Against Compulsory Delusion

On November 29, 2019, Quillette published an essay by Chang Che titled “The Case for Compulsory Voting” in which he argues that the right to vote is under attack and that making voting mandatory is the remedy for this and other problems. In this rebuttal, I will show that the case Che presents is thoroughly flawed and representative of a fractally wrong worldview.

Che begins by considering changes to voting laws following the Supreme Court decision Shelby County v. Holder (2013), before which states had to have federal approval to change their voting laws. He cites three leftist sources, all of which engage in fearmongering about voter suppression. These sources contend that North Carolina’s 2013 law banning same-day voter registration, requiring photo ID, rejecting ballots cast in the wrong precinct, and reducing early voting was essentially designed to keep nonwhites from voting. Similar laws in other states are likewise accused of racist intent. The face-value reasons for supporting such measures are often discounted; opponents will cite a lack of evidence of voter fraud. But the reason there is scant evidence of voter fraud is that it is in no establishment faction’s rational self-interest to find it; only a rogue anti-democracy movement would stand to benefit from exposing widespread corruption of the democratic apparatus itself. More recent concerns over foreign interference in American elections cast further doubt on such arguments, as it now seems that election security is only important when the results do not favor Democrats.

There is always a trade-off between security and convenience; the aforementioned laws simply shift the balance toward security. Those affected by polling closures can file absentee ballots, and those who truly believe that voting is important can take the necessary measures in advance so as to not need to register on Election Day. But let us challenge Che’s hidden assumption that the ability to identify oneself properly and be registered before voting should not affect one’s ability to vote. The counterargument is that those who cannot plan ahead in this manner and those who cannot manage to get identifying documents lack the intelligence, low time preference, and stake in society to have a voice in governance decisions that affect everyone. Making voting more difficult also ensures that those who care more will have more representation, as those who do not care as much will decide not to jump the proverbial hurdles. Curtailing the vote in this manner ensures a more informed and engaged electorate. If this has a disproportionate racial impact, then it only confirms certain claims made by those who have studied human biodiversity.

Next, Che quotes Barack Obama’s 2015 musing that “It would be transformative if everybody voted—that would counteract money [in politics] more than anything.” It would be fair to note that a statement asserted without evidence may be dismissed without evidence, but we can do far better. It is important to understand how a democracy actually functions. A democratic structure exists to give the masses the illusion that they are in charge while centralizing the state and giving elites more power than they ever had in a monarchic or aristocratic governance structure. It has been thus since the beginnings of democracy in ancient Athens. As C.A. Bond explains,

“[D]emocracy was not a rationally discovered concept, but was, instead, a cultural production of centralising Power, just as the actions of Solon, Peisistratus, and Cleisthenes clearly were. These power structures acted as selection mechanisms for concepts that accorded with their centralising actions, and this process reached its logical conclusion with democracy, a state of centralised Power wherein this primary Power ensured its continuance and security by hiding its true nature. This appeal to the people, which was key to centralisation, could not be presented as the transference of immediate government by the [local] nobility to distant government in the form of the archons and tyrants of Athens; instead, what we find is the claim that this relationship is one of liberation of the common people, with the government not advertising its role in this relationship. This power structure—which had been subject to Jouvenelian centralising, and to the promotion of cultural trends that simultaneously hid the role of this primary Power and successfully presented a narrative of the liberation of the citizens—is the one wherein we find that the political categories were developed.”[1]

This illusion requires maintenance in the form of propaganda, or what Walter Lippmann called the manufacture of consent. He writes,

“The creation of consent is not a new art. It is a very old one which was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy. But it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in [technique], because it is now based on analysis rather than on rule of thumb. And so, as a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner.

