By: Jessica

In reply to Rose.

I think the sentence “It’s liberals who continue to bury their head in the sand about how much of a difference their vote makes, and think ‘not voting’ is a courageous rather than completely lazy and ineffective means of protest” is what makes people feel uncomfortable and that people who espouse that view on this website are attempting to shame them.

Most of the people I know who choose not to vote would be quite offended to be characterized as “liberals” – they are anarchists and anti-statists. Their motivation for not voting isn’t to make a courageous statement. It’s refusing to engage with a system that is profoundly flawed (not in the Democrat candidate vs. Republican candidate sense but in the entire corporate two-party-dominated system of representative democracy) and instead focusing their energies and time on community organizing and direct action – rather than spending two hours voting and feeling smug about their “civic engagement” (note: I am not accusing you or anyone else on this website of this – I don’t know you or what you do in your life).

I agree with antiant that “Not voting does not equate to a submission of the current policies or systems at hand” – it just means that rather than working within the system and accepting whatever lesser evil it offers, one has decided to organize and work outside that system from the ground up.