On Voting

Is the West's favorite political ritual coming to an end?

If spanking is the British vice, voting is America’s preferred fetish. We treat elections like our cousins across the pond treat football games. We cry telegenically on TikTok when our preferred candidate loses. We even disown family members who support the wrong ticket. And yet at a time when we need the wisdom of a Solomon or a Marcus Aurelius, Americans regularly find themselves choosing between Giant Douche and Turd Sandwich.

The Athenians became famous for their democracy. But while adult male Athenians were expected to take part in running the government, suffrage was denied for the women, slaves, and foreigners who comprised the majority of Athens residents. And, as Socrates can attest, Athenian democracy made some very unwise decisions.

Today our government is much too unwieldy to allow for direct participation. Even our Founding Fathers were forced to create a representative rather than a participatory democracy. We don’t vote on issues, we vote for people who then vote on the issues. Still, election rituals are a huge part of Western culture. But have we outgrown our need for the ballot box?

The Limits of Voting

In the West, we consider a free and fair vote a non-negotiable part of any civilized society. But your individual vote has about as much impact on an election’s outcome as your lucky shirt has on your favorite team’s winning streak. Gerrymandering, fraud, and other crimes can make your choices irrelevant. Given the price of campaigning, candidates owe far more to their big donors than to their voters. And for every informed voter who studies the issues religiously, there are many who are far less diligent. It only takes one voter who thinks your candidate is an alien reptile to nullify your carefully chosen selection.

Free and fair elections are no guarantee of free and fair government. “Authoritarian Populists” have widespread voter support in places like Germany, Hungary, and Turkey. Nearly nine in ten Russians approved of Vladimir Putin’s job performance in October 2024. When you give the people the vote, they may make a choice that’s so bad you find yourself forced to “fortify” the next election to save freedom and democracy.

Many who have strong opinions about their President couldn’t pick out their mayor or councilman out of a lineup. That’s because these positions have largely become ceremonial as our federal government has centralized its hold on power. This process began after a messy disagreement over slavery. Today most Americans agree that slavery was by and large a bad thing. Most of us also reject the peculiar post-Civil War institution of segregation. As of 2021, 94% of Americans approved of interracial marriage; in 1958 that number was just 4%.

But all those changes only took place after a great deal of pushback from state governments and from their voters. Today we fear a rogue President might send out the military to quell unrest. But on March 20, 1965 Lyndon B. Johnson called up 10,000 Alabama National Guard members to protect a civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery. And when Governor Orval Faubus called out the Arkansas National Guard to stop the court-ordered desegregation of Little Rock schools in September 1957, Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in the Army’s 101st Airborne Division to enforce the judgment.

Was this a tyrannical federal government shoving an unpopular mandate down the throats of people who didn’t want it? Many at the time certainly thought so. Many have since complained about other examples of what they consider to be federal overreach against state and local wishes. Many others, looking at the Civil Rights movement’s political and social successes, have decided that a strong federal government is their best protection against local tyrants.

But though Americans treat the Civil Rights movement with the same religious awe they show for the voting booth, we should be careful to keep things in their proper perspective. Our government has centralized not because we have become more sensitive to minority rights. It has centralized because it has gained the technological capacity to do so.

Transcontinental Railroad to World Wide Web

Superior rail lines transported the Union troops and weapons that defeated the Confederacy. After that forceful reunification, the railroads helped unite a much larger United States. Before 1869, a journey across the country required 5-6 months in a stagecoach across deserts and mountains. With the advent of the Transcontinental Railroad, a traveler could leave New York and arrive in San Francisco a week later. (By 1876, express trains were making that journey in 83 hours).

Telegraph wires sprung up alongside those rails. While an intercontinental telegraph line had been built in 1861, these new telegraph connections had multiple lines and were more reliable than their predecessor. Near-instantaneous communications between the East and West Coast were now possible, albeit still limited to a few words in Morse code. Then, in January 1915, Woodrow Wilson spoke to a San Francisco audience from the White House on the first transcontinental phone line. These connections brought a nation together. They also made it much easier to form a stronger federal government.

Wilson was successful in his efforts to create a centralized banking system. But while his plans to create a League of Nations to prevent another Great War were wildly popular in Europe, Wilson couldn’t sell them to entanglement-wary Americans. Still, his ideas proved popular amongst intellectuals, especially after a Great Depression and a Second World War that was even bloodier than its predecessor. And these intellectuals were far more skeptical about the efficacy of voting than the Founding Fathers ever were. For them the people were a speed bump on the way to progress. As Harold Loeb put it in his 1933 Life in a Technocracy:

Administration, in a technocracy, has to do with material factors which are subject to measurement. Therefore, popular voting can be largely dispensed with. It is stupid deciding an issue by vote or opinion when a yardstick can be used.