…[P]ersuasion has become a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government. None of us begins to understand the consequences, but it is no daring prophecy to say that the knowledge of how to create consent will alter every political calculation and modify every political premise. Under the impact of propaganda, not necessarily in the sinister meaning of the word alone, the old constants of our thinking have become variables. It is no longer possible, for example, to believe in the original dogma of democracy; that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. Where we act on that theory we expose ourselves to self-deception, and to forms of persuasion that we cannot verify. It has been demonstrated that we cannot rely upon intuition, conscience, or the accidents of casual opinion if we are to deal with the world beyond our reach.”[2]

Expanding the electorate to its maximum possible extent will increase the cost of this propaganda effort to teach voters to produce the results sought by elites. There is also the matter of simply bribing voters with money from the public treasury and various privileges and protections, which will be more expensive if there are more voters who need a quid for their ballot quo.

Che continues,

“For decades, conservatives and libertarians have colonized the political space of liberty, arguing that any compulsion by law—whether relinquishing one’s assault weapons or being moderated on speech platforms—is both morally and constitutionally indefensible from the perspective of freedom. Meanwhile, civil rights advocates have largely conceded this territory, clinging to the hard-won legal battles of the Civil Rights Movement, rather than producing new and compelling political arguments in favor of meaningful electoral reform.”

Colonize is an interesting choice of word; according to Merriam-Webster, its context-relevant definition is “to send illegal or irregularly qualified voters into” or “to infiltrate with usually subversive militants for propaganda and strategy reasons.” The proposal that Che later makes would do precisely this to the body politic, subverting the will of current voters by thumbing the scale with a mass of new voters. The Jouvenelian motivation for doing so is easy to smell, and we shall return to this later.

In the case of libertarians, what is now called libertarian in American politics (libertinism aside) was once called classical liberalism. The reason they even exist distinct from liberals is that liberals abandoned the political space of liberty in favor of big government during the Progressive Era. As for conservatism (at least in its contemporary, Outer Party, Buckleyite sense), it exists only to provide false controlled opposition to progressives. As such, any “colonization” that it has done was done to ineptly defend liberty, which is rather worse than a skillful attack.

On the matter of what the several political factions have been doing, one must wonder if Che has been living under a rock. There have been consistent attacks by leftists on the right to keep and bear arms for decades, and many soi disant conservatives have acquiesced to them. (Even Donald Trump is no exception with his ban on bump stocks.) Libertarians and rightists, with few exceptions, have been nearly unanimous in defending corporate censorship and deplatforming until very recently. Also, there are several efforts for “meaningful electoral reform” to replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote.

Che calls for civil rights advocates to “usher in a new vision of political freedom: one that combines the value of full participation with the equal protection of the law.” But these goals are mutually exclusive, as Hans-Hermann Hoppe explains:

“In every society, as long as mankind is what it is, people who covet another man’s property will exist. Some people are more afflicted by this sentiment than others. But people usually learn not to act on such feelings or even feel ashamed for entertaining them. Generally only a few individuals are unable to successfully suppress their desire for others’ property, and they are treated as criminals by their fellow men and repressed by physical punishment. Under princely rule, only one single person―the prince―can possibly act on the desire for another man’s property, and it is this which makes him a potential danger and a ‘bad.’ A…prince is further restrained in his redistributive desires by the circumstance that all members of society have learned to regard the taking and redistributing of another man’s property as shameful and immoral and accordingly watch a prince’s every action with utmost suspicion. In distinct contrast, by freeing up entry into government, everyone is permitted to openly express his desire for other men’s property. What was formerly regarded as immoral and accordingly suppressed is now considered a legitimate sentiment. Everyone may openly covet everyone else’s property, as long as he appeals to democracy; and everyone may act on his desire for another man’s property, provided that he finds entrance into government. Hence, under democracy everyone becomes a threat.

Consequently, under democratic conditions the popular, if immoral and anti-social, desire for other men’s property is systematically strengthened. …Not even the seemingly most secure private property right is exempt from redistributive demands. Worse, subject to mass elections, those members of society with little or no moral inhibition against taking another man’s property, habitual amoralists who are most talented in assembling majorities from a multitude of morally uninhibited and mutually incompatible popular demands, efficient demagogues, will tend to gain entrance in and rise to the top of government. Hence, a bad situation becomes even worse.”[3]

We then come to Che’s proposal proper. He writes,

“A compulsory voting law—practiced in a number of democracies around the world, including Australia and Belgium—makes voting a civic requirement for all citizens. It would incentivize state and local legislatures to lower, not raise, the procedural hurdles to full participation for every citizen over the age of 18, no matter their race or class. This new American democracy would finally represent all the people, rather than the most radical, the wealthiest, and the most well-connected.”

