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]

Read the entire article at ZerothPosition.com

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.