This article is part of our special print debate issue. Below, you’ll find the case in favor of the resolution, followed by the case against the motion and rebuttals.
Should libertarians support voting? Yes!
by Ricardo Felipe
A question profoundly impacts many lovers of liberty when elections are near: Should I or shouldn’t I vote?
The answer I bring you is a resounding yes!
When elections come up in your country, many people may be enticed to stay home instead of going out and casting their ballot. However, what many defenders of liberty may fail to understand is that those who seek a world where the individual is in chains, be it in the name of the state, society or religion, will surely vote.
By casting your vote and supporting candidates or parties that desire to push society toward liberty, you will not only express your stand against a collectivist society with an ever-growing state, but you may be able to throw a wrench into the plans of those scheming to reduce our liberty.
Our rights are often eroded or perverted by governments that seek to increase their power, either by eating away at our political liberties (such as the Right to Life, the Right to Liberty, and the Right to Property) or by creating fake “rights”, which are no more than needs, such as a right to a home or a right to work.
By voting against political forces that seek to do so, we make a clear stand for our rights, showing that there are those in society who will actively resist such attacks. If we do not, there is no real political antidote to those who push for the erosion of personal liberties, in a democratic system.
Some might question the very morality of voting, claiming that voting for a candidate who doesn’t fully represent them is a betrayal of their values. However, this reasoning fails to consider the nature of reality itself.
We may hold our values dearly but if these are impossible to apply, then our values aren’t objective.
While no candidate or political party will likely ever completely represent our values, some will move the balance to the side of liberty. If you’d rather not support parties who would reduce the scale of the state because you feel they don’t go far enough, or you refuse to back those who champion free markets because they demand more regulation than you would ideally like, then you will end up going nowhere.
The goal of our values is to create a fulfilling and happy life. If we demand nothing more than perfection from those who represent us, we will either live in isolation or hypocrisy: either like Bill from The Last of Us, a lone man living in a basement waiting for the apocalypse, or like Gail Wynand from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, a man who keeps his ideals locked away from the real world and lives a life contrary to his values.
By not voting for a party that wishes to increase individual and economic freedom, despite potential disagreements with the goal at the finish line, we fail to shift the course of society towards a better future, allowing those without scruples to dictate how politics will impact society.
Objectively speaking, the ultimate goal of political parties is to gain power. By voting, we send a clear message to politicians: we are here, we have political power and we can elect you if you represent our values.
But what if no option exists? What if all candidates are in league with some kind of collectivism or statism? If you truly can’t find any representation of the ideals of liberty in your country, then become one, raise the banner, and let those who share your beliefs rally to you.
My hometown is sadly ruled by communists, in a country where one form or another of socialism is the norm. Although they currently still hold power, their wall of censorship has been significantly cracked by those who vote against their rule. By doing so, a system that once allowed no voice but a communist one, now forces this party to answer to others and has their schemes exposed more often than not.
In the famous words of Winston Churchill: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried.” Despite the inherent failures of many voting systems, liberty will always be better represented if we voice our preference through voting, instead of allowing others to choose in our stead. For a democratic system to truly work, its citizens must be wise. Don’t forsake your wisdom due to the foolishness of others.
When election day comes, don’t stay home. Stand for liberty, cast your vote, and be the change you want to see.
Should libertarians vote? No!
by Ian Golan
There are quite a few things I’ve done throughout my 22-year existence that I am ashamed of, but the one thing I am the most embarrassed about took place on the 23rd of June 2020. It was on that day that I applied my ink pen to a mail-in ballot card. I partook in the utmost sacred statist ritual of voting. I sold my soul for that election cycle. This was my first and last endeavour as a voter; the ballot slip for the second round of the election, where the choice was limited to only two candidates, I have kept to this day unmarked.
Voting is Foolish
An important part of my reason to abstain: the implausible odds of an individual impacting the electoral outcome. The probability is zero. Your vote doesn’t count. In most jurisdictions, voting is more irrational than spending money on Mega Jackpot Lotteries. Whether, next election day, you queue for an hour to fill in a single ballot or sleep for an hour longer, the election result will be the same. Electoral outcomes decided by a single vote are incredibly rare. And even more rare are parliamentary votes hanging on a single vote. It is more likely that you will get hit by a car on the way to the polling station than that your vote will matter. The rational person stays home on election day.
Voting is Cultish
Why then does voting remain such a sacred cow? Well, the stakes of this argument are very high for any government. Voting is the fundamental axiom of all modern statism. It is the central lie that the state relies on to reinforce the sole justification of its existence, the imaginary social contract. Once it is stripped away, all actions of the government can be seen in their full horror as unjustified violence. Exorbitant taxation to fill its coffers becomes an obvious case of extortion. The prosecution of victimless crime turns out to be banditry. Conscription is revealed as barbaric slavery.
The emperor has no clothes. The state stripped of the democratic smoke cover is seen as merely the most successful crime syndicate on planet Earth. A well-organized squad of goons who successfully built a complex mythology around their monopoly on violence. The point about the nature of the state is historically verifiable. No state emerged through its citizens unanimously signing social contracts. The social contract is merely an ad-hoc rationalization of evil. Every single time, states have been created by violence and rampage. The denizens of a particular territory are terrorized into obedience and then propagandized into a belief that this is all in service of their own good.