This is the apotheosis of liberal universalism: not a free and fair election, but a totalitarian mandate that none may ignore. Che’s idealism is reminiscent of the Forgotten Man of William Graham Sumner:

“The type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy or humanitarianism is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C’s interests, are entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man. For once let us look him up and consider his case, for the characteristic of all social doctors is, that they fix their minds on some man or group of men whose case appeals to the sympathies and the imagination, and they plan remedies addressed to the particular trouble; they do not understand that all the parts of society hold together, and that forces which are set in action act and react throughout the whole organism, until an equilibrium is produced by a re-adjustment of all interests and rights. They therefore ignore entirely the source from which they must draw all the energy which they employ in their remedies, and they ignore all the effects on other members of society than the ones they have in view.”

In this case, C is the principled non-voter, the person who avoids the polls not out of apathy or sloth, but because of practical or moral opposition to democracy. C may understand that one is more likely to be killed on the way to the polling place than to alter the outcome with his one vote, or he may have anti-democratic political beliefs. Forcing such people to vote may result in more “donkey votes,” and a large contingent of C-types would make the ideal voter base for a political movement that seeks to establish an authoritarian, non-democratic regime. But the plural solipsism typical of liberals masks C’s existence, with Che thinking only of D. Note that the existence of C makes Che’s claim of full representation not only false, but impossible.

Che asserts that compulsory voting would “curb the culture of voter suppression that has historically barred less powerful groups from the political system.” In this, he would seem to know little about the true mechanisms of oppression. One of the most effective means of oppressing people is to provide them with an impossible set of rules to follow, then punish them for breaking said rules. This was the methodology of Soviet secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria, who said, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” If state and local governments are truly inhabited by racists and rich snobs, then they will juxtapose compulsory voting with procedural hurdles which cannot be overcome in order to fine and imprison poor and minority citizens, worsening mass incarceration and poverty under this universalist Catch-22. If not, then the concerns motivating Che’s proposal exist only in the minds of those who think like him.

Che claims that “[M]any citizens do not vote because they do not perceive the government as responsive to their needs even if they did vote,” which is true. He then cites the work of Martin Gilens and Ben Page, which shows that “the government is highly responsive to the attitudes of economic elites, but less so to the views of average voters.” But he does not understand why this is the case, which leads him to assert an incorrect solution:

“By creating the expectation that everyone will vote, compulsory voting remedies the collective action problem that plagues disadvantaged communities. A near-universal turnout would then reorient the political system to be responsive to the most vulnerable groups in society—it would, in the most meaningful sense, secure the ‘equal protection of the laws’ under the Fourteenth Amendment.”

It never occurs to Che that there might be something inherently wrong with democracy itself, which is a fatal flaw in his argument. For if there is a structural problem with democratic government, then administering more democracy will be as fruitless as giving a higher dose of pain medication to someone who lacks receptors for it, and we should expect the same counterproductive side effects without the attendant benefits. This structural problem is evidenced not only in the aforementioned legal trap, but in the fact that voter turnout must be organized, and whichever persons or institutions are involved with this will pursue their own self-interest. One finds the proper explanation for the findings of Gilens and Page in the Italian school of elitism founded by Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca, and Robert Michels. Their position is that elites are economically and intellectually resourceful in ways that commoners are generally not. This gives elites both a vested interest in governance (because a failed state would be more costly to them) and the expertise to govern well.[4] They also pay a disproportionate amount of taxes because of their wealth, and those who pay the piper are right to call the tune.

