Contact UsSearch
Click for Search Instructions
Home > Get Involved

Submission STRUMECKI-1429 (Online)

Submission By Elmer Strumecki
AddressVictoria, BC,
Organization
Date20040827
CategoryOther
Abstract
Ten reasons not to vote. [2 pages]

Submission Content
Ten reasons not to vote

 1. Reform is the biggest enemy of revolution and the electoral system is the essence of reformism. Voting  gives the impression of participation and change, yet it is the backbone of a society based upon alienation and boredom. Voting lures me away from the real task of demolishing existing institutions. In the short term the voter gets token, pacifying reform, and in the long run we get the same electoral repetition, with no significant change.
 
 2. To vote is to accept the limits of my own power. It makes me as powerful (or powerless) as the cross on the ballot-paper. Democracy is the amassed power of several million opinions reduced to a whimpering and stifled cheer for the same masters we've had all of our lives.
 
 3. There is nobody who can run my life better than myself. Why then should I give others the power to decide how I should run my life?

 4. There are those who would vote, yet still be active  in the struggle for real change. They are like vegetarians working in slaughterhouses.

 5. Voting is the excuse we need to avoid organizing ourselves, to avoid creating our own alternative. Voting is accepting that the power of the state is preferable to the power of the individual and the power of the community.

 6. The weight and force of the blow of a policeman's truncheon does not change when the truncheon is painted a different color. All democratic institutions are 'law and order' institutions.
 
 7. Voting is a clever way of getting me to sign my name to a whole series of measures, when in fact I am only aware of three or four of them. Thus, my vote is my personal approval of every single policy carried out by the party I vote for, without exception. By the time the elected party has spent a year in office, I won't even recognize the measures I voted for - but I will be subject to the laws and restrictions imposed through each and every decision made by that government.
 
 8. Voting for the lesser of two (or more) evils perpetuates the biggest evil of all: the evil of stasis, a world where all change is superficial. Invariably this means that we eagerly vote in order to grasp the available entertainment of politicians walking tightropes  between popularity and personal wealth and comfort.
 
 9. Voting legitimizes not only the system of government we have now, it also legitimizes the pendulum-style inevitability of the electoral process. (No matter how many times you flip the coin, it will never land on it's edge. No choice exists in the no-hope land between left and right, and voting for it only strengthens the swinging regularity of the elections). Surely it's far better to encourage real change - which can only happen outside of  government.
 
 10. Voting is slapping a preservation order on corruption, inequality, and mass-manufactured boredom. In short, voting is the blinding of the people, by the people....and so it is.

© 2003 Citizens' Assembly on Electoral ReformSite powered by levelCMSSite Map | Privacy Policy