Comments Elsewhere

I can’t see any reason to vote that doesn’t imply that I view the state as legitimate, and therefore no way to act that doesn’t view its actions as originating in real authority, whether or not I agree with the actions.

Well, I think the problem here is that you’re giving too much credit to the State’s own legitimating myths. There are cases in which participating in a process means tacitly accepting the legitimacy of the proceeding, and tacitly consenting to the outcome. But voting, at least, is not among them. For participation to count as consent, even tacit consent, it must be the case that refusing to participate would have exempted you from the outcome. Otherwise, I can’t see how the “permission” you give to the government by voting is any different from the “permission” you give a mugger to take your money instead of your life when you hand over your wallet. Here’s how Lysander Spooner put much the same point in No Treason:

In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having even been asked a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practice this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man takes the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot —- which is a mere substitute for a bullet —- because, as his only chance of self- preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him.

Doubtless the most miserable of men, under the most oppressive government in the world, if allowed the ballot, would use it, if they could see any chance of thereby meliorating their condition. But it would not, therefore, be a legitimate inference that the government itself, that crushes them, was one which they had voluntarily set up, or even consented to.

Therefore, a man’s voting under the Constitution of the United States, is not to be taken as evidence that he ever freely assented to the Constitution, even for the time being. Consequently we have no proof that any very large portion, even of the actual voters of the United States, ever really and voluntarily consented to the Constitution, even for the time being. Nor can we ever have such proof, until every man is left perfectly free to consent, or not, without thereby subjecting himself or his property to be disturbed or injured by others.

I’d be happy to take an anti-electoral line if it were true that everyone who refused to vote didn’t have to deal with tax-men, law-men, hangmen, or Congressmen anymore. But it isn’t, so I don’t see how the decision to vote or not to vote, just by itself, says anything about your moral relationship to the State. (Of course, whom you vote for, and why you vote for them, might.)

I should say that I hardly think that voting is the only or the best or even a particularly effective form of self-defense against the State — I think that voting on single-issue referenda is better than voting for so-called representatives, and that education, symbolic civil disobedience, direct action, etc. are all far better than voting of any kind. So there’s not a particularly pressing reason to get out there and do it. But the opportunity cost for voting in either kind of election is fairly low, so I don’t see a pressing reason not to do it, either, and if the stakes are high it may be worth your time.