Che then turns to the history of compulsory voting, using Australia as an example. He points to the increase in voter turnout from 60 percent to 91 percent in the year following its enactment in 1924, and that later generations of Australians would be more likely to vote (87 percent in a 1996 survey) even if it were no longer required. But he is wrong to say that “[t]his suggests that a significant portion of Australian voters found genuine reasons to vote thanks to a new culture of voting made possible by the law.” This is not suggested; people were forced into it, not reasoned into it. What this really shows is that culture is downstream from (Jouvenelian majuscule) Power, and people tend to continue in their behavioral patterns unless they are forced out of them. Che again assumes without support that this is an improvement, so let us simply dismiss that assumption. He also proves too much, as one could justify reactionary policies that he would hate just as easily by applying similar compulsion to bring about their cultural acceptance over time. The truth is that if political democracy was such an excellent idea, then it would not be necessary to force everyone to participate. Furthermore, if Che trusts the wisdom of crowds, perhaps there is wisdom in their lack of voter participation?

In Che’s next paragraph, he repeats arguments already refuted above. He then demonstrates complete ignorance of American history by declaring that “American politics has also never been more divisive.” We have no fatal duels between politicians today. There has been no Caning in Congress as of late. The small skirmishes between Antifa and their opponents are a pale shadow of Bleeding Kansas, let alone the Civil War. The campaign rhetoric of 2016 and 2020, though more divisive than the cycles immediately preceding them, is far tamer than that of 1800 or 1828.

Che continues,

“The state of polarization in the United States has increasingly incentivized politicians to choose party over country—most notably today through gerrymandering and soliciting interference from foreign countries. By affecting the fairness of our elections, these actions threaten the health of our democracy.”

Again, these are neither novel nor unprecedented in size and scope. The practice of gerrymandering gets its name from Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry (1810–12), who once drew an electoral district map that his Federalist opponents compared to the shape of a salamander.[5,6] Solicitation of foreign interference is also nothing new; in the 1796 presidential election, French ambassador Pierre Auguste Adet openly campaigned for the Democratic Republicans and against the Federalists. Furthermore, if we are to take Che’s position that those who are affected by government decisions should have a voice in the process to its logical conclusion, then foreign interference in American elections must be a positive good. Because the United States is the most powerful government in human history, its foreign policy affects everyone, non-citizens cannot vote, and governments are said to represent their citizens, such foreign interference is justified as those governments securing a voice for their people in decisions that affect them. Finally, he ignores other causes of polarization that can be seen in democracies throughout the world, such as the differing cultures and needs between urban and rural citizens.[7] Che claims that the voters that would be added to the electorate by compulsory voting could permanently depolarize politics, but there is no reason to believe this. Many of the counterarguments raised earlier also apply here, but he commits the additional fallacy of believing that forcibly changing the status of a group of people from nonvoters to voters will have no effect on their political views.

The closing section of Che’s essay is an attempt to deal with objections to his proposal, of which he considers only two. Others left unaddressed include freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of conscience. He begins,

“The main objection to compulsory voting is that it is in violation of our individual liberty. Although this is never decisive (taxation is also a kind of compulsory policy), the principle places a heavy burden of justification on the proponents of compulsory laws. Yet compulsory voting may be more conducive to individual liberty. Because elections in a democracy are the means by which laws are passed, electoral arrangements have deep and pervasive consequences on the freedoms granted to different groups. In the case of something as fundamental as electoral reform, coercion of a vote must be balanced with the potential freedoms enjoyed by different individuals and groups from a newly responsive government. This means that a society with more government coercion on its face may very well respect individual liberty more than a minimalist government. If the burden of proof should be on those who want to curtail individual liberty, then it falls on both sides in this debate, not just on the proponents of compulsory voting.”

He fails miserably in trying to overcome the violation of individual liberty because his argument rests on false premises. As already shown, elections are not the means by which laws are passed; they are best described as a scam perpetrated against voters. Additionally, there is no reason to associate increased voter turnout with government responsiveness because the turnout will be coordinated by self-interested forces and the voters will be bribed with funds from the public treasury. Che’s attempt to balance violations of liberty with beneficial consequences is a game of despots. The parable of the broken window demonstrates that we cannot see what fruits of liberty would be unrealized, and the reasoning of such consequentialism may be used to prove far too much. As such, his conclusion that the burden of proof falls upon both sides rather than solely upon his is not supported. Finally, with regard to taxation, it is immoral as currently practiced, so why should government become more wrong than it already is?

