This seems key. Wouldn’t it be much more effective to write in the name of someone you would support than to send the very ambiguous message of saying nothing?

Jon H: why not use actual arguments yourself, instead of slurs. I doubt you have read Andrea Dworkin, btw, or you wouldn’t have written that.

I would say that the legitimacy of elected rulers relies on the fact that the citizens believe that the outcome of a vote is a valid method of selecting a leader, rather than the absolute percentage of voters supporting the winning candidate.

Ok – I concede your point: in the current atmosphere, when people don’t show up to vote (as in local elections), it is usually taken as an indication of disinterest rather than as delegitimization. Thanks for illuminating me.

That said, my original point stands: Voting legitimizes the electoral system. In view of the point above, however, I amend my position: not voting is not enough – to undermine the legitimacy of the electoral system non-voters have to take some action indicating that they reject the system rather than simply don’t care about the outcome.

Maybe collecting signatures next to polling stations for an anti-electoral petition could do the trick.

What are you, one of the Montana Freemen? Have any liens out on judges?

The ‘system’ would produce another Hitler in 2 seconds?

Withholding your vote is an act of social emasculation, and that’s all. If you want to change the system, support primary challenges by candidates you can support, and vote for them.

Not voting is just lazy.

A prescient use of Republican talking points.

That’s not clear at all. I would say that the legitimacy of elected rulers relies on the fact that the citizens believe that the outcome of a vote is a valid method of selecting a leader, rather than the absolute percentage of voters supporting the winning candidate. Local elections are the perfect example of this. Turnout in our county rarely breaks the 20% mark. If any significant percentage of the people who didn’t vote thought that the elections were illegitimate on that basis, the county would be ungovernable. And yet, they don’t, possibly because it’s more difficult to make the case that voting for a county commisioner makes you complicit in foreign wars.

From McElroy’s extensive writing on the subject, her political philosophy would appear to be derived from and/or influenced by, inter alia, anarchism, libertarianism, “individualist feminism,” the writings of H. D. Thoreau, L. Tolstoy, F. A. Hayek and M. Rothbard.

McElroy explains and defends her position on voting in “Why I Would Not Vote” on “WendyMcElroy.com” (originally published as “Why I Would Not Vote Against Hitler,” Liberty Magazine, (May 1996) ).

Since I consider electoral politics to be the milk-toast equivalent of terrorism, my opening statement as a panel member was a condemnation of voting. My arguments were aimed at L[ibertarian] P[arty] members who consider themselves…anarchists, yet who jump to their feet in ebullient applause upon hearing that a fellow libertarian wants to be a politician.

[A] question was posed to me: “If you could have cast the deciding vote against Hitler, would you have done so?” I replied, “No, but I would have no moral objection to putting a bullet through his skull.”…I consider such a bullet to be an act of self-defense in a manner that a ballot could never be. [A] bullet can be narrowly aimed at a deserving target; a ballot attacks innocent third parties who must endure the consequences of the politician I have assisted into a position of unjust power over their lives. Whoever puts a man into a position of unjust power—that is, a position of political power—must share responsibility for every right he violates thereafter.

[W]hat is the nature of the state? Here, I accept a Nozickian definition that the state is an institution that claims a monopoly of force over a geographical area. It is a form of institutionalized power, and the first step in dissecting its essence is to analyze the defining terms ‘power’ and ‘institution’. … [T]here [a]re … two sorts of power: Social power refers to the amount of freedom individuals actually exercise over their lives: that is, the extent to which they can freely make such choices as where and how to live. State power refers the actual amount of control the government exercises over individuals; that is, the extent to which [government] determines such choices as where and how people live. There is an inverse and antagonistic relationship between social and state power. [O]ne form…expands only at the expense of the other.
[...]
[T]he power of a state rests on social conditions such as whether people will obey its laws and how many resources it can command to enforce obedience. A key social condition is how legitimate the state is seen to be. For without the veil of legitimate authority, the people will not obey: the state will not long command the resources … it needs to live.
[...]
[F]reedom does not depend so much on repealing laws as on weakening the authority of the state. It does not depend…on persuading enough people to vote ‘properly’ so that libertarians can occupy seats of political power and roll back legislation. [T]his [only] strengthens the institutional framework that produced unjust laws in the first place: it strengthens the structure of state power by accepting its authority as a tool of change.
[...]
As long as everyone respects its rules—e.g. they vote, go through state channels, obey the law—it functions as a mechanism of social control….[G]ood men who act through bad institutions will produce bad results [despite their good intentions]. Good men acting through the state will strengthen its legitimacy and institutional framework, … [and thus] weaken the social conditions that allow social power to surge.
[...]
[T]he essential problem is not Hitler, but the institutional framework that allows a Hitler to grasp a monopoly on power. Without the state to back him up and an election to give him legitimized power, Hitler would have been—at most—the leader of some ragged thugs who mugged people in back alleys. Voting for or against Hitler would only strengthen the institutional framework that produced him—a framework that would produce another of his ilk in two seconds.

Killing Hitler does less damage. But it—like voting—is an admission of utter defeat. Resorting to brute force means that all avenues of social power have been destroyed and I have been reduced to adopting the tactics of the state. Under tyranny, such violence might be justified as long as I could avoid harming innocent third parties[,]… [but] voting could not be justified. No one has the right to place one human being in a position of political power over another. A consistent libertarian can never authorize one human being to tax and control peaceful activities. And the state is no more than the institutionalized embodiment of this authorization.

You cannot help freedom or social power by bowing your head to Leviathan.

If a few thousand people with toy hammers could have stopped Bush then those are some valuable toy hammers.

Yes, Sortition, I am aware of that. But the reason for that disenfranchisement was property, not gender. As soon as a man reached a certain level of wealth/property ownership, he could vote. There was no argument that men, per se, were incapable and/or unsuitable to wield the franchise. I would submit that the two things are substantively different.