The late historian Benedict Anderson once reflected that voting was a peculiar form of political action. “On a particular day,” he wrote, “… one joins a queue of people whom one does not typically know, to take a turn to enter a solitary space, where one pulls levers or marks pieces of paper, and then leaves the site with the same calm discretion with which one enters it.” This is, he reflected, “[is] almost the polar opposite of all other forms of personal political participation.”
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