Anarchy Road Signs

[lildog]

I personally only think "not voting" is effective when coupled with "ignoring the demands of those you didn't vote for".

There have been elections with 0% voter turn out. They still elected bureaucrats (there generally are laws for such things) who went on to be violent, even though literally nobody voted for them.

Since I've heard stories of the unelected bureaucrats, but not the reactionary tax revolts, I'll assume they continued to obey.

The political means MIGHT be an effective way to reach people who will only listen to the pulpits they're used to hearing from, but the political means ITSELF isn't a means to more liberty.

You bring up exactly my point.

In Merrimack town elections for example we routinely have 2 to 3 thousand show up to vote.  That's out of a town of 29,000 people with over 9k registered voters.  So not even a majority of registered voters show up but yet the town government continues along on it's happy way.  I even saw one election where the person won had less then 50 votes total.  That's 50 out of 29,000 people.

Has that changed anything?  Nope, the town continues on as if they were elected with a majority vote.

Personally I think a stronger message would be sent if the other 28,950 people (or whatever percent are eligible to vote) actually showed up and cast votes for a write in of "none of the above".  It's one thing to win with 50 votes and have nothing cast against you but to win with 50 votes and have 28,950 votes saying anyone but you I think sends a clear message that people don't want what your pushing.

As for ignoring the demands, that's the more difficult part.  Just as Joe pointed out that 10 bullets could hold back even 50 or 100 people because no one wants to be shot, that same type of fear prevents people from taking a stand ignoring government demands.  For starters if you were to stop 100 people on the street, 99 of them would say that government is needed.  I'd guess at least 40 of them would even argue that our current level of government is needed and perhaps 80 would be afraid to see something they need (read as "want") cut.  Given that, you'd be very unlikely to find many people willing to stop paying taxes or ignore even the stupidest laws fearing for their own safety and freedom.

[FreelanceFreedomFighter]

I don't call in to squawk radio, but decided to try this morning on the way to work... The host that I happened to turn on was saying something about voters being stupid, but I thought I couldn't have heard that right... Someone that agrees that voting is stupid. Turned out he was saying that current voters who're mad at the system are stupid people. I was getting ready to move on to a different station when he made a comment about how "they" want to cut taxes but don't want to cut any services. So... when I heard the number, I called.

The screener (or whatever) answered, he asked what I wanted to talk about. I said that I wanted to talk about the fact that SOME people want to cut taxes to ZERO and also cut EVERYTHING else having to do with government to ZERO. The screener mumbled something about "a nutjob" and I said "Excuse me? What did you just say?" "Oh, I was talking with someone else about how the 'tea-partiers' are being called 'nutjobs'. Are you with the 'tea party'?" "No. I'm not." (Put on hold...) After a whole bunch of other callers and waiting through the break with a bajillion commercials... I got cut off!  grrrrrr... I don't even know why I bothered. A friend of mine said it was probably just an "accident", but the very, very few times I've ever tried to call to any squawk radio show, I've always gotten cut off... 100%. Interesting...

[lildog]

Radio show hosts want one of two types of callers generally... those who kiss their butts saying they are 100% right or those who disagree but are incapable of forming a valid argument.  If you disagree and present a well thought out argument you will make the host look bad and they can't have that.

That said, I think I recall the show.  They were discussing a poll taken recently of "likely voters".  The results were the vast majority wanted taxes cut and at the same time when asked which government services they would want to give up they responded "none".

That's the real problem here, people want everything but they don't want to be the ones paying for it all.  That's why they use government in the first place.  Government has devolved from being a simple protector to make sure Person A doesn't step on the rights of Person B, to being the tool Person A uses to beat Person B over the head with in order to get what they want.

It's going to take a drastic re-education of society for this country to get out of that way of thinking.

[Russell Kanning]

I have also voted in elections where a huge amount of people wanted something done .... like lower taxes or do something specific to lower spending by the government .... and then they ignored it

[John]

Government has devolved from being a simple protector to make sure Person A doesn't step on the rights of Person B, to being the tool Person A uses to beat Person B over the head with in order to get what they want.

And the alleged "devolution" happened a long, long, long time ago.
I think that Bastiat described it in his book "The Law" and that was quite a long time ago. But, neither was it new then.

[Egan Terk]

I was wondering, how many registered voters actually voted?
Turns out in 2008 it was right around 62%
http://elections.gmu.edu/voter_turnout.htm

So . . . .
Obama got ~53% of those votes or 66,882,230
and
McCain received ~46% or 58,343,671



http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/president/


Just to make it easy for me to calculate, I'll say that the turn out of registered voters was 60% in which case we have 53,047,432 people that did in fact vote for Nobody.
A very close race using only registered voters.

Then, look at the number of eligible voters 218,054,301 and subtract 132,645,504 registered voters and you get 85,408,797.
http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2010G.html

That's a lot of disaffected!
Many like myself and many others here that will not vote because of moral issues.
So definitely a bit of speculation on my part but none the less, some demonstrable evidence that we're are closer than we might have thought.

So what now?!
I say we keep talking Konkin, Spooner et al. to friends, family and friends of friends and family.

Speaking of which, Brett's "Escape from Imaginationland" project was a real epiphany for me in regards to talking with people. Check it out.
http://www.schoolsucksproject.com/podcasts/61

[John]

Just to make it easy for me to calculate, I'll say that the turn out of registered voters was 60% in which case we have 53,047,432 people that did in fact vote for Nobody.
A very close race using only registered voters.

Then, look at the number of eligible voters 218,054,301 and subtract 132,645,504 registered voters and you get 85,408,797.
http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2010G.html

That's a lot of disaffected!

Sometimes people (particularly media) like to say that so-and-so was elected by "a clear majority" or even " by a landslide victory" (if it is more that a few percent difference in votes for the top two vote getters).
To make it as simple to understand as I can, I sometimes tell people:

About half the people who are eligible to vote don't want to register.
Of the half who register, only about half of them actually vote.
And, counting only the two top vote getters, the winner usually gets just over half of the votes.
So, Half of 100% is 50%.
And, half of 50% is 25%.
Then, half of that 25% = 12.5%.
Therefore, what is being called the "clear majority" or "landslide victory" is - IN REALITY - just a bit above SINGLE DIGGETS.

Disaffected?
There is also the fact that of the "25%" who vote, MANY only do so because they think they "need" to.
Maybe fewer than 10% actually want/like to vote.

[Free libertarian]

^^^ Single "digits" , dig get?   


(...Often times Bob would display his annoyingly charming wit by playing spelling or grammar cop.)

[Russell Kanning]

and that 60% from last time was extremely high ... and contains all sorts of vote fraud
look at the numbers in a place like california .... it is very normal for a very small % of people to vote