Here in the United States we are less that a week away from holding a new Presidential election and the public proclamations from people declaring their loyalty and love to their political denomination as well as their hatred of and dismay at the treachery of the other political denomination are reaching the shrill zenith of their zeal. Everywhere people are declaring their righteousness for having supported one racist, warmongering, authoritarian rapist over the other and proudly displaying their badges of dedication to their participation in the system by voting. All the meaningless statements about democracy that saturate society at this time, blandishments hammered into us from youth about the “sacred right to vote,” how it is a grand privilege to vote, that it is an important duty of those in society to always vote, and the rest of the blather we are subjected from our infancy, but especially during election seasons, all of it fails to articulate a salient truth about the system itself that we are taking part in. All of it fails to explain the adequately explain true nature of that great fiction we call the State and how it really works.
If voting is a right then there are some very good reasons for why you should exercise your right to vote by refusing to support any of the people vying for power in the statist (“state-ist”) system. Over the next week, here at The Latter-day Liberator we plan to try and expose you to some salient arguments for exactly why you should refuse to take part in the system, for why you should refuse to vote and thereby refuse to give the appearance of your submission and consent to a system which is founded on violence and theft and ran by thugs and criminals. Today’s article does an excellent job of laying a basic foundation of the argument against voting by introducing the morals, principles, and intellectual reasons against participating in the system itself. It is authored by historian, poet, and writer Stephen Smith titled Why I Don’t Vote … and Maybe You Shouldn’t, Either. I have only added pictures to the excerpts below to illustrate some of the people and ideas that Smith mentions. The next article in this series will focus on the meaningless nature of voting, and the final article will focus on why Latter-day Saints should avoid voting in a statist system that will be based on the scriptures and principles of the Restored Gospel.
****
For most of my adult life I voted in every election that came around. The last time I did so, I wrote in my dog for president, while vowing to never again darken the doorway of a polling station.
What happened? Simply, I woke up to the fundamentally unethical nature of voting and elections.
I don’t expect necessarily to convince anyone else of a conclusion it took me most of a lifetime to reach. My purpose is to explain why I, personally, do not vote … and maybe you shouldn’t, either.
1. I don’t vote, because to do so would involve me in immorality.
It’s wrong for me to impose my preferences on other people by force or threat of force. Other people’s bodies, labor and property belong to them; I have no right to dictate how they use them. Nor have I a right to use my fists or a gun to commandeer those things to use for my own ends. That would be immoral even if I enlisted others to help me. And it would still be immoral if a large number of people (even a majority) voted to do so.
No one has been able to explain to me how having more supporters of Side A than of Side B show up at the polls on a given day magically awards the former the moral right to impose their preferences on the latter. Might doesn’t make right — even when exercised through legal elections and sanctioned (allegedly) by majority vote.
2. I don’t vote, because I don’t join mobs or pick sides in gang fights.
Political campaigns and elections are barely disguised gang warfare, with all the ugliness and viciousness the term connotes. They divide friends and families and pit neighbors against one another. People who might otherwise get along are set at each other’s throats, metaphorically and sometimes literally.
The communal anger and tribal hatreds that are roused and then stoked to white-hot levels during elections sicken me. I want no part.
3. I don’t vote, because I refuse to give my approval to criminality.
If the Mafia or MS-13 controlled my town, I wouldn’t let myself be drawn into supporting this or that individual for leader of the gang, were I allowed a say in the matter. That would be tantamount to sanctioning the gang and its criminal activities.
Through elections, political gangs (parties, factions, etc.) strive mightily against each other to seize control of the biggest gang of all: the State, or what most people think of (incorrectly, I believe) as “the government.” The State operates through and exists by coercion, extortion, and robbery — crime, in short.
Certainly, the State does some things that people want, along with many massively wasteful and destructive ones. I believe the desirable things could be accomplished as well or better in the peaceful, i.e., non-political sector — but that’s a different discussion. My objection is to the means. A street gang that robs its victims at gunpoint could conceivably spend some of its loot feeding the homeless. But good ends don’t justify bad means.
4. I don’t vote, because I want to keep my hands clean.
Being given a minuscule say in who pulls the levers of power provides merely the illusion of having meaningful control of that power. Nevertheless, exercising that say — insignificant though it may be— would make me guilty of helping perpetuate what I believe to be an immoral system.
The adage, “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain,” is backwards. It’s those who do vote who have no logical reason to complain. They — not I — are the ones running to the polls to register their complicity in a process that gives some human beings arbitrary power over others.
5. I don’t vote, because I don’t believe in having rulers.
It doesn’t matter if they’re called kings, czars, presidents, senators, “representatives,” or city councilors. No human being has the right — God- or crowd-given — to rule another. As I once explained to someone: “I don’t believe there should be a president. Why would I vote for one?”
