"Think the politicians won’t care if you don’t vote? History proves you wrong."

[phantom power]

In other countries voter boycotts have a long and proud tradition as a way to effect pressure on a non-responsive political system. Think the politicians won’t care if you don’t vote? History proves you wrong. Even in dictatorships where only one candidate appears on the ballot, regimes go to desperate lengths to get people to turn out to vote. Why? It proves the government’s legitimacy.

Samuel Huntington cites the example of apartheid-era South Africa in his book “The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century”: “In the 1988 municipal elections, the South African government…clamped down on pro-boycott opposition groups and made it unlawful for individuals to urge a boycott.” The African National Congress then upped the ante, declaring its intent to “use revolutionary violence to prevent blacks from collaborating .”

Extreme, perhaps. Effective, definitely. The ANC is now the majority incumbent party in post-apartheid South Africa.

http://www.rall.com/rallblog/2011/08/02/syndicated-column-boycott-the-2012-election

[Drale]

1. The Repukes don't care about a legitimate government

They want full on dictatorship without elections where they can do what ever the fuck they want. The Republicans don't want anyone to vote whether its for them or not.

[phantom power]

2. Well, the interesting thing is he cites a counterargument...

Even one-party dictatorships want voter turnout -- not because it involves real choice, but because it maintains a facade of democratic legitimacy.

[gratuitous]

3. I would tend to agree, except . . .

The Republicans as currently constituted seem determined to rewrite the "book" on politics. Facts don't matter nearly as much as snappy sound bites. A bare plurality of the vote is deemed a "mandate" for anything they want, whether they campaigned on it or not. Their oft-repeated formulation is "The American people want . . ." in spite of the fact that whatever they say next is purely self-serving nonsense. But the popular media never challenge Republicans when they solemnly invoke the American people (e.g., "How can you say that the American people want to cut Medicare and Social Security benefits when every poll shows that's just not true"?).

Republicans have been depressingly successful at claiming legitimacy where they have none, and never being called to account for their anti-democratic, unconstitutional ways. Will they continue to prevail, or will there be a correction back to the ways government has traditionally been conducted? Right now, it's hard to say. I think the forms of democracy are durable enough to overcome even the Republicans, but they've certainly been taking a beating in the last 30 years.