No Such Thing As Majority Rule
Posted by Thomas L. Knapp on Sep 6, 2009 in Commentary • 6 commentsGovernment claims, as its source of legitimacy, “the consent of the governed.” Its most sacred ritual for for demonstrating that consent is the periodic election of public officials and, in some areas, referendum voting on particular issues.
In a recent column, I examined claims of elections as a basis for claims of representation and found them wanting. Buried within the information upon which I based that analysis was the core of a far more damning finding upon which I’ll now elaborate. Simply put, not only do elections not provide meaningful representation, they also fail to make the case for anything approaching universal consent to accept representation at all.
My data set last time consisted of statistics on the election of a particular congresswoman. This time, I’m going to use focus on an American county — the county in which I live, St. Louis County, Missouri (not to be confused with the city of St. Louis, which in Missouri’s political scheme is treated as a county in its own right). I’ll use numbers from 2000, the latest year for which I can easily compare different variables.
Per the 2000 census, the population of St. Louis County was 1,016,315.
Of those more than one million inhabitants, only 726,325 — 71.5% — were registered to vote.
Of those 726,325 voters, only 488,400 — 67.2% of those registered, 48% of the county’s population — turned out to participate in the ritual.
To put it a different way, 28.5% of the county’s population boycotts elections entirely by not registering to vote, and 52% (including nearly a third of registered voters) boycotted the 2000 election in particular.
From this fact we can derive two conclusions, one indisputable and one debatable but reasonable.
The indisputable conclusion is that because a majority of the population didn’t vote in that election, neither a single politician elected to office nor a single measure put up for public ratification can be honestly advertised as having secured majority approval.
The debatable but reasonable conclusion is that in declining to vote in the 2000 election, 52% of the population withheld consent to be bound by its outcomes or ruled by its winners.
The conventional wisdom has it otherwise: Refusal to participate in an election, we’re told, constitutes consent to be bound by that election’s outcomes and ruled by its winners. Silence is consent — especially since non-voters make use of “public services” delivered to them through the whole process. Non-voting is a sign of “apathy” or “laziness,” not of alienation or opposition.
This is akin to saying that by slamming my door in the face of a magazine salesman, I’m consenting to pay for subscriptions to Time, Scientific American and Playboy … and that proof of this claim may be drawn from the fact that when those magazines begin to arrive, I read them rather than sending them back or throwing them away.
There are, of course, two flaws in this analogy, neither of which reflect well on the electoral system.
The first major difference between the state’s ritual and my hypothetical magazine subscription experience is that any small claims court would likely reject a frivolous a suit by the magazine salesman claiming that I owe him money for subscriptions I neither asked for nor consented to pay for. Any tax court, on the other hand, would likely find that a non-voter owed payment for those “public services” that some portion of 48% of the populace outside his door had voted to purchase for him without his consent.
The second major difference is that when it comes to magazines, my choice of titles and vendors is limited only by the market’s offerings. I don’t have to buy Time, Scientific American and Playboy from the door-to-door guy. I can go to the newsstand or log onto the Intarweb and buy Newsweek, National Geographic and … well, something a bit more righteously smutty than Playboy, if you know what I mean … or for that matter I can eschew magazines entirely. For the most part, I’m forbidden to buy (or not buy) my own road system, postal carrier, army or navy. Not only do I have to pay for the brands chosen by some portion of that 48% of the populace, but I can’t buy my own on the side and use them instead. There are exceptions (private schools, for example), but they are exceptions. The rule is “one size fits all, cough up and pipe down.”
One objection I’ve encountered in this line of thinking is that many non-voters are non-voters because they’re not allowed to vote. They’re under 18, they’ve previously been convicted of a felony and barred from voting, or they originally came from elsewhere. My reply: Bollocks! If they’re not allowed to participate, they can hardly be said to have consented to be bound by the outcomes. Exclusion, like boycott, negates claims of consent.
