I refuse to vote!
I am sure you have heard it before, somebody with a smug look on their face saying that if you do not vote then you have no right to complain. In this post I will describe why I believe not only is this self righteous dribble, but is factually incorrect as well.
Refusing to vote IS NOT opting out of having an opinion. When you vote, you are essentially saying that you support the process as a whole, and more specificity you endorse one specific way of thinking within that system. Leaving aside the absurdity of saying that everybody conforms to only two or three sets of ideals, not voting at all is in itself a form of vote, it is saying I vote not only not to support any specific party or candidate, but against the system as a whole.
As it stands now, there is a cycle that has gone back generations. First a level or anger starts to rise in the populous, then a bright new shiny hope arrives in the form of a politician. This person then starts campaigning and appeasing this disgruntled populous with promises of how things could substantially improve if they are elected. Once they are put in power, they start to roll back on these promises, acting in a similar way to their predecessors... and the cycle starts again.
Voting is essentially lending legitimacy to this system, and if you are okay with that, then that's fine we are all free (ish) to make that decision but if you are not, if the idea of supporting a system that actively encourages corrupt, morally bankrupt individuals is one you cannot live with, then not voting is surely the way to go.
When are we going to realise that freedoms are taken periodically by both the left and the right of the spectrum. Can you remember at any point in time a government actually increasing people's freedom? At this point somebody usually brings up equal rights for women or minorities, but that wasn't the government's doing.
It was THE PEOPLE who fought for women's rights.
It was THE PEOPLE who fought for civil rights
It was THE PEOPLE who gave gays rights.
The government always takes freedom and offers up payment in the form of the illusion of security. They are allowed to do this because people either actively or passively support the system.
Now, let me be clear, I am not an anarchist I am a libertarian, I just want to be left alone but I accept that some form of government is necessary in order to organise meta tasks like war, diplomacy, research, maintaining roads and public spaces and the like, but what I STRONGLY dislike is the hold that government has in every single aspect of life.
I don't care about some 15 year old who wants to buy some weed, he isn't hurting me, yet the government wants to arrest him/her and potentially damage his/her future and use MY tax money to do it... no thanks.
I support gay marriage, I'm all about live and let live, but when that infamous Christian baker who refused to make a cake for a gay wedding got in trouble, I was appalled! How on earth is that the government's business? Nobody is entitled to somebody else's labour, that's called slavery. I think the baker is prejudiced, sure, but legal trouble... Really?
The list goes on and on and on... over the last hundred years the amount of laws that have passed and freedoms either diminished or revoked is astonishing. I don't know how much more we can take. So I suggest nobody votes until an alternative is proposed which is more palatable to freedom.
Thanks for reading, and I welcome any comments or arguements for or to the contrary.
Viking
Thank you very much for taking the time and energy to post something like this! I wish we could get beyond the two party system and actually have some contenders that a large group of citizens would take seriously.
I think it all begins by realizing that we don't have to vote the lesser of the two evils all of the time... even though I've done that before myself.
We must strive for more even if that means we remain silent at times. Thanks again for posting and you definitely have my upvote! @cryptoviking
My pleasure! thank you :)
You are welcome, @cryptoviking :)
love this post, you always have great posts on your blog man, love it dude.
I don't vote but I do think that voting locally is good.
I believe in local governance. big governments, even state gov's are way to big to do their residents justice/represent them.
i'm not sure what type of government I want to see, something where people are responsible for themselves and their local communities.
(my opinion, I could be shown i'm wrong and id love to embrace a better version of my idea)
Thanks man, I appreciate that. I agree with what you are saying, personal responsibility and community help is much more valuable that governmental tyranny. I don't know what the perfect system would look like either, or even if such a think can even exist, but what we have now is old and corrupt.
yep, if anything, abolishing what we have now and resetting up the same system would be good. governments have a shelf life I feel.
