Should one's faith influence a citizen's vote?

Faith may mean different things in different context usage, but in the context of this article, it has to do with one’s religious belief. It will not be good for people to allow their votes to be influenced by faith. If a country’s citizens should allow their faith to influence their votes, the growth, development and progress of that country could be put in jeopardy. For this and some other reasons that will be highlighted by this article, I strongly oppose that one’s faith should influence his votes in any election.

First of all, religion should be separated from politics because it hinders a country’s growth and development. The reason for this is that whoever that is in power will easily get confused with the interference by the religious group he or she belongs to in the process of carrying out his or her own programs. In the area of voting, most people will be voting against their conscience where the influence of faith is present. For instance, if a Muslim and a Christian were to come out for an election, and one has good political records, while the other person has bad political records, without making any serious efforts to improve. Do you have to vote for the person with bad political records because you belong to the same faith?

Allowing faith to influence a citizen’s vote encourages division among citizens of a country. It is obvious that if faith influences citizens’ votes, the religion with the highest population in a country will always emerge as winners in any election, leaving other religious groups as minorities all the time. This will surely lead to hatred between believers of the faith with lower population and believers of the faith with higher population, and as a result, more division are encouraged which in turn hinder growth, development and progress in any country.

Finally, religion will now base on the need of individuals, rather than belief. If faith is allowed to influence citizens’ votes, more people will be tempted to join that faith with greater number of population in order to stand a chance in winning an election. People will continue to change from one religion to the other, just as they cross- carpet from one political party to the other in a bid to get majority votes cast in elections. When this sort of thing happens, it will only result in people joining a religion because they are in need of being elected, not because they believe in or convinced to believe in such faith.
I strongly oppose that faith should influence a citizen’s vote as a result of the aforementioned reasons and some other reasons not mentioned in this article. A citizen’s vote should be influenced by conscience and personal conviction, not by faith.
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