A principled vote is never a wasted vote

What once was a short-lived affliction called “Election Season” has now metastasized into a full-blown non-stop year-round disorder. We’re constantly being asked to vote for something on the local, city, county, state, or national level for everything from public school boards to parks and rec boards to water boards (which isn’t the same as waterboarding but might feel like it sometimes).

So the mental disturbance diagnosed as The Wasted Vote Syndrome has become an endless condition that needs to be cured once and for all.

Your vote is your vote, not somebody else’s. Only you can decide what your vote means and whether it’s wasted. Like it or not, agree with it or not, your vote is a symbol of your moral principles, a direct message from your character, a shiny spotlight on your values.

What is your “vote?” A betting slip in a two-horse race between the Democratic Stables nag and the Republican Farms mudder? So go ahead and bet it as you always have and you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten; a horse laugh from a horse’s ass.

But if that’s what you really want your vote wasn’t wasted. If you expected something better you wasted it.

Is your vote a voucher for the Lesser of Two Evils freak show? Hand it to the ticket-taker and go on in; you’re guaranteed to get Evil, even as others are voting for their Lesser Evil and getting it. Nothing changes except the types of evil you’ve all voted for.

Is your vote a “Patriotic Duty?” If you think it’s “patriotic” to keep enabling power-craving sociopaths to dictate virtually every aspect of everyone’s life you might want to reconsider exactly what “patriotic” means and then decide if you’re wasting your vote or not.

Libertarians see nothing more “patriotic” about voting for politicians than they see “patriotic” about voting to replace one Mafia mob boss with another.

Is your vote a “message?” That would mean you’re not casting it for a person but for an idea, not choosing a candidate but making a statement, not trying to pick a winner but to make a point. It’s back to that principles-character-values thing again. It means you’re voting to make a statement about what you really believe and care about.

Some refuse to vote at all. Is it a matter of principle not to vote? If so then not voting is the best thing to do with your vote. Voting isn’t mandatory, it’s voluntary, and voting for anyone you don’t want to sanction would be the waste.

In Venezuela recently millions boycotted the reelection of their socialist dictator Maduro on the grounds that any participation would have sanctioned what they saw as a fixed election.

Voting for anyone or anything you don’t believe in is a wasted vote. That’s why not voting at all is not a wasted vote; it’s a principled vote for “None of the Above.”

Libertarians, being libertarians, instinctively understand all of this. They know their Libertarian Party ticket isn’t expected to win, and their vote—and whether or how to use it—is a matter of their philosophical convictions.

What follows is not an exhaustive review of every possibility on how or why or why not to use a vote but just a few thoughts to be considered.

1. Reality: A presidential vote is good only in the voter’s home state. You’re voting for electors, not a president. All but two states are winner-take-all. Most states are foregone conclusions where everyone knows the Republican or the Democrat will win so in either case a person’s one vote is a wasted vote because nobody outside of a tiny village or school board runoff ever wins these things by one vote. To not waste your vote put it where it will do the most good: Give it to the Libertarian Party. The more votes they get year after year after year the sooner they’ll eventually break the two-party monopoly power grip on our lives.

“Voting Libertarian is the only clear message you can send”—Nicholas Sarwark, LNC chair

2. Voluntaryist libertarians: Government is a criminal enterprise and voting makes the voter complicit in the criminality. But really? Is helping the LP grow helping the government grow any different than helping a potential victim defend herself from a known rapist? That’s participating in criminality, isn’t it? The LP participates in government as an advocate against government. But voluntaryists have their well-thought out principles and refusing to vote is a principled refusal.

“Don’t Vote It Just Encourages the Bastards”—P.J. O’Rourke, libertarian author

3. LP Members: The Libertarian Party with its “Maximum Freedom, Minimum Government” service mark has a “minarchist” libertarian policy that means minimizing—but not rejecting all—coercion, intimidation and fraud. They’re still willing to extort taxes from people to pay for police, courts and military. Libertarians should vote for their candidates only if they see this as a “good start” toward a truly free non-government post-statist society that eliminates sociopaths from positions of coercive power and leads to a consumer-based laissez-faire free market in the broadest sense of the term “market” which simply means “human interaction.”

“Minarchism is the lesser of three evils”—Garry Reed, Libertarian Opinionizer

4. Libertarian perfectionists: Some Libertarians are more libertarian than other libertarians. There are no “perfect” libertarians except the individual who thinks he or she is one. Ron Paul wasn’t, but he came closer than any other mainstream politician in modern times. Would voting for him have been a waste of your vote? “Gary Johnson is a terrible libertarian” said “stormqvist” in a Steemit article. Suggestion: If you could have found a better one in 2016 you should have voted for him. Otherwise he at least introduced the word “libertarian” to those who had never heard it before. And then people like Stormqvist could move on to number 5.

“Utopia is not an option.”—libertarian truism

5. Educational Libertarians: Politics is the practical application of philosophy. Without a libertarian philosophy there can be no successful libertarian politics. Education comes first, and that’s where the “Gary Johnson is a terrible libertarian” detractors can step in. If they couldn’t vote for Johnson they could have at least “voted for” libertarianism in general. There are many ways to educate people new to the movement. Some do it with writing, with music, with videos, with art, with speaking, with teaching, with activism, with running for political office as a publicity generator.

“Educating new and prospective libertarians on the philosophy of freedom”—Advocates for Self-Government

Voting after all is just one little way to help advance the cause of freedom from government monopoly power. The LP is best when it performs as an educational platform; introducing the ideas today for new voters tomorrow.

Who would have thought that in a place like America the concepts of individual freedom and personal responsibility would ever be considered a loony fringe belief? Freedom and responsibility are the fundamental essence of libertarianism. But then, who would have thought that the restoration of those ideals could only be obtained through a demand for 100% pure libertarianism right now or else nothing. That seems like the true loony fringe belief.

If you can’t stand, can’t support, can’t vote for the Libertarian Party candidates then at least encourage, advocate, educate others to the philosophy behind the politics and live your vision of libertarianism. The alternative is the death of freedom.

Modern American Libertarianism is the cure for what afflicts the world.