For the state to continue its existence, all citizens need to be forced into meek obedience. They need to have been indoctrinated since kindergarten. They need to be absorbed into a cult.
The cult at hand is quite peculiar but undeniably adept in delivering on its purpose. It has powerful symbols that evoke strong emotions in devotees. It has its saints spread around the country on monuments, paintings and street names. It has temples in every city. It has ingenious publicity campaigns; its newspapers, radios and TV stations funded by cult members and non-members alike. It is present in our lives every month and every week.
And then comes the holiest of days for statists: the election day. All the faithful must embark on a pious pilgrimage to the polling station. They need to partake in the holy rite of voting and receive the holy benediction in the form of an innocuous “I voted” sticker.
Abstention is Liberation
I am a skeptic of that cult. I won’t be queuing for hours in front of the temples of the statist religion. I won’t be marking candidates on the pieces of paper with holy ink. I will never vote again.
Rebuttal
by Ricardo Felipe
Firstly, I would like to highlight Ian’s valid criticism in his writing: the cult of democracy.
Sadly, some believe with blind faith in the democratic system, believing that any vote is a good vote, that people should be forced to vote or have their liberties stripped, or even that democracy is a perfect system. I’ve encountered people such as this throughout my life.
However, Ian’s criticism of the cult established upon a democratic process isn’t a valid critique of the system itself but rather of those who don’t fully understand its goals and merits.
The essence of a liberal democracy is to allow the ruled to have a significant input in how they are ruled. This system should allow the majority to show their preference while safeguarding essential rights beyond “mob rule”. Although the system is far from perfect, it has a similar grace to the free market: it will often give the people what they want, regardless of whether it is rational, functional, or even good for them. There is nothing magical about the democratic system, it requires wisdom to make wise decisions, facts to make objective decisions, and scrutiny to work honestly.
The claim that the action of voting itself is useless is in itself a fallacy. Even if the system is rigged to favor specific political parties, as is the case for Portugal’s legislative elections, reform is still possible if enough people call for it. The fact that a single vote rarely changes the outcome of elections doesn’t change the fact that it can. If you truly believe that some change must happen, you can single-handedly influence its outcome by using your voice. You may only vote once, but your call may influence those close to you, those who hold similar values, those who seek similar outcomes, or even those who share a common foe. This way, you may only vote once, but you may be able to rally thousands of votes to your cause.
While I would agree that the current size of governments makes elections more impactful than they would be in a theorized society based on the ideals of an explicit social contract, where governments would have their powers restricted to only their essential functions, the current reality isn’t, sadly, in line with that, nor does it show any signs of taking this road if the ideas of liberty don’t become mainstream in politics.
Though Ian shows a passionate argumentation of his decisions, his reasoning ends up in the utopian interpretations of libertarianism, resulting in little more than a sense of self-satisfaction while those who seek an authoritarian and/or collectivist future keep tightening the proverbial noose around our liberties.
Rebuttal
by Ian Golan
Libertarians do not have the luxury of resources to waste. While statists can afford to engage in nonsense rituals, in endless bureaucracy, in personal vendettas turned national policy, in senseless conquest and conflict, this is not a path available to us. The threats to liberty are ever-real and everlasting, while our resources are scarce and limited.
Take the 4.5 million people who voted for Gary Johnson in 2016. They spent a conservative total of about 197,531,000 minutes (that’s 137 years) voting. What’s the price tag for that? Roughly $83 million. For that sum of money one could buy digital advertising that could reach 8.3 billion people—basically, every person on the planet with an internet connection. That’s the true cost of voting, a huge waste of time and resources when one could be doing something far more effective.
You should not vote. Not even if you care about votes! One hour of door-to-door canvassing usually leads to gaining 5–10 additional votes in an election. If Jehovah’s Witness-style interactions with strangers are not your thing you can always volunteer with SFL or write a great article for SpeakFreely. Fight for liberty with the written or spoken word and print your “I-voted” sticker at home.
Yet, I assert that the most virtuous act of defiance is not merely abstaining from voting, but proclaiming it proudly. There is no greater statement than the refusal to participate in the state’s holy ceremonies, to decline the ritual of legitimacy it so desperately craves. The myth of the state can come crumbling down. It is not some divine law, handed down from on high, that we must submit to the misery of statism. The first step to its demise is stepping away from its altar.
Sacrificing your values should have a heavy price tag. One which is seldom met by politicians. Maybe you can make an exception on the rare occasion Javier Milei is on your ballot. Politics, you see, is neither sacred nor cursed. And so libertarians can and should participate in politics, but still exercise all the cunning. We should at the very least, in the privacy of our own minds, admit that we don’t buy into the absurd superstition that voting is a sacred rite.
There might come a time when I run for office. I will then kindly ask voters to consider a vote for me. I will renounce my previous absenteeism and herd men and women to the polls, but you, Ricardo, should know that deep down I will still be a non-believer. Even on such a year, I will likely stay home on election day. If need be I will pose for a press photo op, but the ballot I place in the box will be empty. I will never mark a ballot ever again. The state doesn’t deserve my soul.
