Election Rejection: The Myth of Electoral Harm Reduction
From Starting Somewhere: Community Organizing for Socially Awkward People Who’ve Had Enough
Abraham Lincoln famously said in regard to social victories, “Not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.”
A few years later he was shot in the back of the head.
Lincoln, like many, learned the hard way that changing society has little to do with casting ballots, and everything to do with direct action. Still, electoral politics retain a proverbial chokehold on the vast majority of Americans on both sides of the political spectrum, desperate for change.
I don’t know many Leftists who didn’t first get involved in politics because a particular political figure caught their attention and perhaps inspired hope. From Lincoln to Kennedy, to the other Kennedy; to Clinton, to Obama, to the other Clinton — politicians are often a gateway drug to radicalization, even if unintentionally. So while electoral campaigns aren’t what we usually think of when discussing radical community organizing, for many organizers they are our first introduction to political engagement — for better or for worse. As a result, the significance of voting may be the most controversial topic among those who consider themselves left of liberal… and that’s saying something.
Personally, I was all but done with elections when Barack Obama announced his presidential bid in 2007, but the temptation of a Black candidate with an African name-calling for universal healthcare, withdrawal from Iraq, and codified abortion rights sounded too good to pass up. Additionally, the propaganda around Obama was like nothing I’d experienced before. His likeness was everywhere. His rallies regularly topped 100,000 attendees. Rappers were shouting him out on street records and Billboard hits. For the first time in my life, I saw other Black men excited to register and cast their votes, and I reluctantly counted myself among them.
So when Obama ended up being another smooth-talking fascist, like so many of his predecessors, I vowed to never be duped by another celebrity politician promising radical change again. Propaganda had won out for the last time. Bernie Sanders could have dropped an album with Kendrick Lamar and I still wouldn’t have voted for him. And the more I came to understand the true purpose of electoral politics and the ways voting was designed to uphold capitalism — including in local elections — the more I began embracing other more radical means of bringing about systemic change.
Still, I make it a point not to actively discourage people from participating in our current electoral system, because I see value in voters becoming disenfranchised on their own, like I did. But I do take issue with entities that seem determined to shame and belittle people (especially marginalized folks) for choosing to abstain from voting.
Society has been so indoctrinated by the idea that casting a ballot is the most effective and viable way to bring about change that it’s become one of the more challenging notions to unlearn. We’re told in grade school that voting is not only our civic duty, but that our ancestors literally died for our right to vote. And while voting as a concept isn’t inherently harmful, the current electoral system in the United States is designed to render participation antithetical to social progress and stifling to meaningful change.
This is, in part, because presidential elections are essentially rigged, and that’s not even a radical notion. According to a 2024 Pew Research poll, “More than six-in-ten Americans (63%) would prefer to see the winner of the presidential election be the person who wins the most votes.” Only 35% of Americans favor retaining the Electoral College. Under the Electoral College, a handful of swing states regularly dictate the outcome of every presidential election, regardless of who wins the popular vote. If you live in any of the other 43 states, your vote for president is essentially moot. But it could be worse, since nearly 4 million American citizens currently living in U.S. territories (like Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands) aren’t even allowed to vote for president.
Furthermore, a now-infamous study conducted by The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) candidly states, “In the Electoral College, white votes matter more.”
As Andrew Gelman, professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University, explains, “Based on the current distribution of voters of different ethnicities across states, and particularly within swing states, the Electoral College amplifies the power of white voters by a substantial amount.” He adds, “Whites have 16% more power than Blacks once the Electoral College is taken into consideration, 28% more power than Latinos, and 57% more power than those who fall into the ‘Other’ category.”
If you’re thinking, “This sounds eerily similar to the Three-Fifths Compromise of 1787, under which individual slaves counted as 3/5ths of a person towards a state’s total population to determine representation in Congress,” you’d be correct. The voices of white Americans have always counted more in this country, and every time we cast a vote we’re saying, “That’s fine by me.”
So studies confirm the system for determining the president is blatantly racist, and the majority of Americans don’t favor that system in the first place, yet most of us (66%) still willingly participate. Why?
