South Africa seated a government on the basis of a 7% turnout but nobody in South Africa or anywhere else in the world thought that government was legitimate or had the consent of the people.

They can seat the government that wasn’t voted for, but it can’t claim legitimacy. Boycotting elections is the only proven nonviolent way to delegitimize a government. What difference does it make? When people protest a government that can claim legitimacy, that government has the legitimate right to suppress those dissidents. When a government cannot claim legitimacy, protesters immediately are transformed from dissidents and terrorists into freedom fighter opposing an illegitimate government. That’s what happened in South Africa when Mandela was no longer considered a terrorist and was freed from prison. Decades of violence hadn’t worked, but a successful election boycott did.

An impossible scenario?

It wasn’t impossible in Cuba when fewer than 10% turned out to vote for the dictator Batista.

It wasn’t impossible in South Africa when only 7% turned out to vote for the Apartheid regime.

It wasn’t impossible in Haiti when only 3% turned out to vote for the US-imposed government that ousted Aristide.

But it may be impossible in the US because people are so ignorant and apathetic. Given a choice between The Devil and Satan, rather than rejecting both along with the system that doesn’t allow any other viable choices, US voters would get out their micrometers to try to determine which one was a fraction of a millimeter less evil.

It takes social consciousness to oust a ruling oligarchy and its puppet bureaucracy, and our electoral system is set up to divide and conquer and prevent any mass social consciousness from developing. Rather than blame the system, voters always blame their neighbors and the political parties they didn’t vote for. I explained the whole thing very clearly, but there will always be political party operatives earning their pay by helping to get out the vote for capitalism, imperialism, neoliberalism, and fascism. Like all little Eichmanns, they’re just doing their job. And they know that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats will ever prosecute war criminals who are just following orders and just doing their job.

Ignorant of history, they don’t know about the Night of the Long Knives, or that fascist regimes and empires always fall.

I’m totally convinced that the half the eligible electorate who fail to understand that our ruling oligarchy governs solely for the benefit of the rich, not for the benefit of the people, and who therefore continue to vote in a system where any vote at all is a vote against their own best interests, correlate well with the lower half of the IQ bell curve. An election boycott probably is impossible in the US because those with the capacity to understand the need for it, already don’t vote, and those who vote lack the capacity to comprehend why they’re subjugating themselves to a system that will never act in their best interests.

Neither major party feels vulnerable because third parties don’t control the Supreme Court, the media, or program the central tabulators.

As for the Greens, Nativo Lopez found out the hard way that they are not a viable party for people of color: http://fubarandgrill.org/node/1152

Or for anyone who cares about dignity, equality, respect, and justice for all.

But it doesn’t matter how you vote or who you vote for or against. When you cast an unverifiable vote for candidates you know you won’t be able to hold accountable once they’re in office (the ONLY time they’re supposed to represent you and the only possible time you could express your will through them), you’re not only being irresponsible, you’re saying that you need other people to make your decisions for you. By voting, you’re declaring yourself incompetent. Yet a Rasmussen Poll showed that more than half of all voters fully understand that people picked at random from the phone book could do a better job than our “elected” officials.

When you vote, you’re not consenting to be governed by those you vote for, you’re consenting to be governed by whoever wins, even if, as was the case with Bush, they didn’t really win. You’re saying that you don’t care who governs you or how they govern, and that you don’t care if you can’t hold them accountable. Voting is the epitome of apathy and is only done by people who care more about their self-image than about their country.

There’s only one way to defend against the money used in elections.

Suppose the corporations and defense contractors spent $5 to $10 billion on the 2012 election, as they surely will, hedging their bets by donating in almost equal amounts to both major parties, as they usually do, and then nobody voted?

How would their boards of directors react? They expect a return on their money.

All it would take is one successful election boycott and the corporations would no longer spend a dime on elections. Citizens United wouldn’t be worth the paper it was written on.

Corporations care about their bottom line. If they spend billions on marketing and nobody buys their products, they withdraw them from the market and look for something that will produce profits.

You know the corporations are going to spend those billions. You know those billions will be used to try to turn the election into a personality contest instead of a vote of confidence or no confidence in government.

The only way to show that you do not have confidence in our government to listen to people and to do the right thing, is to withhold your vote.

It doesn’t matter how saintly your candidate is and how evil the other candidate is. You know the corporations have funded them both equally and that both will do the bidding of the big donors that funded them.

You’ve been sold so many crooks and liars, you’ve been terrorized into voting for evil because of some greater evil, despite knowing that both evils got equal donations from the exact same big multinational corporations, isn’t it time you stopped voting for evil? Any vote in a US election is a vote for evil–if it wasn’t the corporations wouldn’t spend billions of dollars getting out the vote.

I know you think that the nasty people of the other evil party are trying to keep you from voting. Compare how much they spend suppressing the vote to the amount they spend getting out the vote. They publicize the voter suppression even when only a few million is spent on it, so that you’re too distracted by that to remember that many BILLIONS were spent getting out the vote. For BOTH candidates. For BOTH parties. By the SAME evil corporations and defense contractors.

