something that should influence people’s lives the way it does.”
Ean said he believes elected officials have too much authority over individuals’ lives, and by voting, people give legitimacy to the current system.
“There’s so much accolades and platitudes associated with voting. I think a counter message is important, too, that it’s not as important and not as fundamentally necessary as everyone makes it out to be,” he said.
He added: “I don’t know what most of these people on the ballot support. I don’t know what they do. And literally by checking them off I just authorized them to rule over me, so maybe that’s not such a good idea.”
Ean said he was still considering voting in the primary, however, because unlike the general election it’s a “strategical game” to winnow out the worst candidates – without actually putting them in office.
In the governor’s race, he said, he’s torn between Democrat Steve Marchand and Republican Frank Edelblut because “they’re the least bad of all the candidates running.”
(Nick Reid can be reached at 369-3325, nreid@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @NickBReid.)