All my adult life I have voted at every opportunity and have encouraged those around me to do the same but now I am increasingly convinced of both the futility and, in fact, the moral bankruptcy of democracy.
Henry David Thoreau puts it well:
"All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote."
It seems to me that, rather than being a civic responsibility, voting has become or perhaps always was an act of civic neglect. By voting I am taking no responsibility for anything but rather am abrogating that responsibility, passing it to a person or a nebulous *group* of people with whom I somehow identify. I am, through my vote, handing over any sense of personal responsibility for my society. I am buying off my conscience. I am committing an act of social and moral cowardice.
If one accepts this conclusion then Democracy is not, then, a peak of moral and political achievement (as we are so often told) but rather a self-serving social parasite encouraging the degeneracy of personal responsibility in those which it says it represents. Churchill said that democracy was "the worst form of government apart from all the others" but did not suggest any OTHER form of government or even that we should, as a community, seek for one. However I see in history an almost Darwinian progression in the way individuals in groups choose to manage themselves with, it seems, greater and greater degrees of individual responsibility. This gives me hope for the future of mankind!
To conclude these meandering thoughts (for now) I return to Thoreau again:
"The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual. Even the Chinese philosopher was wise enough to regard the individual as the basis of the empire. Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which I have also imagined, but not yet anywhere seen."
Phill
Quotes from "On the duty of civil disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau which can be found online
here.
A Leave Of Absence 
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