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I agree that it's certainly not the only way to get something. However, if you're trying to make a statement by not voting, your statement gets lost in the noise. If it were not for your enlightening article, how would I know that one less voter this election season was making such a statement? I wouldn't. Most non-voters abstain for other far more trivial reasons. If however I saw one additional vote for Mickey Mouse it would bring explicit attention to your statement.

Voting for Mickey Mouse isn't begging the system to let me be free because I know without a shadow of a doubt that Mickey Mouse stands no chance to win. All it does is make obvious the fact that I'm pointing my middle finger at the system.

@jwmpls

What if they held an election and nobody came?

Not voting is not about making a statement, it's about a refusal to give the system any legitimacy. Statist keep saying that government rules by the consent of the governed. Voting is consent, not voting is denial of consent. If everyone stopped voting, for whatever reason, they couldn't possibly prentend to have the consent of the governed, could they?

That is what not voting is all about. Even if you are voting for Bozo the clown, you are still participating in the process and giving consent to be governed. I for one will do no such thing.