The “Why” of Voting
We are in the heat of the election season now. Many Will start voting soon, and many more will do so before the actual election day. Only 9+ more weeks to go before it is all over. Thank God! It has only been about 6 weeks since Biden’s withdrawal , but it has seemed closer to 100 years.
We are, of course, hearing the drumbeat of “Go Vote!” from all manner of sources. These are typically called “Public Service Announcements”. All types of people have jumped on board with this effort, from local potentates to globally known celebrities. Who could object? The arguments are pretty much the same every election cycle. They typically center around the idea that you can decide the outcome of an election with your vote; participation gives you a say in the nation’s future; that it is your civic obligation. Let us see if any of these rationales hold up.
You Cannot Decide the Outcome
The blunt reality is that it is nearly statistically impossible for your one vote to affect the outcome of an election. In 2010 Columbia University undertook a study to determine the odds of one vote affecting the outcome of a presidential election. In states where the electoral college could go either way, the odds of one vote making a difference was 1 in 10 million. On average, in the US the odds of one vote being decisive are 1 in 60 million. In my home state of Nebraska, in the 2nd House District in which I live the 2022 vote total was 219,470. Therefore, one vote equals .00045%. Statistically meaningless. Ah, but what about smaller races, at the state and/or local level? Surely one vote might be impactful. Well, in the last city council election, my local district totaled 20,082 between the two candidates and a smattering of write in votes. That did, as you may suspect, raise the percentages that one vote represented. It went all the way to .0049%. Wow! There simply is no case to be made that any one vote is statistically meaningful.
The Will of Who?
The next rationale is that voting allows you a say in the direction of the country, or state, or locality. That is that voting reflects the “will of the people”. This is a claim contradicted by reality. In the US, and most of the west, the voting process is what is known as “first past the post”. Basically, this is a plurality voting system. The one with the most votes wins, in a winner take all.
This is as opposed to a “ranked choice voting” process. In this system you mark your first, second, third, etc…. choices in order. One candidate is eliminated each round until one has a majority. This ostensibly prevents a majority of the voters opposing the winner of the election, which is an inherent possibility in the first past the post process.
Yet, this is not really an answer. An economist and social theorist named Kenneth Arrow developed a theorem that rejects the notion that any ranked choice voting process can produced anything resembling voters’ preferences. In short, “a clear order of preferences cannot be determined while adhering to mandatory principles of fair voting procedures”. There just is not a way to obtain a clear preference or determine the “will of the people” via voting.
The practical result of this situation is that voters pick one or two issues that they care about and vote for that person, even if they disagree with most of the rest of their platform. This can hardly be said to reflect the will of the people.
The other way that “the will of the people” is truncated is in the limited number of candidates that are in front of the average voter. Ballot access is so restricted by the duopoly of both major parties that there is scarcely a choice before the voters. Here is a link to an interactive chart giving you a sense of how labyrinthian and picayune the rules for ballot access are. This all but assures that third party candidates will never enjoy equal footing with Republicans or Democrats.
The last point to be made on this topic is that the results of election after election bely any notion of real change in this country. I pointed this out in 2018 in a post about the “excremental continuity” between the policies of both major parties. It simply does not matter who gets elected, the policies stay substantially the same. It does not matter how low the ratings for Congress, or the President get, nothing stops this train.
Civic What?
The last argument for voting is a moral one, dripping with guilt. It is your civic obligation. Perhaps framed by some as a sacred obligation. There are no civic obligations. I argued as much previously. This idea implies that we have positive duties toward the government, which is just shorthand for the idea that we may be compelled to do things. This is a dangerous idea, and accounts for much of what ails the world. It is enough to say that if we have a right to do something, then we have a right not to do something. This renders the “moral” case for voting as inert as the practical case that we have just derailed.
The Case Against Democracy
Now that I have tackled the practical and briefly the moral case for voting, is there a broader case to be made against democracy? Indeed yes! This is particularly the case as democracy is practiced today. Democracy started as a means of controlling the power of the government. To quote James Madison in Federalist Papers “if men were angles, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”. That is, democracy was a process of the people choosing representatives to perform certain limited functions; the goal of which was to preserve individual liberty. It is not that the founders thought that highly of the mass of people, but that giving them some say in governance would best protect freedom. Rapid economic progress in the 19th century, however, spread a view of the general progress in the nature of humanity. This began to erode the sense of a need to limit government, humanity being seen as closer to angels. It began to be seen that all that was needed for sound governance was mass participation. As the franchise expanded the idea became that a simple majority had the right to make all the decisions. Limitations of the prerogatives of the majority began to be viewed as elitist, and a sign of aristocratic thinking. The door was now open to the growth of the state based upon simple majorities. This was true even if, as we have shown above, the majority was not presented with much of a choice, or the “will of the people” respected.
This brings us to the main argument against democracy in general and voting in particular. Democracy, as it is practiced today, generates votes on issues that should not even be up for discussion, much less a vote. Issues such as how much of someone else’s (it is always someone else’s) wealth to expropriate. Questions such as how much I should be able to sell my labor for. Or in general, what I may peacefully do with my property, or what I may put into my body. These questions are none of anyone’s business. There should be no discussion among the voters about these issues, and there is no moral case to be made that these decisions should be made by a majority vote.
So, in the end, we have a situation whereby the cult of voting, built upon a specious view of human nature, has generated a large government that invades most aspects of our lives, simply because a “majority” wants it that way. Yet, at the same time for any given candidate, or issue, the best that can be said is that it is usually a minority of potential voters that support said candidate or issue. After voters have voted, then moved on with their lives, and voted in a larger government, the interests that controlled the selection of candidates, and their exposure in the media, will now get busy capturing the government and go about the business of lining their pockets at the expense of the rest of us.
As for me, I say thanks, but no thanks. I refuse to give any legitimacy to this grotesque exercise in raw power over issues that are none of my business. I am reassured that it makes no practical difference anyway. I would rather take my time to work toward the breaking down of this system and replacing it with one that protects the legitimate human rights of the whole society. One way to do this is to point out that there is no moral or practical case to be made for voting. If we are successful then we will have a situation where people may vote, but only for who will do the few, and I mean very few functions of a government. Then we can get back to the essential business of building a better society instead of encouraging the mass of people to spend their time voting for a living.
Praise Be to God
