Talk:Non-voting

A few problems

How does anyone conclude that by voting, one consents to being ruled? There is nothing in the law about that. The law says that being physically present within a state's geographical borders is what triggers that state's jurisdiction over you, not voting in an election of that state. For instance, you can be a citizen of Virginia and vote absentee in Virginia's elections while living in Colorado, but you will not be criminally prosecuted in Virginia for smoking pot in Colorado, even though you did something that's illegal in Virginia. But if you break Colorado's laws while within the borders of Colorado, you will be prosecuted by Colorado, even if you don't vote in Colorado elections.

The other problem with the "voting implies consent to be ruled" argument is that non-voting can also be construed to imply consent; e.g., the rulers might say, "Look! The people are so content and satisfied with their rulers that hardly any of them feel any need to try to change things by voting." Voter turnout for state and local elections in the U.S. is usually well below 50%, and large numbers of state legislator candidates run unopposed, but who claims that such things render those governments illegitimate?

The bottom line is that the legitimacy, or lack thereof, of a government rests on other things than voter turnout. A corporation could have a 1% turnout in its shareholder elections, but libertarians would still view the chosen board members as having been granted by the shareholders a legitimate right to run the company on their behalf, because it is so stated in the articles of incorporation that the shareholders agreed to. In elections, the fact that most of the shareholders or other voters choose not to exercise their right to vote is irrelevant; what matters is the existence, or lack thereof, of a legitimate contract by which the unanimous consent of the governed to be ruled by those elected is established. Tisane ^talk/_stalk 23:50, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Look this up later

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2111398 Tisane ^talk/_stalk 18:43, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Emma Goldman Quote

I have searched and have not found a substantial source that really attributes the quote “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal” to Emma Goldman. There are plenty of quote websites that attribute it to her, but do not cite anything to prove it. The source that was cited in this article was a blog post in which the blogger attributed the quote to her, but it was not reliable as a primary or secondary source. Can anyone find the source of the quote? --FranklinjKennedy (talk) 04:03, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Rothbard quote

Why is there a "[sic]" in the phrase "an avowedly libertarian candidate?" tomasz. 17:54, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I also noted it. I thought that I'd be missing on something since I'm not a native English speaker. I checked out the source to see if it is like that in the source and is not. I'm going to remove the [sic] marker if there is no good reason for it.--Dave.haku (talk) 20:09, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I also came here looking for an explanation. It doesn't look like the "[sic]" was ever removed, so I'm removing it now. Ohspite (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:34, 2 June 2013 (UTC)