Don't Vote: It Only Encourages Them

To Aristotle, man was by nature a political animal. His notion of politics revolved around the substantial participation in public life one assumed as an Athenian citizen. To most Americans, however, political activity involves merely voting. The media describes the declining voter turnout as a bad thing. One might speculate it is merely a symptom rather than the disease.

In The Crack-Up, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, "France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter?it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart." As our rulers' hearts become less willing, become as free of loyalty to their roots as any multinational corporation (when Dan Quayle left the vice presidency, he remained in Indiana only four years before moving to a gated community of rich folks in Arizona), they stop pretending to live by the rules of conduct they dictate to us. Their attitude toward the average American's choosing not to vote has a Wildean flavor: as Algernon says in The Importance of Being Earnest, "Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility."

Jon Corzine, who is trying to buy one of New Jersey's U.S. Senate seats without revealing his tax returns, did not vote in 17 primary elections and five general elections since 1975, according to Reuters. In desperation, Corzine recently claimed he had voted in a 1998 referendum. He was having an Albert Gore moment: the records showed he had not.

Richard Cheney, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, former secretary of defense and former U.S. representative from Wyoming, registered to vote from Texas in 1995 when he moved to Dallas to work for Halliburton. According to the Associated Press, he did not vote in 14 of the 16 elections held since: primaries, runoffs, school board elections and referenda on bond issues and public questions. Nothing, apparently, distracted Cheney from his private affairs, just like the millions of other Americans who cannot be bothered to vote. Cheney explained extensive traveling had kept him from being involved in state or local politics. Perhaps he does not consider mere voting a political act. For Cheney, as for most of us, voting is a matter of convenience: an economic decision, if you will. As Leo Jakobson recently wrote in the Silicon Alley Reporter, you "have to find the location of your polling station, get up early, wait on line, go in the booth, and then drive on to work. You might even have to skip breakfast."

Albert Jay Nock, who wrote several minor classics including Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, claimed he could not remember when he had last voted. He recalled considering the merits of the candidates and carefully weighing the issues. Then he cast a write-in vote for Jefferson Davis. "I knew Jeff was dead," he wrote, but "if we can't have a live man who amounts to anything, by all means let's have a first class corpse." That vote, Nock believed, was as effective as the millions cast since.

Whether one votes now depends not so much on one's sense of duty as interest and incentive. For example, millions voted among two designs for a postage stamp honoring Elvis Presley. Voting on whether to issue the stamp at all would have been more relevant. As that decision had been made, all we were permitted was to ratify it by choosing the illustration. Voting in political elections similarly ratifies the choices made for us by those whom the French philosopher Alain called the Importants, "the permanent conspiracy of the rich and ambitious, the great chiefs, parasites, and flatterers, those who think themselves indispensable."

I find two honorable arguments for not voting: the philosophical and the immediate. The first is nearly as old as the Republic and premised on the common law. As advanced by Josiah Warren, Lysander Spooner, Voltairine de Cleyre and Benjamin Tucker, no person can ethically occupy a position of power over another without that person's consent. One might delegate one's natural right to protect one's life and property to another person as a matter of contract. However, one had to possess the right that was being delegated. In other words, I may delegate my rights but I cannot delegate yours, at least not without your express permission. Thus, the delegation must be explicit and not merely assumed. Finally, as Spooner wrote, one should be able to "freely withdraw that delegation and reclaim the exercise of one's natural rights, for to say that you cannot withdraw your delegation is to say that you have given away not the exercise of a particular right but your entire liberty."

In 1890, De Cleyre explained her moral opposition to political office and the process of voting thus: "A body of voters cannot give into your charge any rights but their own. By no possible jugglery of logic can they delegate the exercise of any function which they themselves do not control. If any individual on earth has a right to delegate his powers to whomsoever he chooses, then every other individual has an equal right; and if each has an equal right, then none can choose an agent for another without the other's consent. Therefore, if the power of government resides in the whole people and out of that whole all but one elected you as their agent, you would still have no authority whatever to act for that one."

