The indisputable conclusion [to be drawn from facts recited earlier in the column] is that because a majority of the population didn’t vote in that election, neither a single politician elected to office nor a single measure put up for public ratification can be honestly advertised as having secured majority approval.
The debatable but reasonable conclusion is that in declining to vote in the 2000 election, 52% of the population withheld consent to be bound by its outcomes or ruled by its winners.
The conventional wisdom has it otherwise: Refusal to participate in an election, we're told, constitutes consent to be bound by that election's outcomes and ruled by its winners. Silence is consent -- especially since non-voters make use of "public services" delivered to them through the whole process. Non-voting is a sign of "apathy" or "laziness," not of alienation or opposition.
This is akin to saying that by slamming my door in the face of a magazine salesman, I'm consenting to pay for subscriptions to Time, Scientific American and Playboy ... and that proof of this claim may be drawn from the fact that when those magazines begin to arrive, I read them rather than sending them back or throwing them away.
An aside: I run teasers, rather than the full columns, here at KN@PPSTER not because I can't, but because I prefer to send as many readers as possible to C4SS. You, however, are invited to run the columns in full on your own site or in your own print publication. Here's C4SS's policy:
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