I like the idea of anarchy, not burning cars in the street but being responsible for yourself, there's so much gray areas, and its so complicated to think about how a perfect government should be..
not to be redundant but I feel like it was worth saying again in more specific terms.
bro, I'm really serious you're one of my favorite blogs, always something good to see on here.
i'm just saying I appreciate it and wish u great growth
Thanks a lot :)
By voting you are accepting a lie. The lie is that you have some say. You don't. Why continue to be played like a fool? Stop. It is embarrassing. Now, if you are voting to troll the system, that is different. Pointing out absurdities is worth it. :)
I agree as well, but at the same time you're doing what this post is saying and just adding to the count of people that are participating in the system, and the more people that participate the more legitimacy it has
I agree!
I understand what you are saying, Great post!
Thank you :)
You have been upvoted and maybe even resteemed by @vsteems!!We help minnows grow by upvoting and sometimes even resteeming them!!
If you want to say thank you in a way please upvote this comment and maybe our vote be worth a whole bunch someday and maybe it will help you! Thank you.
I agree I don't vote either. The reason I don't vote is because I don't believe in the people who ran. I'm not opposed to voting for someone but they need to be aligned with my views
one of my good friends @ kyle.anderson is someone you might be interested in following, he has great intellect and insight especially concerning the crypto world and in the future I could see him writing more on genetic engineering.
just recommending him because I think you'd like him
Thanks I will check him out.
If you claim to be a libertarian why are you not voting for them?
There is a difference between a political party and beliefs, I believe big l and small l libertarian is a term Americans use?
I'm not from the US. There is no credible libertarian party here.
Making the assumption that if the Libertarian party were elected they would actually make substantial change is something I'm not convinced by. Nothing ever seems to change no matter who is in charge.
If you could reshape the government what would you do?
I love reading the blogs here but I can't upvote them all, But i can comment on them :) That's what it's all about. There are more blogs I want to read than I have votes per day.
This is an interesting perspective, but I believe there is a serious flaw in it. I can generally agree when you say that:
I can also agree that, in a general sense,
What I ask you is this: what is the practical consequence, within most democratic systems, of high abstention numbers? My experience tells me that there is none. Where I'm from (and possibly in many other places), abstention levels have been steadily rising to numbers above 60%. This means that less than half of the voters are directly contributing to the election of governing bodies. Has the political system been shaken by this? Have electoral laws or regime rules been reassessed or altered in any meaningful way? Do we have better representatives? Nope. Not one of these things has happened.
Of course, one must wonder: what if the abstention levels rise to 80 or 90%. Would this still have no practical impact? I can't say it wouldn't in such an extreme case; but I don't think we're very likely to come to such a point. Why? Because there is a baseline number of voters who have personal interests vested in the election and will most probably always vote. These include all the party members and direct sympathizers, but also people whose job or income depends on this or that party being in power, for example. Think about local government: isn't it typical that, when a city council swaps parties, usually a lot of the employees get changed as well? Where I'm from this is happens very often.
I sympathize with your view because I too realize a lot of flaws within the existing political and legal systems. However, I have come to the conclusion that, at least in my home country, my vote is best used if I cast it against majority parties in order to balance the forces in the parliament. Not voting at all, in an election following Hondt's system, I would effectively be favoring the majority parties and helping keep the status quo. Instead, I choose to vote for the most interesting minority parties, or for those which have a better chance at getting some representatives in the parliament and, in that way, disrupt absolute majorities and force negotiations and consensus positions.
In such a bipartisan system as USA's, I would certainly have to reevaluate the practical consequences of voting or not voting; but even if you don't like the system (which I'm not a fan of, by the way), you can try to disrupt it from the inside, and not necessarily to just give up on voting. Because as much as your reasons for not voting may be valid and noble, the act itself will probably be of no consequence.
Well, first of all thank you for the interesting reply.
While in a broad sense we probably agree on more things than we disagree on, I would say that if more than half of a population has decided not to vote, surely, within the political sphere (if they were honest) they would make changes based on the fact that less than half the population support the system therefore should be changed.