We do this out of desperation and indoctrination. Many Americans believe there is no other viable choice outside of the electoral process. They say things like, “Until the Revolution happens, this is the best we can do.” We’re lectured repeatedly that if we don’t vote, we’re not even entitled to complain, which is a convenient way to silence marginalized voices. Truth be told, our willing participation in the system is the only reason it persists, and revolutions require a rejection of all civic engagement designed to quell dissent.
George Jackson notes this in his political memoir, Blood In My Eye, which was completed only days before he was killed by the state. He writes:
When any election is held it will fortify rather than destroy the credibility of [those in power]. When we participate in an election to win, instead of disrupt, we’re lending to its credibility, and destroying our own. With all the factors of control over the electoral process in the hands of the ruling class, the people’s party can always be made to seem isolated, unimportant, even extraneous. If these tactics still give the appearance of revolution to some after decades of miscarriage, we are justified in replacing them as vanguard.
Jackson argues that participation in elections is not only harmful, it’s self-defeating and counter-revolutionary, and those who continue to tout voting as a revolutionary act of resistance have no business leading social movements.
It’s worth noting that Jackson’s stance is not synonymous with “voter apathy,” which is used to describe those who simply see voting as useless or a waste of time. If voting were merely a waste of time, I’d support it. Wasting time is generally harmless. In fact, it can be fun and even radical. In a world where many insist “time is money,” wasting time can even be anti-capitalist. But, tragically, voting is none of those things. Participation in the current electoral system presented to American voters is actively harmful, and it’s past time we get comfortable acknowledging that fact.
When Jackson suggests constituents “disrupt” elections rather than participate, he means rejecting the illusion of choice posed by the two-party system that has always dominated American politics. This rejection can take many forms, from casting a protest vote, to voting for third party candidates who have zero shot of winning, to outright abstaining from the process. (Incidentally, my mother went into labor with me on Election Day and couldn’t make it to the polls, so I’ve technically been disrupting electoral politics for my entire life. *Rimshot*)
The main takeaway here is that if we continue to participate, the process has no incentive to change. Disruption is the only true threat. As such, any action that exposes, discredits, impedes, or otherwise undermines the electoral process is stigmatized as naive or deviant by society, because — above all else — the system requires participation.
Americans are so indoctrinated by the idea of voting that abandoning the electoral process can feel like an overwhelming loss. It’s one thing to be critical of our government and the ruling class, but it’s another to accept that voting is an intricate placebo designed to uphold the status quo at the expense of the oppressed.
We may even go through the Stages of Electoral Grief before accepting that we’ve been misled by a system that was never intended to truly reflect the will of The People™. It usually goes something like this:
• DENIAL: “Voting works; we just have to keep voting and do a better job of getting young people registered and to the polls.”
• ANGER: “Anyone who doesn’t vote is an enemy to the American people! Do you want [Bad Man] to win?!”
• BARGAINING: “OK, I’ll concede that national elections don’t carry much weight, but LOCAL ELECTIONS are surely important. That’s how we’re going to improve society.”
• DEPRESSION: “Fuck.”
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• ACCEPTANCE: “Workers of the world, unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains!”
Most people get hung up on the Bargaining Stage, because it stands to reason that if the Electoral College is unjust, local elections will result in a more representative government better suited to serve a given community. It’s easy to denounce presidential candidates as power-hungry oligarchs intent on upholding the status quo, but it’s more challenging to suggest our friends and peers who comprise city councils, school boards, state legislatures, and municipal offices are complicit as well. Especially when those positions are held by people who look like us.
But we need only observe Democratic cities and states to see that diverse, liberal governments don’t equate to justice or even basic dignity. For starters, “Blue” cities and states are among the poorest.
The 2020 Census ranked California and Washington D.C. as the two locales with the highest poverty rates per capita, according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which factors in each state or district’s cost of living. The top ten list included New York, Hawaii, and New Mexico, which all have overwhelmingly Democratic governments.
Additionally, as noted by Jed Kolko, the former Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs, “Even after adjusting for differences of income, liberal markets tend to have higher income inequality and worse affordability.” According to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the states with the highest rates of homelessness in 2023 were (in order): New York, Vermont, Oregon, California, Hawaii, Washington, Maine, and Massachusetts — all Democratic strongholds.
