Recent years have seen a growing trend of celebrities, athletes, and politically neutral organizations emphasizing the importance of voting simply for voting’s sake. In many cases, the advice isn’t partisan per se — instead it encourages people to register and vote merely to exercise a right that not everyone around the world can access.

Here’s Kelly Clarkson taking a picture of herself leaving a polling place, insisting that everyone vote because we’re lucky to live in a nation where we can:

After Katy Perry announced her intention to vote early for Hillary Clinton, the Twitter account for Los Angeles County put out the following:

Then there was the “What Do You Care About?” ad for the “#VoteYourFuture” campaign, featuring dozens of notable celebrities demanding that people register and vote, along with individual messages espousing support for token progressive issues. The video concludes with endless encouragement simply to vote, “even if we disagree,” the celebrities say. “We have to suck it up and do it. That’s what it means to be an American,” insists Anne Hathaway.

In fact, voting is not “what it means to be an American.” This video is the most prominent example of a remarkably foolish sentiment that has permeated our political and popular culture. Voting isn’t necessarily a good in and of itself. It is important, yes, and a good citizen should participate in government by exercising this right. But voting must be coupled with a sincere effort to educate oneself about the issues and policies in question; a citizen should vote for the candidate who the voter believes is best equipped for the job, not just whomever seems like a nice guy (or gal). Second, the push to vote for its own sake often overlooks the importance of civic involvement that goes beyond voting. Engagement with government and society cannot begin and end at the ballot box; taking on leadership roles within community organizations or local government are other examples of ways to be involved in democratic society.

It is even more irritating that, along with this trend, an increasing number of celebrities have turned get-out-the-vote campaigns into an opportunity to lobby for a certain (read: Democratic) candidate. This year in particular — with the entrance of Donald J. Trump onto our political scene — liberal celebrities have determined (much like many rightwing activists) that this election is the End of the World. In other words, our options are “Hillary Clinton” or “Death to America.”

This support for Clinton appears in varying degrees, with some advocacy cloaked in generalizations about the importance of voting as a civic duty, other times in stark favoritism for the Democratic nominee. (To be fair, there is some celebrity support for Trump, but it is minimal compared with the corresponding advocacy of Clinton.) Celebrity political activism apparently has grown so much in recent years that the website “The Wrap” compiled this handy guide to denote how over 200 celebrities are voting this year. Meanwhile, a writer at Esquire felt it was appropriate to enumerate, and subsequently deride, a number of prominent figures who haven’t taken a partisan stand on the election: “Any action is better than no action, right?” Wrong.

There are many celebrities encouraging people to vote, with the evident underlying assumption that obviously anyone with a brain will be voting for Clinton. For example, today, Emma Watson, who is not a U.S. citizen, tweeted a note about importance of voting:

New York Times columnist Charles Blow tweeted about the vandalism of Trump’s Hollywood star:

Meanwhile, other celebrities are much more open about the imperative need to vote for Clinton, insisting that individuals vote, but only if you’re voting for their preferred candidate. For instance, consider this video of Ben Affleck, encouraging New Hampshire residents to register and vote, especially “if you give a sh** about women’s rights, if you care about keeping the environment safe for future generations, if you care about people getting to p*** in the bathroom of their f***ing choice”:

Jennifer Lopez is performing a “get out the vote” conference this Saturday in Miami, entitled “Love trumps hate”:

Katy Perry celebrated her birthday by announcing to one and all that she had voted early for Clinton. Adele, who like Watson is not an American citizen, nonetheless told her fans at a concert not to vote for Trump and announced that she was “100 percent for Hillary Clinton,” as Clinton sat in the audience.

Someone decided it would be a good idea to write an article discussing how the characters in Gilmore Girls would vote when faced with this year’s options, including a video in which the show’s actors all say they’d vote for Clinton.

Another celebrity took things even further: Miley Cyrus paraded around George Mason University dormitories, dressed in ridiculous garb, and knocked on students’ doors to tell them to register and vote for Clinton.

And if you think these celebrities don’t hold any sway or influence the election results, consider the fact that young people have said they’re voting for Clinton because people like Perry and Cyrus told them to:

Many of these pseudo-activist celebrities are cloaking their intense support for Clinton in a thin veneer of excitement about the importance of voting as such, and this year’s excessive “get out the vote” drives appear to be a cover for a massive push to elect Clinton as the de facto liberal candidate. These celebrities would surely stop pushing people to register and vote if they believed that the individuals in question would turn out for Trump. In reality, these celebrities’ sudden interest in our political process has nothing to do with celebrating the right to vote and everything to do with advancing a progressive agenda.