According to a theory popular among certain kinds of anti-voting anarchists, anarchists shouldn’t vote, and should encourage other people not to vote, because general participation in voting creates the perception that the elected government is legitimate, whereas if only a tiny handful of people voted, or nobody voted, it would expose democratic government as illegitimate, and spur people to resist them or simply shrug them off.

If that’s true, then we ought to expect anarchy to be breaking out any… day… now… in Pillsbury, North Dakota.

Somehow, though, I expect that what we’re much more likely to see is that the lack of a clear No will just be taken as good enough for a Yes, and the same old assholes will go on doing the same old thing and collecting the same old taxes anyway.

(Story via Lew Rockwell 2008-06-16.)

Please note, by the way, that this post is not intended as a brief in favor of voting. If everyone in town had showed up and voted against every candidate on the ticket, that would still be interpreted as legitimation for the State. There is literally nothing you could do with respect to a government election, whether voting for, or voting against, or abstaining from voting entirely, that statists will not interpret as legitimating the State. Statists will interpret any damn thing you could possibly do as legitimating the State; that’s just what statists do.