Voting Is Harmful

This pages discusses why some people think that voting is actually harmful. There are some problems with voting in general (so also on this and other wikis).

Here are some points to think about:

You have to agree which outcome of a vote means what. You can say if there is a majority for option A) then option A) is chosen. But what if most votes were against option A? Sometimes opposing options have things in common and to choose A) and not the similar B) + C) actually can mean that you act against the voters.
Is it important to make decisions? Often people that are trying to force votes do not want to discuss issues. And they think that they can influence people and after the vote everybody feels he must follow this vote. Often a final decision is neither necessary nor helpful. Indeed one view is that voting is only helpful in very few cases.
Alternatives? You can collect opinions and let them stand or comment on each others opinions. If people truly understand each other the actions that follow can be much more powerful as after a hectic voting. A RoughConsensus is an alternative.
Voting only includes those people who participate. So if the community changes or somebody can not vote his view is not included. But maybe he is much more affected on a topic than somebody who just voted by accident (because he was hanging around).
If there was a vote, so what? Is there anybody who really takes action if somebody does not follow the vote?
A majority can suppress a minority when it enforces a majority vote. This only can be hindered by some rights that are declared to be untouchable.
How many votes does each person get to cast? What determines how many votes each person gets to cast?
When not weighted, voting inherently assumes that any two people who know nothing about a subject are together more qualified to judge it than one person who has dedicated his or her life to understanding the subject. This fundamental flaw may make equal voting by nature worse than no vote at all.
What happens when the minority is correct, and the majority wrong? For example, let's vote on defining "pi" as 22/7. Does a majority voting for it make it "TRUE"?

I don't think voting itself is the problem. Sometimes decisions do need to be reached. But often the selection of options to choose from ('vote') is not obvious (natural, wenn understood) but rather artificially constrained, reduced or manipulated. And in such a case there are many more bits controlled by those presenting the options than by the voters. Note: This need not be the case. I seem to remember that StoneSociety controls for this.

CategoryVoting