In Defense of Voting

This is not an official endorsement of the strategy of voting, but the below has certainly caused me to rethink my position. Our first foray into the topic of voting was made by Spencer Morgan. Here’s our next:

I’ve heard many good arguments in opposition to voting. The arguments were so compelling that I adopted the non-voting stance for quite awhile. I mean, it just seemed so natural for someone who doesn’t believe in authority to gravitate towards this position; it seemed like a no-brainier to me. I completely understand that behind every pull of the lever, and in back of every check of the box, lies aggression, or the threat of it. This is problematic for me, because the non-aggression principle is foundational to my philosophy. Therefore, I abandoned the act of voting, and swore I would never vote again.

Along with coming to the conclusion that voting is aggression, I also had other reasons for swearing off voting. I see democracy as nothing more than a perpetual war of the collectives, and I wanted no part in that any longer. In a battle of collectives, the vote is the lowly grunt, and as an individualist, I am much more than that. I own me, I own my labor, I own my property, and frankly, that ain’t up for a vote. That was basically my position, and I held it for a long time, and I defended that position fiercely. However, I try to be as honest with myself as I possibly can, so this means from time to time, I send my own beliefs back through the logic mill to check them for errors. Through internal cross-examination, I believe I have discovered an error within the principled non-voting position. I stated earlier that my property is not up for a vote, and I believe that is where the error lies.

by Chris Dates, read the rest.

Update 11/12: The above article, in my view, applies only to referendum voting and offers a pretty good defense at participation. However, electoral voting is not about protecting property rights, it’s about assigning illegitimately-obtained and held authority to individuals. One simply has no right to do this.

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Founder and editor of Everything-Voluntary.com and UnschoolingDads.com, Skyler is a husband and unschooling father of three beautiful children. His writings include the column series “One Voluntaryist’s Perspective” and “One Improved Unit,” and blog series “Two Cents“. Skyler also wrote the books No Hitting! and Toward a Free Society, and edited the books Everything Voluntary and Unschooling Dads. You can hear Skyler chatting away on his podcasts, Everything Voluntary and Thinking & Doing.