The question of whether or not majority rule is a valid measure of consent is an interesting one, but one we don’t have to reach here. The dirty little secret of “majority rule” is that it’s no such thing. Rather we are governed by (usually) “representatives” chosen by a majority of a minority, in most cases plausibly representing no more than 25-30% of the population.
One question on your statistics: of the 1 million residents of your county, how many were of legal voting age? Using that as the basis for your comparisons would give you more relevant statistics regarding participation.
That’s completely wrong, lissismore. The people who are 17 are also supposedly “represented” by those elected. And they are just as much people as those who are 18 and older.
You also forget that many people are not allowed to vote by virtue of being incarcerated, or formerly convicted of felony, or regarded as mentally deficient. Including those who are discriminated against on account of their age, people who are not allowed to vote because your government is bigoted and hateful may be around 25% or more of the population of a given county.
Then you’ll say that people aren’t registered and don’t deserve to be counted if they won’t register to vote. About half the voting eligible population don’t register. And why should we? It isn’t like the votes are counted properly.
And up to half the people who are eligible to vote and registered may stay home on election day. Why bother? It isn’t like the vicious authoritarian filth who get elected are going to change anything.
If we take it as a given that there are 305 million people in the country (and I don’t think the census bureau-rats can count properly; I suspect there are many who refuse to be counted and many others the fed goons won’t count) and if we take it as a given that 69.5 million people voted for Obama in 2008 (and I don’t think the votes are counted properly in many counties) then we get a figure of about 22.8% who voted for Obama.
Now you will say, lissismore, that the people who are under 18 don’t count because you don’t like young people. And the people who don’t register to vote don’t count because you don’t like non-voters. And the people who didn’t show up to vote don’t count for the same reason. But that’s all stupid idiocy and not a meaningful argument.
The reality is that the president of the united States of America represents at most the 22.8% who voted for him. And nobody else. And since his approval ratings have dropped substantially, he certainly doesn’t represent all 69.5 million who once thought to vote for him.
Herbert Spencer, in Social Statics:
“Do we not continually hear them quote Blackstone’s assertion that ‘no subject of England can be constrained to pay any aids or taxes even for the defence of the realm or the support of government, but such as are imposed by his own consent, or that of his representative in parliament?’ And what does this mean? It means, say they, that every man should have a vote. True, but it means much more. If there is any sense in words it is a distinct enunciation of the right now contended for. In affirming that a man may not be taxed unless he has directly or indirectly given his consent, it affirms that he may refuse to be so taxed; and to refuse to be taxed is to cut all connection with the state. Perhaps it will be said that this consent is not a specific, but a general one, and that the citizen is understood to have assented to everything his representative may do when he voted for him. But suppose he did not vote for him, and on the contrary did all in his power to get elected someone holding opposite views – what then? The reply will probably be that, by taking part in such an election, he tacitly agreed to abide by the decision of the majority. And how if he did not vote at all? Why, then he cannot justly complain of any tax, seeing that he made no protest against its imposition. So, curiously enough, it seems that he gave his consent in whatever way he acted – whether he said yes, whether he said no, or whether he remained neuter! A rather awkward doctrine, this. Here stands an unfortunate citizen who is asked if he will pay money for a certain proffered advantage; and whether he employs the only means of expressing his refusal or does not employ it, we are told that he practically agrees, if only the number of others who agree is greater than the number of those who dissent. And thus we are introduced to the novel principle that A’s consent to a thing is not determined by what A says, but by what B may happen to say!”
A’s consent is determined by A’s willingness to engage in sudden combat to keep his money to himself. The rest is all fairy stories and lunacy.
Many don’t vote because they know their side won’t win, or is not represented. This is because we have single seat districts. In Puerto Rico, where they have proportional representation 98% of the population votes since everyone gets a voice based on how their slate does. There are also often problems in the voter roles themselves. Often, people have moved and have not yet been purged. In DC, this is particularly a problem, as they never purge the roles. At least half the voters on the roles there have moved, but they remain on the roles, which pretty much stops any recall, intitiative or referendum, which must have a certain percentage of voters to get on the ballot.