It seemed obvious to Harold Loeb that our technological capacity had taken us to a new stage of humanity. In his 42 years he had already seen the birth of airplanes, submarines, radio broadcasts, the Panama Canal, talkies, insulin, and penicillin. He had every reason to expect the future would continue on its upward trend to the moon and the stars. He assumed that ultimately we would replace capitalism with distribution networks that provided goods according to need. And today’s technocrats largely share his scorn for voters, especially those who don’t Trust the Science as presented by Experts.

By the time of his death in 1974 Loeb had also seen the atomic bomb, television, Sputnik, computers, and the moon landing. A few months after his passing, Richard Nixon became the first American President to resign and the postwar Boom that had lasted for generations was replaced by the Rust Belt and Stagflation. Though few were aware of it at the time of his death, scientists had already set up ARPAnet, a computer network that would later metastasize into the World Wide Web.

Voting and the Internet

To help you sort through the information torrent, social media programmers have developed algorithms that recommend postings you engage with and steer you away from material you don’t find interesting. This results in echo chambers where users see only material that affirms their beliefs and rage bait that reinforces their prejudices. The more active the user, the more accurately those algorithms serve up those choices. Soon it becomes clear that everybody worth listening to agrees with your opinions and everybody who disagrees is not just misguided but actively evil.

Microblogging services like X and Bluesky are dopamine pumps that stimulate your brain 280 characters at a time. Dopamine receptors are also linked to compulsive gambling and sex addiction; cocaine works by increasing your brain’s dopamine levels. It’s not surprising that many users keep hitting that SEND button like a lab rat pushing a button for crack. Nor is it surprising that their behavior becomes increasingly incoherent and unhinged the longer they stay on the site.

A November 2022 study found that between 25% and 68% of all Twitter users were bots. Many post inflammatory false information. Others repost existing disinfo, or bump it up in the algorithm with mass likes. This creates an illusion of consensus. And because humans learn by mimesis, we often internalize repeated nonsense that feeds into our peer group’s prejudices. Advertisers have long known that reinforcing feelings is far more effective than offering logical explanations.

This has led to calls to clean up the Internet and get rid of the bots, trolls, and online liars. But there’s a fine line between a dissension-spreading troll and a spirited defender of the truth. The people drawing those lines generally play for one team or the other. And any service that’s used to stifle disinformation can be used to shut down inconvenient truths. The Hunter Biden laptop and COVID vaccine injury reports are two real stories that got dismissed as fake news.

On November 6, 2024 Romania’s Constitutional Court canceled its election citing thousands of TikTok accounts created by a “foreign state.” Calin Georgescu, who favors closer relations with Russia, made a surprisingly strong showing in the race. Then the Court determined that a “highly organized” online campaign had unduly influenced the election. As of this time, it is unclear when the new election will be held or whether Georgescu will be allowed to run.

Reactions in Romania have been largely mixed, with those who favor the current administration supporting the move and opposing politicians calling it an attack on democracy and freedom. In America Democrats claimed Russian interference in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. As in Romania, American acceptance or rejection of those claims split largely along party lines. It remains unclear to what extent, if any, these campaigns influenced election results. But they have certainly eroded voter trust in elections and in their government’s willingness to honor election results.

The Post-Voting World

Electoral democracy only works if everyone involved agrees to honor the results. Most of us are aware that there’s a certain degree of corruption and cheating in every election, but we play along nonetheless. When we decide that we will only accept the election if our chosen candidate wins, our electoral democracy is doomed. It may linger for a while, but one good crisis – a hard economic downturn, widespread civil unrest, a pandemic – will send us searching for a strongman to take charge.

After 9/11 Americans happily embraced the civil surveillance protections of the PATRIOT Act. In January 2022, during the COVID lockdowns, a Rasmussen poll found that:

59% favored that vaccine resisters be confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies

55% of likely Democratic voters supported fining Americans who chose not to get a COVID-19 vaccine

48% favored fining or imprisoning individuals who questioned the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications

45% favored requiring placing vaccine resisters in internment camps

29% favored removing children from the custody of parents who refused the COVID-19 vaccine.

​Many Americans are crying out to be freed from tyranny. Most simply want their favored candidate to crush the tyrants and take their place on the Dark Lord’s throne. The Athenians used shattered pottery pieces (ὄστρακα, ostraka) to mark their troublemakers for exile and ostracism. In 338 BC Philip of Macedon conquered Athens and brought it into his empire. We can only wonder what strongman will conquer our weakened state and what Alexander may arise from our ashes.