<BACK> <HOME> <UP ONE LEVEL>ELECTING NOT TO VOTE,
by Bob Black (the 'unknown' anarchist), circa 1985-88If elections are, as Sartre said, "a trap for fools," then recent voting
trends are in hopeful contrast with other signs of social somnolence. Not
that election results are getting any better. They never will, so long as
anybody wins. The good news is the steady growth of the nonvoting majority
of eligibles which has been "winning" elections for over sixty years. In
place of "majority rule" we see an increasingly unruly majority.The 1984 presidential election - the Comet Kahoutek of recent politics -
should have sharply reversed the trend; in fact it only stalled it. Despite
a flashy ideological incumbent; despite the antics of Jesse Jackson, the
Preacher from the Black Lagoon; despite the saliency of the nuclear war
issue and a vote-or-die terror campaign by frantic leftists; and despite the
relative decline in the size of the low-turnout youngest age-groups, most
eligible voters, as usual, found better things to do.For a system which makes "majority rule" the by-words and buzzwords of
state-of-the-art statism, a chronic crisis simmers which, for once, will
hurt Them more than it hurts us. It seems like the easier the authorities
make it for their subjects to consecrate their coercion with their votes,
the less response to their come-on. They ended poll taxes and literacy
tests, they enfranchised minorities and 18 year olds, they provided
bilingual ballots - but no one votes less often than the beneficiaries of
these reforms."Democracy,"observed Karl Kraus, "means the permission to be everybody's
slave." Its claimed superiority over other oppressive arrangements remains,
after centuries of philosophy and propaganda, obscure. That an abstract,
evanescent majority - of whom, is one of the central mysteries of democratic
dogma - could ever claim more than the right to rule itself has always been
a gross impertinence. Yet liberals and the leftists who tail them assure us,
with a straight face, that those who participate in elections thereby agree
to abide by the outcome, whereas those who abstain have no right to complain
since, after all, they could have voted. This ritual, they assure us,
magically expands the scope of legitimate authority, i.e., cop violence.Beware of democrats offering rights! Such sophistries stand out in their
proper satirical light when, year in and year out, the majority refuses to
rule. What do I care if some cabal of ambitious opportunists declares me a
member of some club I don't want to join? Majority rule, shaky enough as a
"right," is openly malignant when imposed by a minority as a duty. Ralph
"Darth" Nader is only a step ahead of his fellow paternalists in calling for
compulsory voting.[Yikes, what would Bob think about Ralph running on the Green ticket???]
The composition of the nonvoting majority is disturbing to our overlords.
Liberals and leftists, when they're not gushing slush about the wisdom of
the people, when they're not promising succor to the downtrodden, with
typical cynicism defame nonvoters - hitherto mainly poor, minority, and
foreign-born - as stupid, uneducated, and indifferent to their civic
responsibilities if not downright un-American. But by now the voting drop
reflects the ongoing coming-of-age of new eligibles who never do acquire the
voting vice, and the attrition of those of their elders who never kick the
habit. Most aren't conscious refusniks, but their absence from the rolls
today just may prefigure refusal of the roles tommorrow.[Recent polls were at pains to explain the continued trend of declining
voting despite motor-voter. A similar poll found the decline in network news
viewership due to people becoming increasingly 'indifferent' to 'issues,'
but also indicated 'viewers' were seeking other means of 'entertainment'
(note the definition game here) on the INTERNET. The internet is a realm of
political foment -- and they call this 'entertainment.'] - leebertNaturally the (hamster-)wheeler-dealers of the left deliver the loyalists
who make the system work for all their rejective rhetoric. So do the
misnamed "libertarians," some of whom hallucinate that they're anarchists.
For that matter, more than a few avowed "anarchists" slunk into voting
booths in 1984, and anarcha-feminist "imagine" (sic) endorsed Mondale in the
pages of Circle A in Atlanta, prompting Ted Lopez to ask, What does the "A"
really stand for? More usually these loyal oppositionists serve up pathetic
no-win third parties which offer a "choice"; the choice, having gone to the
bother of voting in the first place, of making absolutely certain (not just
99.99% certain?) of wasting one's vote. Proposals to reward voters with
green stamps make more sense. Why not enfranchise pigeons and offer them
pellets? The real meaning of "Don't waste your vote" is, don't cast it.The mini-parties solicit votes as a form of "protest," but as a medium of
expression, a can of spray-paint has it all over any election. As conformist
as voters are, no two of them mean precisely the same by their votes even if
cast for the same candidate.Yet the votes as tallied are anonymous, impersonal and interchangeable. A
vote once cast is cast away; it then belongs to the pundits and politicos to
make what they will of it. And a candidate once elected will tell you what
to do, no matter what went before. You can't protest fundamentals by voting:
voting is bound up with them. There's no such thing as voting against voting.Contrary to the anthill collectivists, it's stupid to say nonvoting is a
merely personal, "individualistic" gesture. What could be more privatized
and isolated than casting a "secret ballot" (evidently designed for people
with something to hide) all by yourself which acknowledges your status as
replacable part of a polity you never asked to belong to? Collective action
against electoral alienation is fully as feasible as running for office, but
strangely, it holds no appeal for power-hungry "progressives."No need to address the populist reforms (initiative, referendum, recall,
etc.) contrived to outflank corporate control of the state. At best they
never worked that way. At worst they became the vehicle for regressive
"reforms" like California's Proposition 13 which were KY'd into the body
politic by monied cabals who buy the mass media. As with the Ptolemaic
system, the effort to rectify the electoral system with epicycles inevitably
went awry. The crisis of democracy transcends all gimmickry.Every politician's "platform" is a scaffold. Which of two fungible fakers
assumes a particular office is a matter of decreasing relevance to reality.
A voter is far more likely to be hit by a car on the way to the polls than
s/he is of affecting the outcome of an election, to say nothing of changing
real life.How much lower will the vote totals go before the "winners" are ashamed or
afraid to take office? People aren't as stupid as the politicians think.
More and more of us are laughing off our "civic duty" to vote, rejecting the
role of compulsory constituent.What if they gave an election and nobody came? We'll find out pretty soon.