 I admit it, I voted. In my home state of Colorado, all voting is by mailed paper ballots. That means if you're a registered voter, the county clerk sends you a ballot every election. And then, at least in my case, it sits there, on a table, near my desk. Hello, this is Ryan McMakin, and you're listening to Radio Rothbard. One is supposed to fill the ballot out, and then mail it back, or drop it off in one of the mailbox-like boxes scattered around the city. Sometimes I do it. This time around, as the ballot sat there on the table, I kept thinking about the proposed tax increases I could vote yes or no on. Like many states in the western half of the United States, this state makes frequent use of ballot initiatives and referenda in elections. Voters are asked to vote up or down on any number of regulations and taxes which the policy makers will be more than happy to implement, if they can muster a yes from the majority of voters. I'm certainly not willing to stand in line at a polling place, and I don't care about getting an aye-voted sticker, but I had to admit the opportunity cost of sending in the ballot was really quite low, so as I am not a big fan of new taxes, I filled out the ballot according to my whims and sent it in. Nothing about this little anecdote would strike most people as remarkable in any way. Since at least the 19th century though, there has been a debate over whether or not voting somehow means the voter has agreed to submit to, or even support, whatever the state does. In some cases, libertarians and anarchists who agree with the Voting Equals Consent Claim conclude that voting is therefore immoral, or perhaps even a form of violence. Anarchist extraordinaire Lysander Spooner however disagreed, quote, it cannot be said that by voting a man pledges himself to the Constitution, unless the act of voting be a perfectly voluntary one on his part. Yet the act of voting cannot properly be called a voluntary one on the part of any very large number of those who do vote, it is rather a measure of necessity imposed upon them by others than one of their own choice, unquote. In other words, let's imagine a small business owner were given the choice between candidate A, who promises to tax small businesses into oblivion, and candidate B, who promises to lower taxes. It hardly follows that the small business owner who cast a ballot in this case was supporting the whole system and apparatus that had put him in such an unenviable position to begin with. Spooner continues, quote, in truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that without his consent having even been asked, a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist, a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forgo the exercise of many of his natural rights under the peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practice this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further that if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself without his consent, so situated that if he used the ballot, he may become a master. If he does not use it, he must become a slave. If he has no other alternative than these two, in self-defense, he attempts the former. It would not therefore be a legitimate inference that the government itself that crushes the voters was one which they had voluntarily set up or even consented to, unquote. In fact, when one adopts the position that voting indicates consent to the regime and all its acts, one is agreeing with the state's apologists who repeatedly assert that, yes, voting means the voter acquiesces to the results of the election and the state overall. They don't stop there, though. Herbert Spencer notes that, in the minds of the voting as consent ideologues, not voting counts as consent, too, as does voting against the victorious side in any election. Thus, it is claimed, quote. 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 agrees 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 a neuter, a rather awkward doctor in this. Here stands an unfortunate citizen who is asked if he will pay money for a certain profit 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. Unquote. The only alternative we are told is to move away, to move thousands of miles from friends, family, and property, learn a new culture and probably a new language, and take up residence under a different regime. To define consent in this manner, though, sets the bar of consent so low as to render it utterly meaningless. The horrors of such a definition can be plainly seen if we apply this to the case of women and sexual consent. By the logic of the sort of consent Spencer describes, we are forced to conclude if a woman says yes, she consents. If she says no, she also consents. If she can't run away, then she's still consenting. One suspects that this would not be a terribly successful argument if employed by a rapist in a court of law. And yet here we are, being told that no matter what you do at election time, nothing, short of self-imposed exile, is to be interpreted as actual opposition to the state. Now to be fair, voting four candidates would appear to be harder to defend in this vein than voting against specific policies. Voting no on a tax increase is fairly unambiguous and can hardly be taken as support for any other policy. With candidates, however, there's far more room for state action. Even a candidate who might campaign on a tax cut will, after winning the election, take his election as a mandate to enact all sort of other objectionable laws that those who voted for him based on the tax issue would oppose. Thus, voting yes for any candidate is inherently more dangerous than simply voting no on a tax increase. For this reason, one might suggest that all ballots offer an abstain or none of the above option. Even if no further steps were taken, such as requiring a runoff in cases where abstain won a majority, the option of voting against everyone would do wonders to illustrate the lack of legitimacy that political candidates truly have. This, of course, is how we ought to interpret the vote of every eligible voter who prefers to not vote at all. Every non-vote is essentially a none of the above vote. And many people choose to express their opposition to the candidates in this way. That's a perfectly acceptable course of action, but it's not the only acceptable one. Thank you for listening to Radio Rothbard. Have a wonderful day. For more content like this, visit Mises.org.