The entire notion of putting massive resources and effort into building electoral parties to compete in the elite-managed horse-race charades is fatally flawed. In the final analysis it does not work. We have to do something radically different, and the election boycott is the start of this new, genuinely revolutionary—not reformist—movement.
-Ted Aranda, Election Boycott advocate and lifelong activist
The Election Boycott Manifesto
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.—from The Declaration of Independence.
Indeed! (click to enlarge)
A plurality of Americans have been boycotting federal elections for more than half a century, but as individuals, silently, letting their rulers know that they did not support them, but in a passive protest. Now, with the advent of the Election Boycott Advocates, the silent majority of nonvoters has found a voice that will make what was implicit, explicit, what was silent, loud, what was unconscious, thoughtful and public.
The reasons so many millions of American—mostly working class people—are boycotting elections is that they have figured out that votes don’t count. The wealthy ruling elite have the real power and use their overwhelming financial superiority to rig every election in the country, and always determine in advance who will win their phony elections. And we now understand that the candidates of the two dominant political parties, the Democratic and Republican parties, are always on the side of the wealthy ruling elite and their corporations. It is not difficult to understand since all these plutocratic politicians give promises to the wealthy in exchange for legal open bribes called “campaign contributions.”
And with the Supreme Court decisions on Citizens’ United in 2010 and McCutcheon in 2014, there are essentially no limits for corporations and the wealthy elite (e.g. billionaires) on the contributions they make directly to candidates. They can essentially completely own the electoral process.
Studies have found that over 90 percent of the winners in recent Congressional elections were the candidates who raised more money than their opponents. Similarly nearly the same percentage of incumbents are reelected to office. In other words, the bribes of the billionaire class work. Those bribes to candidates directly result in favors from Congress. A recent scientific study of policy issues passed by Congress has demonstrated that we are an Oligarchy, not a Democracy, because the average citizen has little or no impact on the policy issues passed and becoming law. And once in Congress, the plutocratic politicians never fail to deliver on the promises they made to the wealthy elite and the corporations owned by the wealthy.
Promises to the working class are another matter, as working class citizens have long learned. Those promises are easily broken and rarely kept. Is it any wonder that in the most recent Gallop poll, only about 15 percent approved of the job Congress was doing? Recently this percentage has been less that 9 percent! How could it be any other way when the members of Congress have turned the highest legislative body in the land into a private preserve of the wealthy ruling class, hostile to all the petitions of the working masses?
And this problem is not new. That’s why a large percentage of working people have boycotted the vote for more than half a century. And many large political movements have attempted to use the system to change the system without success. The populist Peoples Party of the 1890s had as one of its aims the reform of elections to get dirty corporate money out of politics. So did the Progressive Movement and the Progressive Party of the early 20th century and the Socialist Party and Communist Party as well.
Movements by literally millions of people have attempted to change the American plutocracy (rule by the rich) into a democracy but failed. Not because they were lazy, apathetic or didn’t try hard enough, but because the system is armored against their attacks. Like an impenetrable citadel, the American plutocracy has withstood every barrage by reformers. Sincere as they might have been, they had set for themselves an impossible task, to reform the American plutocracy. Rule by the rich is enshrined and entrenched in the U.S. Constitution, in American culture and tradition and guarded by the force of the world’s mightiest police state, military, government bureaucracy and economy. No reform could or ever will penetrate that. Only a thorough-going annihilation of the old system and its replacement will result in a genuine democracy.
What does our election boycott do? It removes from the government and state any hint of legitimacy, establishing the truth that the majority oppose the government. Failing to obtain majority support from the people, the government and state become illegitimate in the eyes of all Americans and all the world’s people.
At the same time, our election boycott promotes the construction of an alternative to the illegitimate plutocratic government and state of the wealthy ruling class and its hand-picked politicians, bankers, executives and managers.
The election boycott is only the first step in a campaign of noncompliance with the illegitimate plutocrats that will include building alternative democratic institutions to replace every illegitimate institution of plutocracy.
To Election Boycott Advocates, democracy means much more than the right to vote in phony rigged elections that are predetermined to deliver faithful lapdogs who always do the bidding of the wealthy ruling elite. EBA believes in genuine democracy and we will strive to replace the plutocracy with a genuine democracy. That new democratic system would include principles like one-person-one-vote, the total elimination of money from elections, the ironclad guarantee that any position on any issue before the public would receive equal time before the public in any print or electronic media, and the right of all citizens to vote on public issues before they become public policy.
Our election boycott will eventually not only protest the plutocratic elections, pulling the rug out from under the wealthy ruling elite by withholding our consent for their governance, but also will eventually create large numbers of worker-owned and managed commercial enterprises to replace the totalitarian privately-owned enterprises, publicly run banks and utilities, including a thorough democratization of the Federal Reserve Bank.
Eventually, plutocratic institutions will either be remade or replaced with democratic institutions, including the military, schools, all commercial and governmental enterprises, etc. We will attempt to do that in a non-violent way, but we will also be ever vigilant of plutocratic violence against the citizenry, especially the working class, as the plutocrats have never ever been known to give up their illegitimate power without striking out at the innocent with extreme brutality. The price of freedom and democracy is constant vigilance against the enemies of freedom and democracy, the wealthy ruling elite first and foremost because they will always defend the wealth they have stolen from working people with extreme violence.
Like Howard Beale, the TV news anchor from the movie “Network,” the half-century-old boycott is about to shout out to the entire world, <span “font-family:=”” “calibri”,”sans-serif””=””> “[We’re] As MAD AS HELL, AND [We’re] NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”<span “font-family:=”” “calibri”,”sans-serif””=””>
We, the party of the non-voters, silent in the past save for the message of our nonvote that rings out like a church bell in a small village once every two years, are about to erupt with a message of hope and change, real hope and change this time, not the phony “hope and change” of a plutocratic politician.)
