Why voting is wrong

I would like to follow up on my Oct. 22 anti-voting column “Please don’t vote” and do my best to clarify my position:

By advocating not voting I don’t mean to say that voting doesn’t matter—it quite clearly does matter. The last eight years prove that elections affect everyone’s lives to some degree. By the same token, I have a very strong preference in this election—I am not apathetic. But I am not apathetic on the Duke/UNC rivalry either, but that doesn’t mean it’s OK for me to kidnap Tyler Hansbrough. I’m not equating politics and basketball, but the point holds—just because you would prefer one outcome doesn’t mean that doing everything you can to achieve that outcome is OK.

So why is voting so wrong that you should abstain from it when the stakes are so high?

1. It legitimizes the tyranny of the majority. By voting you are not only voicing your preference, but declaring your intention to abide by the outcome—you cannot participate in democracy on the condition that your side always wins. But why should the fact that many people disagree with me matter? Obviously Hitler and slavery are extreme examples, but there are plenty of others I could have invoked: abortion, civil rights, the Patriot Act, government-subsided health care, lowering the top marginal income tax rate…whether any of these issues are right or wrong has nothing to do with how many people support them, just as Hitler and slavery were not OK because they were supported by a majority.

2. Everyone’s vote counts the same. So much time in this election has been spent convincing people that a black president would not be the end of the world, or that a Muslim is not necessarily a terrorist. This is not a debate worth having, and yet this is not an aberration. Some people are just too ignorant or closed-minded to have say in the deciding of issues—even issues that affect their own lives.

3. Voting further entrenches the given party system. Even voting for a third-party candidate does this. Third-party voting is at least better than voting for a Democrat or Republican, but it is still bad, since ultimately one of the main two parties often swallows the central issue of a third-party’s platform. This is a short-term benefit for that party, but a long-term negative for any hope of reforming the two-party system.

There are a lot more reasons not to vote, but this post is getting kind of long. As for proposing an alternative to voting, that is another vast subject, but I will say this: principled nonvoting is a viable alternative. It is not apathetic or lazy or indecisive. Even if I have failed to convince you not to vote, I hope you realize that there is nothing inherently good about voting, despite all the propaganda that says so. Voting is relegated to a decision between predetermined candidates—nonvoting expands the discussion to the current system’s fundamental flaws.