On Voting

For those of us concerned with the question of what an anti-state praxis might look like, the question of voting is a particularly perplexing one. The most important things are never at stake in a political decision, be it for a candidate or ballot initiative--we are still saddled with the same system, although there may be alternate views of how best to run it. Nevertheless, it can't be denied that real issues ARE put into play, and they can be very important to those they affect; at times, maybe even a matter of life or death.

A voter boycott, like veganism, is a kind of refusal that can seem like a purist pose. After all, a massive, intentional voter boycott has not been seriously proposed as a tactic for social change by anyone that I'm aware of; all the arguments against voting I've heard tend to treat it as a personal choice, or at best a potential collective "no" that is recommended on its merits, without hope of any really efficacious result. And I find "if everybody" arguments highly unsatisfying, which is one of the reasons I am no longer a vegan.

If the government wants to ask my advice on how it should be run, why shouldn't I give it? It's true that I can't hope to seriously affect the outcome of an election with my single vote, but voting costs nothing but a few moments of my time, so it would seem there is nothing to lose by doing so.

Voting is something that gives the illusion of participation by putting certain questions into play while leaving the really big questions entirely out of play. However, the rub is that the questions that ARE in play are often, as I've already stated, very important. On the one hand, a small and perhaps insignificant act that costs me nothing; on the other, what is perhaps an empty pose of refusal that, in any event, can claim even less efficacy than voting can. Whereas it could perhaps be argued that voting has a small effect (i.e., if I can identify myself with a certain statistical grouping or bloc), not voting clearly has none. The scale seems to tip, ever so slightly, towards the ballot.

However, if there is to be something like a liberatory praxis, I think it would have to be a sort of acting that is other than a repetition of the white noise and empty chatter that surrounds us as beings awash in public discourse, yet alienated from public decision-making. We are divested of any ability to determine the conditions of our lives outside of a very narrow sphere, and in place of this power we are handed the vote. When I vote, I take up my position as a citizen, or a political subject who is asked to ratify his own exlusion by pretending to participate in decisions I, in fact, have no real part in; I am confronted with alien conditions not of my making and asked to act out a charade to convince myself that I am their source. It is widely recognized, even by avid partisans, that elections are yet another consumer spectacle, a choice between two products that is largely determined by advertising.

Not voting is indeed a small act of refusal, but perhaps it is a crucial one; it is my exit from a sphere that I was never really in to begin with, or the refusal of an illusion. Uneasy as I am with some of this terminology, and unsure as I am of the content, I will venture to say that voting is, objectively, the enactment of a false consciousness, no matter the subjective thought that accompanies it, regardless of how much cynicism runs along with it. Not voting effects nothing, affects nothing, acheives nothing, issues forth in no product. But perhaps it is the proper way to begin to move toward what I would hope would be a liberatory social praxis.