Unregistering From the Voter Rolls

James Bovard once said that, “Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner,” but is that really true in America today? It presupposes that Americans live under a tyranny of the majority, but then the conspiracists within the alternative media claim that Americans instead live under a shadowy oligarchy, so which is it? Perhaps it would be best to first determine whether or not democracy, of any kind, is actually practiced in these United States.

 

 

Anyone who cares about their own individual privacy should be abhorred about how their personal data is abused by government in order to get their vote. This is only possible if you are still registered to vote. As I have written before:

 

“Similar to how congressional aides regularly don’t correctly record which side of a political issue geographical constituents are on in the first place, it’s not that all uncommon for votes to be ‘misrecorded’ either. Regardless of when voting officials actually do record results even halfway accurately, they admittedly keep databases on voting histories (so called ‘enhanced voter files’) with the explicit intention of profiling voters for the next electoral cycle. Everyone who chooses to vote is getting their individual voter files datamined by both the Democrats and the Republicans.”

 

Let me add here though that you can circumvent even the most remote possibility of being profiled by the government with their enhanced voter files if you choose to unregister from the voter rolls.

Even if you don’t care about your privacy, consider also the tyranny of the incompetent:

 

“In order for a Republic to work, the populace must be competent enough to elect representatives to the legislature. Considering the various statistics and research studies suggesting that the majority of Americans are incompetent buffoons (courtesy of the public fool system), this would indicate such a high level of ineptness to the point that these are exactly the type of fools who would easily be conned into supporting a politician through emotional rhetoric instead of based on rational criteria. Other social science research shows that people who lack expertise in a given subject (in this case, politics) are too incompetent to gauge the quality of whether anyone is qualified for public office. Worse, they are so incompetent to the point that they can’t even accurately estimate the severity of their own ineptness, always overinflating their performance on various tasks.

“Another study revealed that political partisans, when presented with objective facts, will twist those in such a manner as to hang on to those facts that support their preconceived notions while conveniently ignoring the rest of them. According to psychiatrist Scott Peck, there exist only a ‘fortunate few’ who are able to successfully avert this self-delusional trap, and thus possess the best chance of being even somewhat objective. I think it is fair to declare at this point that most American voters are an uneducated, slovenly mob instead of being an enlightened, rational citizenry.”

 

Now, the key question to ask yourself is whether or not you sanction such a political system that endorses voter incompetence by giving them the ability to make coercively binding decisions upon you and your family. If not, then perhaps the best way to remove your sanction of such a system (besides never voting again) is to unregister from the voter rolls.

What about the consent of the governed? Even if nobody cared about their privacy (or is even slightly perturbed at the notion of an idiocracy), it still bears upon us to examine if indeed the “will of the majority” is being carried out. Using a combination of figures from the US Census Bureau on Williamson and Travis Counties in Texas, the 2012 General Election Cumulative Results from both of those counties, as well as taking a look at Title 2, Chapters 11 and 16 of the Texas Election Code, it is possible to determine if Texans within those two counties truly enjoy the benefits of American democracy.

According to the following chart, some startling revelations can be made. First, the total county populations are always greater than the approximate number of people eligible to vote (i.e. 18+). Second, the approximate number of people eligible to vote is always greater than the number of registered voters. Third, the total number of registered voters is always greater than those voters who actually casted ballots. Fourth, and most importantly, voter turnout is always less than half the total county population, which means that even if you held all other variables constant (such as election fraud, partisan affiliations, individual vote strength percentages, etc.), voting as it is practiced today is completely undemocratic in every sense of the term.

What you literally have here is a minority of the population making coercively binding political decisions upon the majority within each county. That’s not democracy, it’s not even a ocholocracy (mob rule, or tyranny of the majority); it is a de facto aristocracy (or, rule of the best). This is not to be confused with an oligarchy (rule by the few), since what I am saying here is that those who actually casted a ballot are a numerical minority and thus are, at best, a special class (albeit, an ever shifting one) whose enjoyment of suffrage somehow allows them to dominate and control their neighbors; however, this ever shifting electoral aristocracy is different from the more permanently entrenched oligarchy, which is the US Congress.

