In the last 250 years of US history, there have been 1 revolution, 1 civil war, and 59 presidential elections. That would suggest that it is easier to gain political power through votes than it is to gain political power by force. Now it is in the very nature of different political parties that they believe in different things; but it seems that a party that doesn't believe in voting would be ultimately self-destructive. The world has a long history of political activists organizing election boycotts, but in the overwhelming majority of cases the election still was declared valid, and the non-participating side lost by default.

Now a very vain individual losing an election might understandably claim that the vote was rigged against him. There is no forward-looking strategy in that, it is just an expression of personal weakness to be unable to admit defeat. It gets slightly ridiculous if you claim fraud after losing an election decisively. But the psychology of trying to save face in not admitting reality is pretty clear.

However, as a forward-looking political strategy, claiming that elections are fundamentally rigged at a very large scale looks like political suicide for any party. How is a follower of a political party supposed to react when told that his vote isn't counted? He basically has the choice between insurrection and apathy. As I mentioned at the start, in the US real insurrections happen less than once per century, and have a historical 50% success rate. Smaller scale violent protest is more frequent, but has a 0% success rate. With little chance of success for violence, and a natural human preference for apathy, most people who believe that going to vote is useless will simply stay home.

Now obviously the winning side in any election is usually quite certain that everything with the vote was fine. Having won the previous election makes the supporter of a party more convinced that his vote made a difference, and thus motivates him to go voting the next time around. So the risk of a party promoting voting apathy has a potential of becoming a death spiral: In a close election the more motivated side wins, then gets even more motivated, while the party of apathy loses, and becomes even more convinced that voting is of no use. And then having made voting more difficult can really backfire.

My prediction still is that this isn't going to end well. Even as a foreigner just skimming US news, it is noticeable that losing politicians talking of violence as a solution to "take our country back" is on the rise. If that trends isn't reversed, they might take their country back all the way to 1861.

- posted by Tobold @ 8:41 AM Permanent Link