What can be seen as just not caring can usually be translated into a failure of our ‘democratic’ system to engage the voters and is legitimate – as is voting for Elvis.

Yes, I do vote … but it is usually for the lesser of all the evils.

Some of these arguments have been discussed some time ago on the Crooked Timber blog.

Since I prefer a sortition based government over an electoral system, I presented at the time the position that voting legitimizes the powerful and thus not voting is a tool against the elite. I discovered that my position was untenable.

It turns out that it is not the act of voting itself that legitimizes the government and thus the act of withholding your vote does not delegitimize the government. A government elected with a very low turnout (as many local governments are) is considered legitimate as long as the act of not voting is interpreted as an expression of apathy rather than an expression of dissent. On the other hand, if it is known that many voters vote despite the fact that they consider the system illegitimate, the government would enjoy very little legitimacy, even if the turnout is high.

The important act, therefore, is to let it be known – in every possible way – that you consider the electoral system illegitimate. At the same time, you might as well vote – seeing it simply as the political tool it is rather than as a moral act.

Crucially, however, delegitimizing the electoral system is very difficult unless you offer a better government system. That is why McElroy’s moralistic tone is uncovincing and even phony. Sure, elected governments can do bad things, but what is the alternative? Unelected government? No government at all? McElroy doesn’t explicitly say so, but it seems that she favors “no government at all”, believing in the emergence of some kind of right-wing-libertarian utopia. I understand that in this forum, such nonsense does not need to be seriously addressed.

As I wrote above, I have my own favorite alternative, which I believe is superior – and is only because this alternative exists that I feel justified in attacking the electoral system. I strongly prefer the current system over McElroy’s alternative.

Anyway, I think my earlier comments were misunderstood. My intent was to say this: Low turnout is not a bad thing. I dont see why we are fussing because turnout is dropping, these are people who cannot be bothered to vote, do we really want to force them to do something they do not want to do?

For the other point, human beings are especially creative although not always ’smart’. However, democracy is about seeing one’s own self interest as much as anything else. I may not know how to signal a bus driver about a sign, but I can still decide whether, say, I want X tax dollars to go to a new water treatment plant-like they voted on in Richmond, British Columbia. Or I can decide whether I want my town to spend money on a swimming pool, or a bigger library. Those decisions have nothing to do with ‘intelligence’, although people who want a swimming pool are likely to call those who want a library ‘idiots’ who don’t know whats good for them, etc. That’s the problem with ‘representative democracy’ or worse ‘responsible government’, people can’t get anywhere near the ISSUES and are stuck voting in a biased system. NOT voting though, doesn’t change that, I remember one politician saying that if people ONLY vote then they have no right to complain.

And I’m pretty sure that’s a Moencken quote, I looked it up.

I should mention that my interest in Mencken is a weird one. While I quote him often and while I find his quotes hilarious, I often don’t agree with them fully. I think there’s a grain of truth to much of what he says, but that doesn’t mean that everything surrounding that truth is necessarily accurate.

That said, I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong in calling some people ’stupid’ or ‘incompetent’ so long as one also accepts oneself as ’stupid’ or ‘incompetent’. Keep in mind, when the Oracle of Delphi was asked who the wisest man in Greece was, she responded that it was Socrates because just like everyone else he knew nothing, but unlike everyone else, he at least knew that he knew nothing.

I have no problem admitting my incompetence and stupidity in certain areas and contexts. I think the real problem comes not necessarily when we call other people stupid but rather when we think that they are stupid AND ALSO THINK that we aren’t.

It’s of course elites like Mencken who sit around doing nothing but make up pithy quotes about OTHER people’s stupidity, but there’s also a good one from him: “all the problems of democracy can be resolved with more democracy”.

Considering your comment above, I thought you might enjoy some of these quotes from H.L. Mencken:

“Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.”
-H.L. Mencken

“The Fathers who invented it [democracy], if they could return from Hell, would never recognize it. It was conceived as a free government of free men; it has become simply a battle of charlatans for the votes of idiots.”
-H.L. Mencken

“There is no underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”
-H.L. Mencken

Brampton has some buses called Nova LFS. They come with the option (that Brampton took) to have a rear door opened by motion sensor. To inform the public of how to open the rear door they placed a large Yellow and Red sticker, at eye level, with a huge Hand outline on it, that says “TO OPEN DOOR WAVE HAND HERE”. Yet over and over, I see people standing at the rear door, staring at it, and expecting it to just open. When it does not they turn to the driver and yell, of all things, “The door is broken!”. My guess is that this group of people is very similar to those that I’ve run across that think that, and I quote, the United States is far away from us because “It’s in the Western World”

Frankly, if people with this intellect level were to vote en masse, who knows what kind of mess they’d get us into.