This amorphous electoral aristocracy demonstrates that there is no consent of the governed (at least, not in Travis & Williamson counties, anyway). It’s even worse than that; consider also that voters who casted ballots are ultimately making coercively binding decisions upon their neighbors and their neighbors’ children (the latter of whom comprise 23.9% & 28.3% of the total county populations for Travis & Williamson, respectively). Is that morally sound? Have you really given your consent?

What is the alternative? Let’s first consider those registered voters who did not cast a ballot (243,592 & 89,582 abstaining voters for Travis & Williamson counties, respectively). Why do you suppose they did so? Perhaps they initially had some naïve hope for positive change, or maybe they just didn’t give a shit. This former type of apathy, this futile or frustrated apathy, might indicate a realization that voting does not work for securing your Liberty. Obviously, there will always be a portion of registered voters who neglect to cast a ballot due to innocuous reasons (such as illness or even laziness), but that doesn’t explain all of them. It is within this pool of politically interested yet disengaged registered voters whose hearts and minds must be won over in the infowar since they are essentially the “swing vote;” it is they who are most likely primed to receive the message of Liberty.

Some might postulate that my recommendation (that you might want to consider unregistering from the voter rolls) is somehow advocating for irresponsibility. “Oh, you don’t want to be responsible,” they may say. “No,” I reply, “I don’t want to be a tyrant.” In fact, straight-ticket voters allow themselves to fulfill Downs’ Median Voter Theorem, and thus help entrench the hegemonic political parties. It perpetuates this system of tyrannical control and oppression, as demonstrated by Duverger’s Law.

Other authoritarian sycophants of the Establishment want to establish compulsory voting. If this were ever successfully implemented, then it would make unregistering from the voter rolls mala prohibita. If abstaining from voting were ever made illegal, then I recommend that civil disobedience be practiced, especially if the government was ever bold (or foolish) enough to enforce it. Forced sanction is no sanction at all, and should be resisted based upon the collective right of revolution and the individual natural liberty of self-defense.

So, how does one unregister from the voter rolls? In Texas, there seems to be primarily two different ways of accomplishing this: explicit request and tacit acquiescence. According to Title 2, Chapter 16 of the Texas Election Code, it says that a voter “must submit to the registrar a written, signed request for the cancellation… the registrar shall cancel a voter’s registration immediately on receipt of a request.” The other route entails not voting long enough; if you fail to renew your voter registration certificate and it expires, that by itself unregisters you from the voter rolls. A version on a theme of this is that if your residence is in doubt (because you’ve moved since you last voted), then you are placed on a “suspense list,” and given enough time, your voter registration is cancelled. Regardless of which flavor you unregister by, the registrar should “deliver written notice of the cancellation to the voter.”

Admittedly, unless you are explicitly requesting your local Registrar to cancel your voter registration, the details get pretty murky with whether your registration has already been cancelled or not. It is probably best to contact the local Registrar and first ask if you are registered; if not, then ask if they would be able to deliver by mail a written notice to you of the cancellation, pursuant to Sec. 16.036 of the Texas Election Code.

I must impress upon you that it is likely the legal statutes wherever you live might very well be different from Texas. So, it would become incumbent upon you to perform your own due diligence and first check your state government’s statutes on elections, and then contact your county Registrar to determine your current status. It also wouldn’t hurt if you checked both the US Census Bureau and your local county government for statistics regarding your local county and voting populations, analyze them, and then determine whether or not they happen to follow the same pattern I discovered with Travis & Williamson counties here in Texas. Depending upon the results, you may want to write a letter to the editor of your local mainstream paper, or simply publish your findings somewhere on the Internet.

Keep in mind that once you unregister, you are closing the door on other mitigating options, such as straight-ticket voting for the Libertarian Party, or giving a vote of no confidence by selecting the write-in candidate. Unregistering should never be taken lightly, for it is an absolutist position one takes whereby you choose to never vote again. If you are indeed ready for such a step, then by all means feel free to do so; I completely support you all the way. Having unregistered myself, I am now at liberty to ignore most of the mainline political process (at least, on the government’s side when they clumsily attempt to perpetuate The Left-Right Paradigm). It’s a whole lot less work for me to do, and by having no stake in the electoral outcome whatsoever, I have more time available to me with which I can win my freedom that much sooner. I hope this finally seals the coffin on the failed idea that, by scratching shit in a booth, you can somehow secure your Liberty.