The paper ballots are tallied by central tabulators. The central tabulators are actually computers and what goes on inside them is completely unverifiable. As for hand recounts, even in districts where they are possible, the ballots remain in the custody of elections officials (quite a few of whom have been convicted and imprisoned for tampering with ballots) between the election and the recount, in a public building that is not open to the public except for a small reception area during working hours, but which elections officials can access freely overnight in order to manipulate the ballots so that the recount will match the machine count.

Paper ballots can give you a false sense of security, but remember Stalin’s warning. It isn’t the votes, it’s who counts the votes. When computers count the votes, the only one who has a vote is the person who pays the programmer who programs the computer.

They don’t care who you vote for, as long as you vote.

Even though both major parties have openly admitted that they don’t allow public opinion to influence policy decisions, and even though both parties supported bailouts when between 80% and 90% of the public opposed bailouts, there are people who still think they might care.

They don’t. The only thing they care about is that you vote, not who you vote for. They have the same agenda, so it doesn’t matter who you vote for, or even if you vote third party or cast a blank ballot. It is the TURNOUT that gives them the consent of the governed, the power and authority to claim that they are a legitimate government.

The only way to withdraw your consent is to boycott elections completely and not vote. Do you still think that your vote counts, even though the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore 2000 found that there is no Constitutional requirement that votes be counted and proceeded to stop the vote count so that the popular vote was completely nullified and nobody’s vote counted? Do you still think your vote counts after John Kerry broke his promises in 2004 not concede early and to ensure that all votes were counted, and conceding early before all votes were counted, single-handedly threw out the votes of everyone and selected the winner himself? Do you still think that if you don’t vote, the bad guys will win? What kind of good guy can raise the billions from corporations and defense contractors that is needed to win a presidential election these days? Do you still think that refusing to authorize whoever wins the election to spend your money as they wish and make your decisions for you, with no way to hold them accountable, is “doing nothing?”

Haven’t you woken up yet? When you vote you are consenting to allow the government to wage wars in your name on your tax dollar, without bothering to consult you, to spend your tax money on crooks and billionaires who don’t pay taxes instead of on people like you, to kill innocent women and children in foreign countries because the US, with no real enemies, in in the weapons business and needs wars to stay in business?

There are only two kinds of people who have a reason to vote. The very rich have a reason to vote because our government is run on their behalf. But they are only 2% of the population so they could never win an honest election. The other group with a reason to vote are Zionists because they know that our government places the interests of Israel before the interests of our own country. But they are also a minority. In fact, of those who vote, polls show that only 11% approve of the government they’re voting for, and vote in hopes of bringing about some sort of change that cannot be brought about by voting.

When the US has a presidential election, more than half the electorate turns out to vote, and all but 11% of them spend the next four years regretting their own vote because it never results in what they’d hoped for. Never.

You’re not voting for President or Vice-President. Our Constitution expressly forbids US citizens from voting for President or Vice-President. You’re voting for the slate of Electors of the political party those candidates belong to, and if those Electors don’t like your vote, they can vote differently. And if Congress so chooses, it has the Constitutional right to accept or reject those Electoral votes. And the Supreme Court has the Divine Right to nullify any presidential election and install whomever they want without regard to the popular vote. Our Constitution was written by rich people to ensure that those who owned the country would always rule it, and they made sure that the popular vote could never be decisive unless the wealthy elite wanted it to be.

Look at Egypt. They had a revolution to force the dictator Mubarak to step down. Obama immediately suggested that the military juntas which has ruled Egypt since 1952 and is supported by over a billion dollars a year from the US so that it will suppress the Egyptian people and protect Israel, form a “transitional government.” He also suggested that they hold elections. And the Egyptians, who had rallied by the hundreds of thousands and had sacrificed 800 martyrs and thousands more wounded, fell for it. Instead of continuing the spirit so exciting in Tahrir Square when they held hands and chanted, “Moslem, Christian, we are all Egyptian!” they began forming political parties so that they would divide up into opposing sectors and blame each other for everything instead of uniting against their oppression. But they recognized the problem when nothing changed. So now they are back in Tahrir Square demanding real change, the change that only comes about through revolution, not through phony cosmetic reforms.

You know our government has no real power, that our military and intelligence agencies don’t tell the government what they’re doing, lie to Congress, and have secret black budgets. You know that our politicians have to cater to their big donors even when it means cutting the throats of their constituents.

When will you stop voting to authorize tyranny? No matter how you vote, no matter who you vote for or against, your vote is your consent to the status quo. It is your civic duty to the state that is tyrannizing you. No, when votes are unverifiable in more than 90% of US voting districts, your vote cannot make a difference. But as long as you continue to vote, the government will continue to claim your consent for anything it does. You can protest, you can go to jail, you can lobby, petition, whatever, but when you voted you gave your consent, the consent of the governed TO BE GOVERNED, and without accountability that’s a deal with the devil. You should be ashamed of yourselves!