You don't own me. Therefore, you cannot try and transfer ownership of me and everybody else by telling somebody who is a complete stranger to us all that they get to rule over all of us. Thank you for reading...
If you are somebody who accepts property rights (which is provably 100% of people), this should be all the thought one needs to put into the question of whether to vote or not. However, there are a large number of people who outwardly admit they accept property right and the rational conclusion that stems from it that government is predicated on violations of property rights, who at the same time think that voting is a rational and consistent proposition. They do not find the fact that they do not own me as sufficient for convincing them not to try and transfer ownership of me to a complete stranger. Sadly, this means I'll need to make this infinitely more lengthy than is necessary.
Easily the most often reached for explanation for voting without the above cognitive dissonance is that it is an act of self-defense; That voting for the person who is less harmful is a way of actively defending themselves. There are so many problems with this claim. Not the least of which is that we don't actually know who is less harmful. All we know for certain is that those running have accepted the false premise that human beings can exist in different, opposing moral categories. This makes them harmful with any power they have over anybody. Power that voting pretends to give them. Which says nothing of the fact that we have no reason to believe that they will do as they say once elected. History tells us they likely won't. Either way, there is no apparatus in place to hold these people accountable. One of the many dangers in pretending people are not responsible for their actions, which is what politics and statism does.
Another problem with the prospect of defensive force is the line between proportionate counter-force and retaliatory force. For example, imagine you own a convenience store and you catch somebody trying to walk out of your store with an unpaid for candy bar. Were you to grab them by the arm, you would not be initiating the use of force. Force was initiated when the perpetrator violated your property rights by taking something that belonged to you without your consent. If you were to instead shoot them, this would be retaliatory. Because the level of force is so disproportionate that you are in fact creating a new, much larger debt. You would in fact be initiating the use of force even though there was a chain of causality leading up to that decision.
Let us now imagine you're still this store owner, but now instead of stealing a candy bar, the perpetrator in question is trying to rob you at gun point. Now, the deployment of lethal force in the form of shooting them is proportionate. It would not be proportionate to, for example, drop a bomb on their house. Because you do not know who else is in the house, nor do you have the capability of controlling the level of destruction such a behavior would yield. Identically, somebody voting for a politician has no apparatus through which to control the level of violations of property rights they would engage in at the behest of every person who voted for them. Voting, were it in self-defense, would in fact be retaliatory given the disproportionate escalation.
There was a time when I was convinced that voting was the initiation of the use of force. It was explained to me that because the people being voted for can refuse to initiate the use of force, that the act isn't immoral. Condoning something is not the same as being culpable for it. I accept this argument as philosophically sound. However, this takes the option of defensive force off the table altogether. Voting can not simultaneously be the deployment of force and not the deployment of force. Additionally, this deployment of force is imaginary. In that a person has no reason to believe that their vote actually contributes to anything. Between institutions such as the United States' Electoral Colleges, to tampering, to rigging the elections, nobody has any proof that their vote has any influence on the outcome.
This raises the question: "If we have no reason to suspect our vote has any influence on the outcome, where is the harm?" Pascal's wager if you will. The very reason why I put as much effort as I do into trying to convince others not to vote is because there is very real harm done when one votes. It occurs first within the mind of the vote themselves. First of all, by participating in this game that was inflicted upon them, they are not resisting their enslavement, they are accepting it! Secondly, there is an opportunity cost associated with voting. I'm not referring to the time it takes to go to the polls and flip a switch. No, I'm talking about the time spent pretending to address a problem in a way that demonstrates that the voter doesn't even understand what the problem is.
What then is in fact the problem? As I see it, the lifeblood of the state is its perceived legitimacy. If we see some random hooligan taking somebody's wallet at knife point, striking an unwilling individual, holding down somebody to rape them, or killing them for no reason, we recognize these things to be immoral. However, when these same acts are referred to as taxation, arrest, incarceration, and war, it's not so clear to many that these are the initiation of the use of force against people who do not consent. Voting actively contributes to this perceived legitimacy, signaling to others that you find it to be a valid proposition.
All of this equates to deliberately engaging in behavior that has the opposite effect of one's stated goals. The very act of which should give rational, humble, peaceful individuals pause. This includes people who use labels such as minarchism and Libertarian Party to make it seem as if their idea of how to initiate the use of force is comparatively valid. There have beem some of this ilk who would claim that because they are doing "something" that this is better than doing nothing. This is poisoning the well. For starters, when "something" runs contrary to the stated goal, it is not the same as "something useful." Additionally, it is misleading to describe not voting as doing nothing. You are currently reading an article I have taken time to write in an attempt to help others think more rationally and align their behaviors with their goals. Even if it failed to convince a single person, it is exposing those same people to very necessary information. It makes them accountable for their participation in voting.