I’ve always been firmly planted on the "against" side of the big "should libertarians vote" debate, so I was pleased to discover that, in a recent episode of The Tom Woods Show, Jeff Deist made the case for why libertarians shouldn’t vote in a much more lucid and succinct manner than I’ve ever heard it presented. The whole interview’s worth listening to, of course — Woods and Deist are always engaging and insightful — but I’ll quote the relevant portion below for your perusal.
Here’s why I tell people they can’t get emotionally attached to Hillary, or to Trump, or even to Gary Johnson, and that they, in my opinion anyway, shouldn’t vote for any of the three, and it’s very simple: at some point, regardless of who wins, regardless of your take on the "lesser of evils" argument (which applies equally to Gary Johnson, I might add) — regardless of your take on that, at some point, whoever is president is going to order bombs to be dropped somewhere, and at some point the person for whom you pulled the lever is going to be responsible for a young child somewhere, probably in the Islamic world, laying there with his arm blown off or something like this, and I think that no libertarian ought to live with that, or to give that his or her sanction. So that’s why I try very hard to be emotionally detached from this, to view things as they are, and to simply not vote — not as some great, noble gesture on my part, but just as a tiny drip, another drop in the bucket, hopefully, of people who don’t sanction this whole sordid affair.
If you vote, there are only two possible results: either your vote actually means something, be it actually influencing the course of political affairs or be it merely cheerleading for politicians, or else it does not. Those possibilities are exhaustive. We needn’t get into the weeds here arguing about which one is the case; either way, it’s a bad idea. If your vote has no influence and no meaning, then clearly you’re just wasting your time doing it — unless maybe you’re some type of lever fetishist and you just really dig the actual physical action or something — and you’re also wasting the time and money of your fellow citizens, who are forced to pay for your voting kink. This is behavior unworthy of a free man. On the other hand, if your vote does matter, then you need to deal with the fact that your vote, in some small way, led to the death and destruction of millions of people, endless cultural upheaval, and the general impoverishment and immiseration of mankind. If the best possible outcome of a course of action is a complete waste of your time and everybody’s money, and the other possible outcome is placing your imprimatur on the most horrible evils mankind is capable of perpetrating, I think it’s safe to say that course of action is best avoided.
On a more cheery note, if you’re a listener of The Tom Woods Show (which you should be, because it’s great), make sure to keep an eye out for episode 701, in which Tom Woods will be giving Bumbling Bees a shout-out!