From this point of view, as Wendy McElroy, a contemporary writer, suggests, electoral politics is merely "replacing the face behind the desk as though it were the particular face and not the desk?the position of unjust power itself?that was the enemy." In short, to these men and women, government itself?the political solution to society's problems, requiring the use of force or compulsion to work its will?is inherently immoral.

If one does not reject the state, however, the immediate argument for not voting remains: the men on the ballot. "If the Gods had meant us to vote," Jim Hightower has written, "they would have given us candidates." For once, he may be right. I admired Sen. Albert Gore Sr. because there were a few things he might have sold and did not sell. I could not say that of his son. As we now know, Albert Gore Jr.'s great fundraising campaigns over the last eight years have yielded millions. They have also resulted in some 22 indictments, 12 convictions, 70 witnesses taking the Fifth Amendment and 18 witnesses fleeing the country. This is Al Gore, not Al Capone.

Corrupt fundraising is one thing. One might tolerate it. Eugene McCarthy could not have driven Lyndon Johnson from the presidency in 1968 by raising funds under today's restrictions. The existing regulations impracticably restrict the size of individual contributions at a time when, with the disappearance of political machines, the only effective campaign medium is television, and the cost of television commercials is obscene. The regulations thus protect the established order from insurgency. Nor do any of the proposed reforms address the real problems: ballot and media access so outsiders may fight the system.

More importantly, Albert Gore Jr. lies when he doesn't have to, a sign of bad judgment. The truth about Gore's lies is remarkable. Most famously, he claimed to have taken "the initiative in creating the Internet," something that began around the time he was first old enough to vote. He claimed to have discovered Love Canal. He claimed to have written the first Superfund law. (Congressman Jim Florio of New Jersey wrote the bill.) He claimed to be the author of the Earned Income Tax Credit bill. It became law two years before he became a Congressman. He claimed to have been a cosponsor of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, which is remarkable for a man who shook down Buddhist nuns for political contributions. It is amazing because, as Russell Feingold did not become a senator until after Gore became vice president, the two men never served together and could not have cosponsored anything.

Deceit, though undesirable in a friend, may be useful in a president. Richard Reeves once wrote that Turner Catledge, the White House correspondent for The New York Times during the 1930s, said Franklin Roosevelt's first instinct was to lie, but halfway through an answer he would realize he could get away with the truth and shift gears. Gore can't manage this because he lacks FDR's facile charm and the flow of information is less controlled now. Gore is simply not persuasive. His inability to avoid lying under pressure, his petulant sighs during the first televised presidential debate (a man who cannot endure for an hour an opponent whom he believes less intelligent lacks the patience to be president), even the obviously staged passionate kiss at the Democratic convention (a colleague has suggested we will soon see a candidate proving his manhood, or at least his virility, by publicly coupling with his spouse), show him embarrassingly unworthy of the office.

Then there's the other guy. George W. Bush, who considers whether he's used illegal narcotics a question too intimate to answer while publicly admitting he did not go a virgin to his wedding bed, doesn't share my tastes in discretion. Yet I voted three times for Alfonse D'Amato, who held a press conference to introduce his mistress to the world. I chose not to vote for George W. Bush because of the interview with Tucker Carlson that appeared a little over a year ago. In it, Bush discussed Karla Faye Tucker, a double murderess executed by the state of Texas in 1998. He talked about watching Tucker's interview with Larry King, saying, "He asked her real difficult questions, like 'What would you say to Governor Bush?'" "What was her answer?" Carlson asked. "'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, 'don't kill me.'"

Mocking anyone begging for her life is coarse and cruel. What struck me most forcibly was that Bush said this to an interviewer, surely knowing his words would be published, and simply didn't care.

On Nov. 1, 1800, a few days before Thomas Jefferson won that year's election, John Adams became the first president to reside in the White House. He said, "May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof." The contrast of Adams and Clinton, in terms of character alone, is so painful as to cast doubt on Darwin's theory of evolution. Both animals and humans have appetites. However, human beings also have intelligence, conscience, memory, guilt, pride and honor, the qualities of discernment, judgment and distinction that raise us above the beasts. Those values seem no longer in play. Pity. If you must vote, vote for one of the others: Nader or Buchanan, Browne or Hagelin. Nothing will so anger the Importants.