So while it’s great that abortion access, for example, is still relatively available in these states, it’s unfortunate that parents and children residing there are more likely to have to live on the streets. If this is what’s passing for “harm reduction” these days, I’d say it’s time to re-evaluate.
Still, some insist that Democratic states have higher rates of homelessness and poverty simply because poor people flock to these regions to reap the public benefits and social services available under their liberal leadership and progressive policies. I’d argue that claiming someone would rather suffer in New York than, say, Alabama, is a pretty low bar to serve as an example of local elections making a difference.
But if local elections are indeed the gold standard for American democracy, is this truly the best we can do? Every two to four years we’re expected to vote for our most basic human rights, and if we miss a year we risk losing everything.
And what about people suffering in neighboring towns and states? Are we supposed to ignore them and just “vote local” so we don’t end up like them? Don’t we want ALL children safe? Don’t we want reproductive rights for ALL? Don’t we want human dignity, food, healthcare, and housing for ALL? Or is that just something we say while fighting for scraps of comfort and dignity afforded to those with enough privilege to keep their heads above water?
Because even in the most progressive and liberal states, children go to sleep hungry, disabled people fall through the gaping holes of the system, and queer and trans folks go without housing and healthcare; all while our tax dollars fund rampant police violence instead of confronting these problems head-on. Every time we cast a vote for the status quo, we’re sacrificing the most marginalized and writing them off as collateral damage because we fear it “could be worse.”
Worse for whom?
Whether people flee to conservative states to find more affordable housing or liberal states to access reproductive healthcare, the reality remains that most Americans are faced with choosing which of their human rights they’re willing to forfeit to survive. The homeless encampments popping up in America’s liberal cities are increasingly destroyed by law enforcement agencies run by Black and brown police chiefs, appointed by Black and brown mayors, using budgets approved by Black and brown City Council members. Record numbers of women now hold office at federal and state levels, but even the most diverse political representation in U.S. history has only succeeded in making it more challenging to confront oppressive policies, systemic abuse, and mismanagement across the board.
In 1956, W.E.B. Dubois wrote, “Democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no ‘two evils’ exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.” That was written before Black Americans secured the right to vote, but is now more true than ever. Local elections remain entrenched in the two-party system, and diverse and progressive candidates are forced to compromise their principles and messaging if they hope to win a seat at the table.
The underlying theme here is that reform doesn’t work at a local level any better than it works at a national level. Flipping states and cities Blue and tokenizing diverse candidates is ineffective in addressing social inequality because the frameworks in place are inherently designed to uphold oppressive systems. The notion that Democrats seek to end poverty and discrimination is a blatant falsehood because Democrats seek to preserve capitalism, which requires exploitation of the working class.
“The oppressed,” writes Karl Marx, “are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.” It is in this way that both major parties ensure that the back-and-forth game of politics never ends, in an effort to retain power and control of the masses.
Case in point: Since 1977, Democrats have had four opportunities to codify Roe v. Wade into law, ensuring reproductive rights for all. Yet each time they chose not to, for the express purpose of holding American voters hostage with the threat of losing abortion access. Frustratingly, this strategy continues to prove effective because voter turnout is at an all-time high.
In fact, the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, respectively, had the highest voter turnout rates for ANY national elections held since 1900. And the 2018 and 2022 midterms had the highest midterm turnouts of the past 50 years. Despite persistent talk of voter apathy, voter suppression, and fear-mongering claims that voting rights are “under attack,” Americans are hitting the polls like never before. Voting remains the status quo across virtually all demographics. Participation in the electoral process is the default position among Republicans and Democrats alike, and indeed the overwhelming majority of Americans. Yet there is outrage whenever someone even hints at the idea of not voting. I personally know many individuals who lie and say they voted, just so they don’t get shamed and judged by their peers.
We should ask ourselves why this is happening. When is it ever worthwhile to defend the dominant opinion so fervently?
Those who do abstain from voting generally do so conscientiously for a number of reasons. Some abstain because the system has proven ineffective and/or detrimental to the most marginalized. “Since candidates running for office seldom represent the interests of Black and poor people,” writes Assata Shakur, “Blacks and the poor don’t vote.” Others abstain because our government is complicit in genocides (plural) which are routinely supported by both major parties. Some simply don’t have the will or energy to vote since they’re too busy trying to survive under the crushing weight of capitalism. And still others abstain because they refuse to participate or lend credibility to a system that is so blatantly corrupt and discriminatory.
