Democracy is filled with mythology. Larken Rose has recently covered many of these myths. Today I would like to introduce a new concept that may totally change how some people perceive democracy.
Voting Theory
Popular political theology around voting is that each individual has the right to vote for anything, for any reason, and in complete secrecy. Education, knowledge, race, and inelegance are not legitimate prerequisites. It goes so far as to say that through voting the entire constitution and every human right can be violated.
There are many different kinds of voting that attempt to capture public opinion accurately. Systems include plurality, instant runoff, majority, and proportional representation. Each system has its strengths and weaknesses.
Being an Anarchist, I like to work from first principles. If I assume the popular political theology is morally acceptable means of making decisions regarding what people may or may not do, then I would like to add a new voting system and means of fully “expressing ones vote” that I feel would truly capture a legitimate outcome.
In other words, if all people are equal and entitled equal weight to vote for what ever they want, for what ever reason they want to, then it should be possible to express your opinion as the exact opposite of someone else. This is a perfectly valid opinion and deserves as much respect as their opinion. After all, you could just as easily say that they are the one who is adopting an opinion opposite to your own. It is not possible to say who is positive and who is negative, they are merely reflections of equal value with no beginning and no end.
The act of negating someone else’s opinion does not require you to know their opinion, because you are free to change your opinion to counter theirs as fast as they can change their opinion. The outcome will always result in a net vote of 0.
Anarchist Husband and his Political Wife
Imagine an anarchist named John adopted a position against voting and was against voting completely. Unfortunately for Jared, he married a hard core political activist who believes in democracy.
John and his wife have a huge fight about whether they should vote and if so, who they should vote for. John recognizes that the only two candidates with a chance of winning are evil and agree on the important issues. John’s wife has an opinion on which one is “less evil”.
John wants to protest the election by not voting, but his wife believes she must do something to combat the more evil option.
John then comes up with an idea, he decides to cast his vote to be the exact opposite of his wife’s. He goes to his wife and asks who she is voting for, she tells him. He then informs her that he will vote for the other candidate.
A brief fight ensues about how the other guy is more evil, but ultimately she concedes that he has a right to vote how ever he wants.
After she accepts reality, John suggests that they can both stay home this election because their votes will now cancel out. They could drive to the polls, spend their time and gas money in order to cast a neutral vote for two evil candidates, or they could stay home and have a drink without feeling dirty for supporting the lessor of two evils.
Any rational couple would choose to stay home. They have nothing to gain by casting opposing votes and nothing to lose by not casting their vote. All of the usual arguments for voting fall apart:
You have no right to complain if you didn’t try.
Well that isn’t true, you did try, but someone else negated your vote. Both parties can legitimately say they “tried” but their vote wouldn’t have been the tie breaker.
Higher turnout makes democracy more representative .
Well you both could have turned out, but the amount of raw information you would contribute would be identical to if you both didn’t show up. If every non-voter was modeled as a purely random voter, then the amount your opposing votes do nothing. If you model non-voter’s as voting with the ratio as voters then the only thing your votes would do is reduce the percentage spread between the two candidates by an imperceptible amount.
Even a vote for a third Party can have an impact
Unless there is a 3rd party who you actually can support, all you would be doing is voting for evil. Suppose John’s wife really liked a 3rd party candidate, she is now left with a choice: let John vote for the most evil candidate while she votes for someone who will lose, or not vote at all.
Voting is a Right Generations Struggled to Win
And based upon this right John and his wife have nullified their influence. It is John’s right to oppose his wife’s vote and therefore his wife’s vote is now meaningless. Democracy wins!
Secret Ballots prevent John’s Blackmail
In theory John’s wife could lie to John about who she intends to vote for. This would make it impossible to be 100% sure the he was countering his wife’s vote. She could “trick him” into inadvertently siding with her choice of lessor evil.
This is true, but John could also lie.
Ultimately the joke is on John’s wife because it isn’t who votes that counts, it is who counts the vote. In this case, the secret ballot means that John’s wife cannot prove her vote was accurately counted.
Unfortunately, secret ballots also prevent John from casting his true opinion and thus effectively deny him the right to vote.
Smart Ballots
What if John could express his desire to counter his wife’s vote by casting a ballot that would automatically vote for the candidate opposite of his wife without having to know her vote? In this case there is no need to reveal who you will vote for and there is no ability to cheat.
If you could cast such a ballot then the entire voting system could be revamped. Each person would have the option to either cast a ballot or to negate someone else’s right to cast a ballot. Once you have been negated no one else may negate you.
Those who are politically outspoken would quickly get negated by people who don’t like what they stand for. After all, it is much easier to vote against something you don’t like than to vote for something you do like. This means that anyone that ever expresses any ideas disliked by a passive observer would get nullified.
The final outcome would be an election decided by those who have managed to escape without offending anyone. One thing is for certain, anyone who goes near the polls would be quickly negated by someone else, the mere act of voting would become offensive!
In a Rational World…
People would realize that democracy and voting were adopted as a proxy for war and violence. Rather than having two armies fight to the death, they would simply count their numbers and assume the larger army would win and get their way. This seems logical and avoids a lot of unnecessary bloodshed.
How you count the votes makes a huge difference, especially when there are complex factors and decisions. You cannot assume that everyone voting for a candidate actually supports that candidate, they have merely formed an alliance under the principle of “an enemy of my enemy is my friend”. That principle hardly turns a lessor enemy into your representative.
In reality there are not two armies battling it out, there are thousands of armies each with their own opinion. If you want to properly simulate the war, then each person needs to find one other person to take out in a Kmakazi battle to the death.
When the dust settles from the simulated war you will have a few people left standing. These are the people whom no one else felt was a priority to take out. Each person would rationally take out the “greatest evil” they could find and everyone else is considered better. It would mean that who ever won the war would be “better” than the evil they just eliminated. A true vote against the greatest of all evils.
Obviously, if this process were adopted the entire mirage of democracy would disappear. If the population was odd, then one person would be left standing, if even then no one would win.
Conclusion
If we were to use a legitimate voting system that accurately reflected the moral principle behind each individuals “right to vote” by allowing individuals to fully express their “right to counter someone else’s vote” then we would end up in complete anarchy as no law could pass except by unanimous consent of people no one had reason to oppose.
If man does not have a right to counter balance another man in the political system, then the game is rigged. His right to cast a vote that expresses his wishes has been denied. He has been given a false choice rather than a free choice. After all, if you cannot express a vote that is exactly opposite of someone else, then that means not all opinions are on the table. It means that the people who get to decide the options are the rulers, not the voters.
You can vote for any color car you want so long as it is black.