4 ms·

Well… Every single person who votes in an election , without exception, votes for an organization that is doing bad things. The simplest thing to do to solve t

• geofft 5y ago
  There are in fact multiple political movements, from all sorts of perspectives, that refuse to vote because they don't want to grant legitimacy to an organization they have problems with! This is certainly a position I've seen on the American far left about our elections, but you also see it from entire political parties (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_boycott https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_boycott), and there's the more interesting position where Sinn Fein to this day gets elected to Parliament and refuses to participate or vote on things (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstentionism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstentionism). So, yes, I think that's a defensible position, and if you wanted to characterize my decision to vote as evidence that I believe that my government as an institution is salvageable and not inherently hopeless the way I believe the police as an institution are, I don't think you'd be wrong. The other thing is that you wouldn't really do away with elections, you'd do away with the whole organization (the government) that you're electing people to. Which is, in fact, the anarchist position, and I think that position is also defensible.