As such, the way to increase voter turnout amongst these groups is simply by addressing those valid concerns, not by shaming constituents into compliance. Parties and politicians who fail to meet the needs of The People™ are undeserving of our votes, even if they portray themselves as “harm reduction” candidates.
Indeed, the concept of voting as harm reduction is itself damaging to society, as noted by author and activist Rudy Preston in his 2020 piece, “Voting is Not Harm Reduction — An Indigenous Perspective.” He writes:
At some point the Left in the so-called U.S. realized that convincing people to rally behind a “lesser evil” was a losing strategy. The term “harm reduction” was appropriated to reframe efforts to justify their participation and coerce others to engage in the theater of what is called “democracy” in the U.S. The idea of a ballot being capable of reducing the harm in a system rooted in colonial domination and exploitation, white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, and capitalism is an extraordinary exaggeration. There is no person whose lives aren’t impacted everyday by these systems of oppression, but instead of coded reformism and coercive “get out the vote” campaigns towards a “safer” form of settler colonialism, we’re asking “what is the real and tragic harm and danger associated with perpetuating colonial power and what can be done to end it?” […] And while the harm reduction sentiment may be sincere, even hard won marginal reforms gained through popular support can be just as easily reversed by the stroke of a politician’s pen. If voting is the democratic participation in our own oppression, voting as harm reduction is a politic that keeps us at the mercy of our oppressors.
Additionally, like nonprofits, electoral politics in the United States cause further harm by co-opting movements and diverting energy and resources away from meaningful initiatives that tangibly empower communities.
During modern presidential election cycles, more than $10 BILLION(!) is regularly spent on campaign funding alone. According to the Federal Election Commission, Kamala Harris’ failed 2024 presidential campaign spent a staggering $1.5 billion in just over three months, with much of those funds going towards celebrity concerts and influencer endorsements. A large portion of this money is donated by working-class Americans who believe in the democratic process, and are increasingly willing to donate to political candidates as societal conditions worsen.
There are also millions of volunteers contributing countless hours of labor to canvas, fundraise, campaign, engage in poll work, and rally for their political party or candidate of choice.
Many of these people are wholly invested in the electoral process and content in participating year after year, despite a lack of meaningful results. Some simply haven’t been exposed to more effective modes of liberation that can easily be drowned out by the electoral chorus, or they reject any solution that could result in violence. They believe voting is the only option — or at least the safest one.
But if you look at virtually all of the lasting and significant progressive victories won throughout American history (and indeed human history), voting wasn’t the catalyst. The catalyst was most always organized resistance or outright war. Elections won’t save us because their primary purpose is to deter the masses from forcefully asserting our rights.
As community organizers, our paths will frequently cross with groups and individuals committed to political campaigns and electoral politics. There was a time when most radicals were equally invested in the illusion of electoral choice. Don’t waste energy trying to debate or influence individuals into abandoning their devotion to politicians and reform, but make space for those who are ready to direct their energy and efforts elsewhere.
I’ll leave you with additional insights from George Jackson’s Blood In My Eye:
We will not be distracted by such empty questions as who will be elected from which political party. All political parties, as things stand, will support the power complex. […] What would help us, in fact, is to allow as many right-wing elements as possible to assume ‘political’ power. The warnings that ‘our thrusts toward self-determination will bring on fascism’ are irresponsible — or better, unrealistic. The fascists already have power! An electoral choice of ten different fascists is like choosing which way one wishes to die. The holder of so-called high public office is always merely an extension of the hated ruling corporate class. It is to our benefit that this person be openly hostile, despotic, unreasoning. […] This is a huge nation dominated by the most reactionary and violent ruling class in the history of the world, where the majority of the people simply cannot understand that they are existing on the misery and discomfort of the world. […] We are faced with two choices: Continue as we have done for [a century], fanning our pamphlets against the hurricane, or build a new revolutionary culture that we will be able to turn on the old culture. Collectively we have that choice.
From Starting Somewhere: Community Organizing for Socially Awkward People Who’ve Had Enough