Elections allow me to give my opinion as to which master (from a pre-selected list) I would prefer to run my life. The choice of “none” is never on the ballot. Even if it were, it would be subject to override by the desires of others to impose a master on me — so really, no choice at all.
By voting I would be tacitly agreeing that it’s proper and necessary to cede large swaths of my decision-making to people who don’t have one-trillionth the understanding of or concern for my life that I do. Voting would thus be an act of self-betrayal.
6. I don’t vote, because I won’t enable sociopaths and their activities.
To my mind there’s something spiritually disordered, if not psychologically twisted, about any person who seeks the power to order others around against their will, whatever noble-sounding motives he or she proclaims.
Worse, the cleverest or most flagrant liars and manipulators are the ones who tend to rise to the highest political offices. Voting lubricates the very mechanism that perversely rewards such individuals with the power to command armies and drop bombs.
My own conscience, being intact, prohibits me from abetting the machinations of people with a shrunken or non-existent one — in which the political sphere (aka the violent sector) abounds.
7. I don’t vote, because I refuse to join a secret band of robbers and tyrants, or to give the appearance of doing so.
The use of secret ballots compounds the immorality of the political process.
I’m told, say, that X number of people voted (either directly or through a politician) to take my property or dictate how I use my own body. But who exactly are these people?
If I knew their names and where they lived, I could refuse to associate or trade with them if I so chose, in the same way I could ostracize a neighbor I knew was stealing things from my yard. But I’m not allowed to know. I’m only “allowed” to submit to the will of this anonymous cabal.
The public nature of registered-voter lists doesn’t tell me who, specifically, endorsed committing harm against me by voting for policies or individuals that would steal my property, restrict my freedom, or endanger my safety and that of my loved ones by starting unnecessary wars.
Lysander Spooner, 19th century abolitionist and essayist, pointed out that the secret ballot undermines the State’s claims of legitimacy, because it can’t be proved that any particular individuals ever voted for it:
As all voting is secret (by secret ballot), and as all secret governments are necessarily only secret bands of robbers, tyrants, and murderers, the general fact that our government is practically carried on by means of such voting, only proves that there is among us a secret band of robbers, tyrants, and murderers.
No Treason. № VI. The Constitution of No Authority
A common argument for a secret ballot is that it protects people from having their vote coerced by employers, dominating spouses, etc. In my opinion, this concern is outweighed by the real and present evil of allowing people to hide their identities while conspiring against their neighbors. In any case, if voting did not exist, the question would not even arise.
8. I don’t vote, because it undermines community.
As social beings we need community, people coming together to support one another in various ways and to achieve mutually desirable ends. This is what happens in voluntary organizations such as churches, service clubs and affinity groups. People doing business with one another in a free market can be considered an expression of community, too.
In these cases and others, consent — freely given by all participants— is the key. Without it, community disappears and is replaced by groups of bullies and bullied, robbers and victims, masters and slaves.
Through voting in the State’s elections (and through politics generally), people attempt to enforce their will on others while trying to prevent others from enforcing their will on them. Using the ballot to coerce others to do one’s bidding negates consent and damages or destroys true community.
Politics is war of all against all. As such, it is anti-community.
[Editor’s Note: This last point is one I have elaborated upon before.]
9. I don’t vote, because voting retards progress toward true government.
Contrary to what people often assume, I am pro-government.
The first duty of government, virtually a part of its definition, is to protect people from assault on their persons and property. The State itself assaults people on a huge and ongoing basis, so it cannot be true government, even if popularly referred to as “the government.”
I welcome the expansion of true government — voluntary, peaceful, and based on consent, mutual agreements, and uncoerced trade — and the shrinking and eventual disappearance of the violent, fake government that now dominates.
I don’t have a road map for getting there, nor can I say how “we” will accomplish A or ensure B without the use of State coercion (I have ideas, but no master plan).
If I lived in the 1850s and someone demanded to know how I would get the cotton picked without slaves, I would say this: “I’m confident it will get done, but can I guarantee it with 100 percent certainty? No. The reason to end slavery is because it’s morally imperative to do so, whatever the practical ramifications.”
Committing to end an immoral practice, even one that accomplishes some desirable end (getting the cotton picked, building the roads), shouldn’t depend on first having a detailed blueprint in hand for an alternative. Solutions to human wants and needs emerge when people are free to innovate, and are often ones that no one could possibly predict.
Meanwhile I won’t feed fake government by participating in its rituals such as voting, by which it cloaks itself in false legitimacy, inculcates obedience in its subjects, and helps perpetuate its own wrongful (and wrongs-full) existence.