In terms of what you were saying about voting to mitigate risk, I would say that's a shame. Voting should not be about damage control is should be about choosing ideas you agree with, and in a way you are demonstrating my point if you are voting to stop something rather than for something you believe in.
In a way I have a natural dislike of the idea of voting for PEOPLE to rule over me, Remember we don't have a democracy in the classic Greek sense of the word, we have a delegated democracy, as in we vote for a person to make actions based on their views rather than just voting on an action. I do think that voting on ideas is possibly more palatable than voting for the next short term dictator.
Maybe the answer is a headless small government, where you can vote on policy rather than politicians. Maybe limit who can vote on what based on skill sets (I know nothing about medicine, I probably shouldn't have a say on anything medical, for example). This is just something I'm thinking of as a type, I'm sure it can be deconstructed with a bit of thinking.
Either way I am not against voting, I'm just against voting on what's currently available, I guess I could compare it to being asked if I want to vote on having my arm cut off or my leg. I would rather not vote on that either lol
Thanks
I can very well relate with the sentiment you're expressing. I too think we are mostly in agreement with each other. And I also think it is a shame to vote to mitigate risk. It just shows how engaging the available options are.
Probably all democracies which exist today are of the representative kind, and I don't see a logistically viable way to make it otherwise. We could enhance direct participation through a culture of frequent referendums, both at the national and local levels. I believe this is the case in Switzerland, for example. But you will need people who are able to manage state affairs on a daily basis without having to consult the population every time they are faced with a decision. Also, I think all current democracies are established around a constitutional code, which is supposed to be a stable minimal set of rules which must be observed at every legal, judicial and executive instance, and which should theoretically limit what elected representatives may or may not do. Sometimes there are problems with this, but in principle you could say that you elect people to rule over you according to the constitution. My point is that simple things like a referendum culture or a serious upholding of the constitution could, in principle, result in a better functioning system.
Another thing to consider is the distribution of forces in the parliament. In the USA, I believe there are only two parties with representation in both houses. In Portugal, for example, we now have 7 parties with parliamentary representation (one of those has elected for the first time a single deputy in the last elections). In a country like the Netherlands, for example, there are 12 and 13 parties in the senate and the house of representatives, respectively. I think this variety of political forces is important in order to maintain a power balance and to bring to the table many different interests and points of view which have to be harmonized in some sense in order for the government to function. In a bipartisan system, you can only get a simple polarization of positions regarding several issues. If there are more political forces, not only can you get a much richer spectrum of opinions and points of view, but you can also more easily find a party with which (never completely, but still to some extent) you can find a reasonable common ground.
In summary, bipartisanship sucks a lot. Voting for any of the two options is all too often a horrible choice. In a more diverse political ecosystem, you are more likely to find something or someone worth supporting. Even if they stay a minority force in the parliament, a good bunch of minority forces may provide a good check on the powers that be and overall increase the political health of the system. This is my position right now given the circumstances of the place where I live. If those happen to change, I will have to reassess this and try to find a better use to give to my vote.
You support a military? Why? The only reason there is war is because of Religion and government. Im pretty sure most civilians in the middle east or wherever are just like you and me, we aint make the decsioin for their to be war and i doubt that the civilians want to attack you anymore thank you want to attack a civilian.
Everyone complains about taxes going to welfare but what about War! Thats where youre taxes are really going. People are more concerned with taking the food out of fellow americans mouth than they are with having a peaceful world
I don't necessarily support a military, but because of so many factors out of our control I can't see us ever getting to a situation where it isn't necessary unfortunately. we can sit around all day forging better countries here in the west, but can it happen in the Middle East? Maybe, but certainly not as fast as it does here.
It's not that I like war, it's just getting to a state of affairs where it won't ever happen is so far beyond what any individual or group of countries can achieve I almost think it's pointless trying to achieve it. And the only way to achieve it, ironically, is probably war.
I think international deplomacy is such a minefield, that organising world peace would require a one government planet, which is pretty unpalatable in and of itself.
It's a tough question, and I don't have a good answer for it, unfortunately.