If You Vote, You Can’t Complain
If you’ve ever openly admitted to not voting, one classic refrain you’ve no doubt heard is “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain,” or “If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain,” or some variation thereof. The implication, of course, is that by not expressing your opinion via voting, you are implicitly accepting the consequences of your lack of participation in the electoral process.
Problematic Premise #1: Voting Matters
The first problem with this classic line of argumentation is that it operates under the assumption that our current democracy works, in the sense that you really do have a choice and are proportionately represented in the government.
Let’s take a presidential election for example. You can vote for any number of third party candidates that have no real chance of getting elected, and not be represented at all, or you can vote for whichever of the two major party candidates you dislike the least, and barely be represented. There’s no option to be proportionately represented, and your vote is going to have basically no effect on how the government is run.
Problematic Premise #2: Rights Exist By Permission
The second problem with this argument is the idea that rights exist by permission. If I have an actual right, that exists due to natural facts about being a rational animal and not by permission of the people around me, then clearly I have a right to complain if that right is violated.
Certainly a random group of people can’t announce an election and declare that I will lose my rights if everyone votes against them. They might do so and then violate my rights, but the rights would still be there.
Analogy Time
Imagine that you’re standing in front of a casino. You see a man walk into the casino with $1000 and a smile on his face. An hour later, the man leaves with no money and a frown. Would you say that he is right to complain about losing his money?
Of course not. He knew what he was doing when he bet his money in a casino and was aware of the potential consequences. By spending his money in the casino, he sanctioned the actions of the casino and the consequences of his participation.
Now imagine that the man leaves, and another man walks in front of the casino but doesn’t go in. He starts to walk away when he is assaulted by a mugger, who takes all of his money and runs away. Would you say that he is right to complain about losing his money?
Of course. He was not aware of the mugger’s existence or motives, and had never sanctioned or agreed to the interaction with the mugger. He did not voluntarily participate at all; the mugging was forced on him. Clearly this man has every right to complain about being mugged.
Now apply this to voting. If I don’t vote, then I never sanctioned or agreed to interaction with the state. When the state violates my rights, I am in the right to complain since I never agreed to the state’s existence or its actions. It was completely forced on me, just like being mugged.
But if I do vote, fully aware of how our system works, then I am implicitly acknowledging the legitimacy of the system and its results. In this case, I am more like the gambler who loses all of his money. I knew what I was getting into and participated anyway, and would not be right to complain about it.
So the way I see it, it’s those who vote, who participate in the state apparatus, that have no right to complain. The rest of us are just innocent victims.
One thing you forgot: the electoral college. Even if the other things weren’t true about the American election process, there is still the electoral college in presidential elections, meaning that the individual vote represents and means nothing.
Comment made by Noobbot on May 12, 2008 @ 6:19 pm
Bored Zhwazi has a post about voting, and his position is that pointing to it as condoning or facilitating statism is basically an attempt to assign collective blame, which is a dubious concept. I do agree with that, but at the same time I consider it somewhat irrelevant. Regardless of whether a person implicitly or explicitly sanctions government by voting, the act is portrayed as consent and a mandate by the ruling class.
Comment made by LibertyIsNotGiven on May 13, 2008 @ 6:45 am
I’ve read both Zhwazi and Spooner’s take on voting, and I disagree with their conclusion simply BECAUSE of the way people frame it. The whole “if you don’t vote you can’t bitch” paradigm that is endemic to the political discourse in America shows that Joe Sixpack does indeed believe that voting gives legitimacy to the system. Else he’d never utter the phrase.
I also think that NOT voting is an affirmative defense in debate with statists in that they cannot claim hypocrisy on my part when I state that I do not participate and will only use the state in order to cause it to eat itself.
Comment made by Kevin Biomech on May 14, 2008 @ 3:11 pm
I think such an assessment can only apply to those who were born citizens, and had no choice in coming to the country of reference. It would also only theoretically apply to those who had never voted before. Once you have voted you have already under your mugger framework, legitimized the state, the same being with those who chose to become naturalized citizens.
Though even then it becomes problematic because you may be legitimizing it by remaining under the system itself. I was having a similar argument with a friend basically debating when an individual legitimizes the state, and how one would go about not participating. But that is beside the point.
I have a saying “There are two things that change the world; power and those who control it.” I think trying to escape or delegitimize the state itself ultimately achieves nothing other than the alteration of the de jure. This being a personal phrase similar to its common use. The de jure is the theoretical state of order, or how things ought to be, the true flow of legitimacy if you will, “Truth”. The de facto would be its conceptual antithesis, it being the actual state of reality. What you are suggesting is a form of protest, in which you hope to alter the de jure. For example if a community passes a law, and all of those under its dominion sign a petition denouncing the law, they would be symbolically de-legitimizing, or shifting the de jure away from the community government which they originally sanctioned. In doing so they now offer to the state, the quid-pro-quo of regaining their legitimacy by reversing the action, but in actuality while they have altered the de jure what have they truly accomplished? Nothing. The de facto remains, and the law still exists. The police then exist to enforce the law, and even if individuals intend to alter the de facto by not observing the new law: the police will see to it that they are made to obey.
So while you have opted to not vote, you have in effect changed nothing. You have only removed your stake of legitimacy from the collective will. And yet you still have to submit to the state itself which has its own police force to see to it that you do indeed obey it.
But what is legitimacy? I prefer to define it under a framework similar to that of Nietzsche’s master slave morality. Legitimacy is in a sense the slave morality of the modern government. It is a concept formed out of resentment for those with power, the ruling class, who have created their own virtue from their strength (the police). It was invented by those without power so that they could have power over the powerful. It is in a sense a concept or attribute created to tell the powerful that they didn’t have something that they should want. The best tangible example of this dynamic is the friendship bracelet. I make you a friendship bracelet and give it to you, when I decide I don’t like you any more I take it back: yet there remains the obvious assumption that if I begin to like you again I will return it. In a sense legitimacy is nothing, it is like that friendship bracelet something I have constructed, and is in no way necessary or needed for your continued existence, or for the case of the state its continued rule. It still possesses that police force to make you do what it says, and it certainly existed before you cast your first vote. In fact for the bulk of history government has existed without any regard for legitimacy or the will of its people. All that should ultimately matter to a government is whether it has the ability (the police manpower) to maintain the de facto. To them the de jure shouldn’t logically even matter. Now in your case, the dissatisfied individual, and rightfully so, “this government is indeed quite bad, and I would agree that a new system entirely is necessary if it is to ever get better) you are now suffering from an even greater delusion and that is also that the de jure truly matters at all. You have grown up under this slave morality as most individuals have, even those in power now, and believe that when you take away what little portion of the legitimacy you have authority over, you actually do something. If you were to simply dismiss this from your mind you would then realize that your focus shouldn’t be this pointless symbolism but rather altering the de facto itself. And to do that you must thus acquire power though the assemblence of a structure, an organization if you will, and like the state enact your change, (which would be its destruction), and then subsequently destroy your own structure, or maintain it. If you were to do the latter they would call you a statist.
Comment made by Iamthey on June 01, 2008 @ 6:03 am