Against Voting

After careful and lengthy introspection, I have isolated an aspect of my social thought to such a degree of clarity that I can express it with ease: I hate voting.  Not in the sense that I don’t like the process of voting, although it can be a pain.  Also not in the sense that I think voting in a political context is immoral.  Rather I hate the idea of settling an issue—any issue, large or small—by plebiscite.

Consider a presidential election.  What is theoretically at issue is the question of who should be President of the United States, a position with no small amount of power and responsibility.  Generally speaking, there are two candidates between whom voters choose, a Republican and a Democrat, with one wining and the other losing.  One Tuesday in November, everyone interested and eligible goes to the polls and usually by the end of the day it’s obvious who won, waiving the complications of the Electoral College.

Now suppose that one year the Republican wins and the Democrat loses.  Further suppose that this was an overwhelming victory with the outcome completely incontestable by the loser; let’s say the vote was 80% Republican to 20% Democrat.  This should be a case where the will of the people is clear and our supposedly democratic institutions reflect as such.  Now suppose that the 20% who voted Democrat had stayed home instead of voting; would the outcome have been significantly different?  No, of course not, and that’s because they lost.  Would this fact be different had the victory been less dramatic?  Again, no, and for exactly the same reason.  After a plebiscite, the losers cease to matter.

Consider now a smaller-scale vote, say, whether a state should allow gay marriage.  The vote is set for a particular date, and when that day arrives, everyone interested and eligible will vote yea or nay.  By the time of the vote, everyone will be expected to have made up their mind on the issue.  After the vote, however, the matter is supposed to be settled more-or-less permanently.  This means that whoever lost or hadn’t made up their mind yet is out of luck at influencing the outcome.  In this case, we can see more clearly why the losers don’t matter.  The vote is supposed to be the final word on the issue, expressing the general consensus.  But in fact, it does no such thing.  The vote a person casts expresses their views only, and there is no wiggle-room on their ballot. Rather than expressing consensus, a plebiscite splits a society into factions contesting with each other for control.

This scenario also sheds light on another problem of voting.  The options presented at the time of the vote are never the only possible choices, and almost certainly not the best choices.  For a complex issue, the best, most acceptable outcome is to be discovered in a conversation amongst the people the issue affects.  Take, for instance, the Constitutional Convention in 1787.  The people at the convention did not settle contentious issues by simply polling the delegations, but through lengthy discussions in which all the attendees weighed various arguments and positions.  What came out was a series of compromises that were at least acceptable to everyone present.  The fact that they voted on the various proposals and the final product was ultimately less significant than their general resolution to accept them or reject them as they case may have been.

Now let’s take things down to an even smaller scale.  Suppose a group of friends are trying to figure out where they should go for dinner.  Suppose also that one of the friends is a vegetarian.  How should they decide where to go?  The main issue involved here is how much sway the lone vegetarian should have over the decision of the group, and this depends on a variety of factors.  What are the available options?  How willing is the vegetarian to go without eating for a while longer?  How much weight do the other friends give to the vegetarian’s desires?  There is no simple answer to these questions, but simply deciding the issue by voting sweeps all of these concerns under the rug.  The difficulty is in finding the right balance so that the most satisfactory outcome is reached.  This may not always occur, and even in those cases where it does, it may require a strong personality to step forward and forge a consensus where there wasn’t one before.  There may have hard decisions made and compromises on many fronts.  Decision by poll simply ignores all of these complicating factors which form the core of the issue to be decided.

The upshot of these considerations is that whenever voting is “needed” it is destructive to the body that is making the decision, and whenever it is not needed, well, then it is superfluous.  This strikes at the heart of the idea of plebiscitary democracy, revealing it as a wretched form of government fostering division rather than community.  And this is true regardless of the size of the government in question, whether of a small group of people, of a company’s workers, or of an entire nation.