Why I Don’t Vote … and Maybe You Shouldn’t, Either
I recently printed up cards that I carry with me, that read as follows:
I don’t vote. I believe it would be unethical for me to assist in placing one human being in a position of power over others. Further, I don’t join mobs or pick sides in gang fights. This seems difficult to explain in casual conversation (some people even get angry). Therefore I usually avoid discussing it unless pressed. For anyone really curious, I’ve written out an explanation, which may be found here: tinyurl.com/againstvoting
The URL goes to a web page (possibly the one you are reading now) where I detail my reasons for not voting. The cards are to hand to people who bring up the subject and become perplexed or argumentative when they find out where I stand.
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 doing 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, 1870]
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.
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 like to think I would answer something like 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.
Note 1: My use of the term, “the State,” should not be taken to mean that I think it is an entity with a will and existence of its own, apart from the people who make it up. That would be committing the reification fallacy. I use it simply as shorthand to refer to those who constitute the so-called government, especially those who make and enforce laws, edicts and mandates, who are backed by police power, and who are viewed as having a legitimate authority (or at least an unopposable one) by a large number of people.
Note 2: I owe the distinction between (true) government and the State to Perry Willis and Jim Babka of Downsize DC and the Zero Aggression Project. It’s not a commonly made one; even most voluntaryists and libertarians tend to use the terms interchangeably. However, I think it’s a useful one worth popularizing. See: “Are some people confused about what a government is?” and consumer-controlled governance (a non-violent alternative to the State).
Note 3: I came to my position of principled non-voting after many years of reading, thinking and reasoning. No one person, book or discussion led me to it. However, Lysander Spooner, quoted above, was a big influence. In addition to No Treason, I recommend his 1877 essay, “Against Woman Suffrage,” to anyone interested in his views on this subject.
(I should note that Spooner does write that voting can be viewed as an act of self-defense, one to which a person may be driven in desperation, but which does not thereby signify approval of the State and its criminal activities. Some commentators take this to mean that he was not anti-voting, but I think they overstate the case.)
Wendy McElroy’s essay, “Why I Would Not Vote Against Hitler,” was also influential in my evolution. It took me several readings over the course of about twenty years before I was able to fully understand and embrace her argument. When you’ve had it pounded into you from an early age that voting is a wonderful privilege, a solemn duty, and even a sacred right, it takes a lot of work to break out of the box.
Note 4: A web search turns up other statements of principled non-voting. Many of them make excellent points that I neglected above, and shine further light on the subject. (Listing updated and links checked Nov. 4, 2020)
- Michael Malice (The Guardian, Oct. 14, 2014): Why I won’t vote this year — or any year
- Jonathan Bean (The Beacon/Independent Institute, March 18, 2016): Nonvoter Manifesto: Don’t Vote!
- Carl Watner (The Voluntaryist №103, April 2000): Is Voting an Act of Violence?
- A. Barton Hinkle (Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 7, 2016): No, you don’t have an obligation to vote
- David E. Shellenberger (DaveShellenberger.com, Nov. 4, 2014) Please Remember Not to Vote
- Brian Doherty (Reason, Nov. 4, 2004): Not Voting and Proud
- Darren Wolfe (NolanChart.com, Sept. 16, 2010): Principled Nonvoting: The Beginning of Disengaging From the State
- George Donnelly (More Liberty Now, May 4, 2009): Non-Voting is Principled Political Self-Defense
- Bryan Caplan (EconLog, Sept. 13, 2016): Why I Don’t Vote: The Honest Truth
- Skyler J. Collins (Everything Voluntary, Nov. 15, 2018): Voting Shmoting, or Why I Didn’t Vote (podcast episode, 28 minutes)
- Jared Nordin (The Voluntary Contrarian, April 28, 2019): Vote for What I Want … or Else! (podcast episode, 16 minutes)
- William Gillis (Center for a Stateless Society, Nov. 20, 2018): The Case Against Voting
- George (Barbarous Relic blog, May 7, 2019): What will you do on Election Day?
- Aaron Ross Powell (Libertarianism.org, Nov. 3, 2014): Voting as a Moral Wrong
- Aaron Ross Powell and Trevor Burrus (Libertarianism.org, Nov. 8, 2016): Some Very Good Reasons Not to Vote
- David McElroy (DavidMcElroy.org, June 3, 2014): Not voting makes a statement: ‘You don’t have my moral consent’
- Doug Casey (International Man): Top Five Reasons Not to Vote
- Frank Chodorov (mises.org, Nov. 4, 2014; published originally in the newsletter analysis, July, 1945): If We Quit Voting
- L. Reichard White (lewrockwell.com, Oct. 24, 2020): It’s About Your Voting Fetish
- John Hasnas (200-Proof Liberals, Oct. 7, 2020): Principled Non-Voting
- More, more, more! See this list of additional articles on the subject (at Voluntaryist.com)
Finally, I cannot omit mentioning the great George Carlin’s brief but biting routine on voting, available on YouTube.