The other objection that Che considers is that it “cedes too much power to the uneducated.” He notes that this concern has existed since ancient times. He quotes Thomas Jefferson, “If we think [voters] not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.” That which is simply asserted may be simply dismissed, but let us do better. What will happen under compulsory voting will be an exacerbation of what already happens: the public discourse will overflow with misinformation and disinformation, as various factions seek to appeal to an artificially broadened electorate. Contrary to Che, compulsory voting will spur the miseducation of the public, and the media will become an even greater enemy of the people in this regard.

“Flooding Washington with the will of all voters” will accomplish none of the objectives that Che believes it will. It especially cannot “restore legitimacy to democratic institutions” because the people had no choice but to vote, and as any believer in the liberal religion knows, consent under duress is invalid. And if the system is illegitimate, then the occupants of its institutions are illegitimate a fortiori.

In conclusion, Che’s penultimate sentence is worthy of deeper exploration, for it is true that “The state of America’s deep political tribalism and culture of voter suppression calls for bold, actionable political reform.” However, the “bold, actionable political reform” that is actually called for is quite different from compulsory voting. To arrive at this, it is necessary to understand and approach the problem correctly. The goal of political reform should be secure, effective, responsible governance. Whether every moron who can make his way to a polling station has a voice in the process should be subordinated to these more important concerns. In fact, universal suffrage ensures that the aforementioned goal is impossible because political democracy is a deliberate engineering of insecurity and irresponsibility. Because elected leaders do not own the capital stock of the nation and only have temporary control of the usufruct, the incentive structure does not align their interests with what is best for the nation. They are instead incentivized to act in their own interest of getting re-elected and lining their own pockets while they can. As for the unelected civil service bureaucrats, they are shielded from responsibility for their malign actions because no one has the effective power to fire them for incompetence or malfeasance. Furthermore, the perpetual fight over the elected offices diverts funding and labor away from actually solving problems.

Thus, the solution is not to compel the vote, but to abolish the vote, or at least restrict it to pre-modern standards of having an ownership stake in society. This may take the monarchic form of one vote per king, the aristocratic or timocratic form of one vote per landowner, the neoreactionary form of one vote per voting shareholder in the sovereign joint-stock corporation, a combination thereof, or some other system as yet unimagined. To proceed otherwise, as Che would have us do, will only exacerbate political and social unrest. If a person or group had the ability to organize the masses for the purpose of holding power to account, then they already would have become the new leadership and changed the incentive structure for the better. The facts that this has not happened, and that historical attempts at this method of change have been highly destructive[8], suggest that it is absurd to diagnose a fault in the masses as the problem and corrective state action as the solution. A productive discourse would instead focus on how the best and brightest among the masses might help leaders govern with more competence, virtue, and vision, as well as how other, non-democratic forms of government may offer better incentive structures.

So let us dispel the compulsory delusion of Che and his ilk. We will not, because we cannot, solve the real problems with governance that way.

References

  1. Bond, C.A. (2019). Nemesis: The Jouvenelian Versus the Liberal Model of Human Orders. Imperium Press. p. 77–8.
  2. Lippmann, Walter (1922). Public Opinion. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. p. 248–9.
  3. Hoppe, Hans-Hermann (2001). Democracy―The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order. Transaction Publishers. p. 87–8.
  4. Nye, Robert A. (1977). The Anti-Democratic Sources of Elite Theory: Pareto, Mosca, Michels. Sage.
  5. Hart, Albert Bushnell (ed) (1927). Commonwealth History of Massachusetts. New York: The States History Company. pp. 3, 458.
  6. Billias, George (1976). Elbridge Gerry, Founding Father and Republican Statesman. McGraw-Hill Publishers. p. 317.
  7. Rodden, Jonathan A. (2019). Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide. Basic Books: New York.
  8. Manzanilla, Linda R. (2015, Jul. 28). “Cooperation and tensions in multiethnic corporate societies using Teotihuacan, Central Mexico, as a case study”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS/PNAS Online), vol. 112, no. 30, p. 9210–5.

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