I think voting 'no rulers' is probably the best option if you end up in a ballot box, but I think it's still worse than ignoring it.
I agree that lack of voting gets mixed in with apathy and kids having a soccer game etc and doesn't clearly express itself as a protest. But do you have to protest something to defeat it?
I think it's forces outside the state (how you connect with people, how you treat children, your economic activity) that defeats the state, and any energy you give to it is less ideal than what you would have otherwise done.
or Ron Paul who (I believe) would actively work to diminish the influence of rulers within our society
I disagree with this. People like Ron Paul serve a function for the state. It provides a softer landing, where people who realize the ruse of it all will still be lending their energy to the state, which is less threatening than actually behaving like anarchists.
And it polarizes people against these ideas. There would come a point where somebody needs to talk about deficits, wars, etc or it's increasingly obvious that important things are being hidden. So when you can package it in one extremely principled candidate and then defeat him, it dignifies the status quo and saves the mainstream candidates from having to move a little closer to the sane rhetoric.
What's in Ron Paul's heart, who knows of course. But I don't think it's any different than other politicians, where it should be safe to assume his political career is his top priority. He just had a different angle for gaining traction than other politicians.
I understand this position and it is true, but it's also not all of the truth (IMO). Anarchists are often criticized for seeing everything in black and white and not seeing reality is it is. I see you left out commenting on Adam's bid for president in 2020 on a platform to peacefully dissolving the federal government. Is he also just serving a function for the state? As for Ron Paul, how many more anarchists/voluntaryists exist today directly because of his influence and the platform given to him by the State? People like him are not just serving the State, they are also supporting their world views which include peaceful, voluntary interactions. If they were just about politics, they would have made different decisions to be more successful at politics. Instead, from my perspective, they stayed consistent to their principles over many decades.
We as anarchists should be rational about our goals and the best approach to reaching those goals. There are very real emergent properties of several hundred thousand human beings living together in cities which few anarchists offer solutions for seriously other than "it will just work out." My Statist friends need more than that. We could, for example, go through the entire federal budget line by line and explain how each item has at least 10-20 voluntary solutions which would not need to be funded via taxation and enforced via coercion. The world needs practical, pragmatic solutions for very real problems. If the only thing we have going for us is our moral superiority and all-or-nothing thinking, we will remain sidelined as an irrelevant minority for much longer (IMO).
And what if you have 10 principled candidates? 20? 100? I think change involves many angles. As I said in my post, I'm more of a reformer than a "change it from the inside" transformer, but I also recognize the evidence of the influence these people have our on society, and I'm thankful for their existence.
Entirely agree with you. Ending up in a ballot box is a proof of obedience. Some states even have compulsory voting, like Belgium. People not attending the ballot receive a fee.
All the power our rulers have is given by the people, and can easily be taken back.