Elections Probably Don't Matter

The. new mayor of NYC will be determined today, and the outcome is utterly insignificant.

Violence against animals is the most significant moral problem of our era. And it’s not a close call. The number of animals slaughtered for food each year is larger than the total number of humans who’ve lived in Earth’s history. (And that doesn’t even count the far greater suffering of wild animals.)

If you agree with me on this, then you should also agree the elections really don’t matter. Voting, or any other electoral intervention, is akin to a boy throwing a pebble at a tsunami and hoping that he will stop the wave. The system is simply far too large and broken for the relatively minor reforms caused by elections to make a difference.

I say this because elections are occurring today in NYC, and it seems the entire nation is watching. I do not fault people for this interest — competitions of all sort can be useful entertainment — but I do fault our collective faith in elections as a tool for change. Historically, very few significant moral transformations have been driven by electoral politics. That seems even more likely today, given the mass distrust in established institutions. Even if reformers could win the seats in office to create change, there’s so little trust that those reforms are unlikely to be accepted if undertaken through traditional institutions.

What we need, instead, is a social movement.

Elections can still play an important role in change. They can drive narratives about change. They can smooth (or block) the progress of a social movement—though this is much harder to control, much less predict, than most people think. But the fundamental flaw of those who obsess over electoral politics is that they confuse political competition with political change. By all means, go ahead and vote. But let’s not make the same mistake.