The Ⓧ2012 Project
Ⓧvoters of America, unite!
2010 Midterms: Only 29% of Americans Consent to be Governed
Nov 4th
Per KBZK Channel 7 (Bozeman, Montana) and the Associated Press:
Nationally, voter turnout was higher Tuesday than for the mid-term elections four years ago. … The turnout is projected at 42 percent of registered voters. That translates to about 90 million people, 6.2 million more than in 2006.
In other words:
- The 112th Congress was elected by pluralities/majorities of a 42% minority even among those registered to vote.
- The 112th Congress was elected by pluralities/majorities of just under 29% of the total population.
71% of Americans either chose not to vote or were forbidden to vote — yet for the next two years the members of the 112th Congress will claim to “represent” us and to possess legitimate authority to rule us.
Who’s An Ⓧ Voter?
Nov 2nd
If you choose not to vote because you do not to consent to “the system as it is,” and if you’re willing to say so, you’re an Ⓧ Voter.
Yes, it’s really that simple.
Maybe you’re a member of one of the political parties which finds it as hard to get on the ballot in Oklahoma as a non-Shiite-fundamentalist party does in Iran.
Maybe you’ve gone unrepresented in Congress your whole life because geographical districting, gerrymandering, “first past the post” elections and other features of the existing system make you part of the 49.9% instead of part of the 50.1% (of those voting — in most cases and most places, the majority don’t vote).
Hell, maybe you’re an authoritarian who doesn’t truck with all this election stuff — you’d prefer a Maximum Leader and universal conscription.
Or maybe you are (like me) an anarchist.
Ⓧ2012 is ecumenical — if your reason for not voting falls under any heading other than “apathy,” and if you’re willing to say so, you are an Ⓧ Voter.
Ⓧ2012 isn’t a total agenda. It’s just a first step, an umbrella of sorts, for all of us whose political agendas start with “NOT THIS.”
Ⓧ2012 is, in a way, an intervention. Like the folks at Alcoholics Anonymous say, “the first step is admitting that you have a problem.” The current system has a problem — a problem its supporters, like many substance abusers, won’t admit to unless forcefully confronted about it. Its problem is that a supermajority of its subjects don’t consent to be governed by it.
Ⓧ2012 itself isn’t what’s next. It’s a tool for mobilizing that supermajority to clear the road so that we can get to whatever’s next.
Pre-Launch Thoughts
Oct 4th
If you’re reading this post before November 2nd, 2010 — the site’s “official launch date” — you might want to come back later. There’s not much here yet.
Then again, since you’re here anyway, I might as well go ahead and clue you in as to what The Ⓧ2012 Project is about and why I’m planning to dedicate a significant amount of my personal time and effort to it over the next two years.
Over the course of my political life, I’ve come up against three key items over and over:
- For the last two centuries and change, the predominant justification for political government in much of the world has been that, in the words of Thomas Jefferson from the Declaration of Independence, governments derive their “just powers” from “the consent of the governed.”
- In the US and other “liberal democracies,” the primary instrument for expressing or affirming that alleged consent is the ceremony of “election” in which individuals choose government officials by voting for candidates.
- In many countries, and in the United States in particular, only a fraction of the populace actually votes. In 2008, for example, only 43% of the populace voted and US president Barack Obama was elected with the votes of barely one in five Americans (69 million votes from among a population of 305 million).
The usual explanation for a majority of Americans not voting is “apathy,” but that claim is not self-evident and I’ve seen no evidence to support it. Back in the 1980s, a common (and eminently reasonable!) claim from the political Left was that if Latin American countries had had the same rate of voter turnout as the US, the Reagan administration would have propagandized about “massive voter boycotts” in those countries.
In point of fact, many Americans can’t vote for one reason or another — they’re under 18 years of age, or they’ve been convicted of a felony, or are otherwise legally disenfranchised. Whether or not these people should be allowed to vote is irrelevant to the question of whether or not they’ve consented to be ruled by those who win the elections. It’s pretty clear to me that someone who hasn’t been consulted can’t plausibly be held to have consented.
So far as those who could vote but choose not to do so are concerned, I’ve seen no scientific surveys purporting to confirm the “apathy” diagnosis. We don’t know why they choose not to vote, we know only that they choose not to vote.
In the absence of personal disclosure of motives, the assumption that non-voting is an expression of “apathy” is no more obviously correct, and in fact is prima facie less likely, than is the assumption that non-voting is an expression of implicit non-consent to be governed by the winners of the election.
Think about it: The fact that I’ve not said “you can’t take my car” isn’t evidence of “apathy” toward car theft on my part, is it? You wouldn’t dream of walking into my house, raiding my fridge, and settling down in front of my television to watch a “Seinfeld” re-run without my explicit permission — at least not if you’re a normal, honest human being.
How then, would you assume my permission to rule me “in all cases whatsoever” (Jefferson’s characterization of the scope of George III’s claim to power over the American colonists) in the absence of explicit permission from me to do so? And how would I be justified in making any such assumption about you?
But, enough of assumptions: The only people whose motivations can be known are those who choose to publicly divulge those motivations. The purpose of The Ⓧ2012 Project is to settle the question of motivations by providing a platform for Ⓧ-voters to register their Ⓧ-plicit non-consent to be governed by the winners of the 2012 US elections.
Ⓧ2012 is, plain and simple, a boycott of those elections, and of rule by the winners of those elections. While I’m personally prepared to claim that the non-voting 57% of Americans are non-consenting rather than merely apathetic, I contend that the time has come for non-voters to forcefully combat the “apathy” claim by publicly identifying themselves as Ⓧ-voters. This site will be the Internet headquarters of a campaign to encourage that public self-identification.
Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Ⓧ-voter
