Practical, political, and moral reasons not to vote
November 3rd, 2008 | by Brian |Wendy McElroy presents some food for thought on principled non-voting in a recent speech. I think her ideas are worth considering, but Bill Bradford’s rebuttal (not to this speech, but to an article of McElroy’s) is also worth reading for an opposing perspective. Here are some excerpts:
But what if the ballot is just one more government form to be filled out and filed. What if the process itself is nothing more than a ritual designed to give you a feeling of control over your life, and elections are what they give you instead of real change? …
Tonight I’m addressing the specific act of voting that involves giving your personal sanction – usually by pulling a lever or marking a ballot. I’m talking about giving your personal sanction to a candidate in order to assist that candidate into a position of power over the lives of others – a position like senator or president. …
Politically speaking, I believe your consent and the right to withhold it is the most important thing that an individual can possess. Quite apart from the voting issue, as a larger statement, your consent is the most politically powerful thing you own. …
I want to pause … to look at a common pro-voting argument that makes no sense to me. And, by the way, it would make no sense even if I believed in voting.
This particular argument derides non-voters – as most of the arguments do – but it also is vaguely threatening. It is: “if you don’t care enough to vote, then you have no right to criticize the outcome.” In other words, if you don’t vote, you lose your voice – or at least you lose the right to voice specific criticism of the government that emerges.
I think the opposite is true. Those who vote, those who play the election game, have implicitly agreed to the rules and they are the ones who have no right to complain about an outcome they don’t like. It is non-voters who say “no” to the game and reject the rules who have a moral right to complain about outcomes.
Imagine a comparable situation: you are urged to play Russian roulette – a form in which a 2nd person controls the gun. You say “hell, yes!” At that point, with the act of saying “yes”, you have the lost moral right to complain about whatever happens when the trigger is pulled. Why? Because you agreed to the rules, you said “yes” to the rules. If you say “no” at the outset, however, then when the gun is fired, you have a right to scream bloody murder. …
… many dictatorships – including the former Soviet Union – make voting mandatory….
It should also raise the corollary question: why do the tyrants want you to vote? Or expanding that question; why do all politicians want you to vote? They want it so much that their ads claim to not care if you vote for them or their opponents. …
To understand the politician’s desire for everyone to vote whatever his or her vote might be, you have to look deeper. An old joke says, “don’t vote, it only encourages them.” The underlying message of the joke is that you should be so disgusted and disillusioned with the political system that you will not sanction it through your participation. …
whatever you think of the man George W. Bush – even if you think he cheated his way into office — you respect the authority of “president” because you accept the institutional legitimacy of that position. You believe that anyone who wins enough votes has a right to occupy a position of such vast power over your life and the lives of others …
And that’s why all politicians want you to vote… that’s why even the worst tyrant will conduct a massive election charade. Your act of voting legitimizes their office of power. It transforms their office from raw, unjustified force into a position of just authority. …
In concluding, let me return to a point I raised at the beginning of my talk. And that is – I think voting is a very serious matter.
I know that some of you will think I am making too much of the act of voting…and, by extension, you must think the “get out the vote” people (who take the act as seriously as I do) are also over the top. Some people will say that marking on a ballot is nothing more than a “slide of ink”…saying “yes” to candidate is nothing more than an expulsion of air. In short, giving your approval, your personal sanction to a political candidate is no big thing; it doesn’t mean that you bear any responsibility for the candidate’s later actions.
Well…a mark on a ballot is a slide of ink in the same way that your signature on a contract is. Saying ‘yes’ to a politician is an expulsion of breath in the same manner as a verbal contract.
I take your word seriously. I hope you do too. And I hope the word you use in November is “no” to the entire process.
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2 Responses to “Practical, political, and moral reasons not to vote”
By nub on Nov 4, 2008 | Reply
You would have been better off posting the rebuttal here and linking to the counterexample, as the rebuttal makes a heckuva lot more sense than this contrarian, self-righteous claptrap. And I really don’t understand why you insist on casting all political decisions in moral terms. Such a framing belies an absolutist certainty in the face of complex questions that strikes me as a kind of fundamentalism, made ineffectual by its rigidity.
One is reminded of Churchill: “It has been said that Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried.” I wonder what Wendy would propose as an alternative to our imperfect yet enduring brand of representative democracy. What else is there but tyranny of one sort or another? Or is it that she’s so pro-democracy that she will not deign to vote in a system that does not live up to her ideal? (Hence the ineffectual rigidity of moral absolutism.) Either way, her argument is truly baffling to me.
If I were a man given to moral arguments (and a certain degree of histrionics), I might point out that many people have died for your right to vote. Many who were for decades denied the right to vote have fought and died to secure it. From there one can easily make the moral case that it is a right not to be taken for granted. The Fifteenth Amendment would seem to back me up on this. So for anyone to argue or even imply that the act of voting is not just a personally disagreeable act, but an inherently immoral one, is to make a mockery of the one tangible thing that separates our democracy from despotism. For the essence of voting is not, as Wendy would have it, the act of “conferring legitimacy” on any one candidate or party. Rather it is simply that we have the choice to do so.
By Allen on Nov 5, 2008 | Reply
” From there one can easily make the moral case that it is a right not to be taken for granted. ”
And that’s the problem with those who yap excessively about voting being a duty or some moral obligation. They assume those who do not vote are doing so out of indifference or laziness. More so, I would argue that they’re sugar coating what they really mean. What they really is that you must vote, that you are obliged to vote. And if you have to vote, you have no choice. And without choice there is no freedom.