Voting When Everything Is Shit

This is a strategy for elections in an authoritarian state. When the elections are completely fake. When you cannot remove your government by voting. When they are deeply rigged, or very unequal in some other way.

It does not strictly apply to authoritarian regimes, though. Consider any election system, almost everywhere, healthy or not – it can be broken in some way or another. The advice still applies. In the end it requires you to have a voice despite the circumstances.

Why everyone stays home – and why that is exactly what they want

The first strategy people reach for is to abstain entirely. Stay home, and claim: "I did not give them legitimacy, because I did not vote."

It sounds clean. Only 20% voted, or less – how can you represent us?

Here is the problem: you are already in an authoritarian state and they simply do not care. If anything, it is easier for them to rig the results anyway. And if they can rig the results, they can rig the appearance of how many people came. They can paint that out too. If you think you should not go because it is all rigged anyway, consider this: your absence would be rigged as well. It is much easier for them to take an empty ballot and put a checkmark on it than to watch you not come.

But step back and ask the bigger question: is your participation even required for them to continue? Do they need you to get elected, to make the laws, to stay in power? Most certainly not, as all the systems currently are. You do not live in a system where politicians have to get your approval before doing anything. Some election happens anyway – and once it does, they are free to go. They can just forget about you. You are needed once, as a checkbox, and then you are out of the calculation.

If you stay home, nobody is watching. The people who do show up and watch are the people already in bed with the government, who will not complain too much. If everyone sits at home, who prevents them from lying about how many people came? You cannot check what you did not see.

And here is the sweet lie they want you to fall into: the "don’t bother, it is rigged anyway" vibe – that is their propaganda.

When you hear anyone promoting skipping elections, they are working for the current scoreboard, so the same people stay in.

Now, Captain Obvious moment: the only way to remove them is to get more votes than they do. Think about what they actually want. The ruling party has a fanbase, and the more authoritarian the state, the more that fanbase becomes a mandatory support group: all the government workers, the bureaucracy, everyone who already accepted the establishment. Unlikely you will find pure rebels in that bureaucracy. They will come and vote for the ruling party or something adjacent. The opposition stays home.
So the government does not need you. It has its reliable people. You are just the nuisance that could potentially ruin their plans to have the elections nice and steady. So of course they don’t want you in.

What they cannot guarantee is who you would vote for. That is why they avoid mobilizing anyone at all. They can raise the general interest in voting, but they can never be sure you pick the right guys. So they push the vibe: skip it, do not bother, grab a beer, it is predetermined anyway, what are you, an idiot?

And the specific excuses they sell you? "If you come, they will just repaint your vote." Sure. But they could do it anyway – with you at home just as easily as with you at the booth. Staying home changes nothing about their ability to fake. What it changes is your ability to see.

And sometimes they just point at the candidate list: look who is even allowed to run, they are all shit, so your fate is doomed, do not even try. That is another way of selling you the same despair – except here the despair is about the menu itself, not about you. They want you to believe the outcome is sealed before the booth even opens.

Even with very rigged elections, there is still a vibe of who voted for who. If you know all your friends did not vote for them, and they still get 90%, the rigging becomes very, very obvious. They still need the right people to come, so it looks like it has always been like this. But when real people come and see that the actual result does not match how people talk about it, they start asking questions. Why are our elections unjust, broken, rigged? Potentially even protest. That is a nightmare for any regime.

All they ever want is for you to not come and ruin their fun and ruin their rule. The less attention they get, the better for them. You already built a system where they do not need your participation, active participation, nor your direct approval to do anything. They run an election once, and then they are free. They can just forget about you.

What you actually want – and it is not the lesser evil

Now the danger of the second common tactic: voting for someone, just to vote, by some strategy. If you do not like any of them, this poses a problem. In an authoritarian state the opposition is systematically removed and cannot participate. In a so-called democracy, every party is shitty and the same thing happens. Single-party, two-party, three-party dominant systems.

If you vote for them anyway, you give them legitimacy. You are choosing between many evils, trying to pick the lesser one – if that even applies. It is still not satisfactory, and it legitimizes the current system and lets it continue.

So first, remove the notion that everything is predetermined. Most of the stuff before elections is a psyop. Half their pre-election job is manufacturing the appearance of winning: raising their numbers, connecting to previous results, manufacturing pre-polls, rapidly improving their political activity with their own resources or state resources, coercing masses of people into vouching for their party. They work very hard to implant the idea of who will likely win. That is how half of autocracies in quasi-elections operate – they ride on your belief that it is forever.

And when they brag that it will be forever, that they are as strong as ever – that is the tell. They inflate their perceived power precisely because they know their power is dwelling. The bravado is the confession.

When you vote strategically, based on who is likely to win rather than who you actually want, you are doing that job for them. You are feeding the self-fulfilling prophecy they created.

What you actually want is not a lesser evil. You need to attack not someone specifically – well, do if you can – but the entire system at once. Demand that it reform.

The system that runs your elections did not make fair elections with equal representation possible in the first place. So voice the demand for the system as a whole: destroy the dominant-party systems where you have to choose only between evils, or in the authoritarian case, reduce the barriers to entry if they are synthetic, manufactured by the autocrats.

But name exactly how it is rotten. Not empty "I hate everyone" – that is just noise.
Name the barrier, the monopoly, the fake opposition. That is what your peers can understand.

Here is the simple difference: "I just hate the elections because I fundamentally do not believe they could ever be fair" versus "I hate these elections because our pool of candidates is limited, unjust, restricted in some way, and we know it could be better, but the current system does not allow it."

There’s also a potential to make a mistake where you attack the democratic system as a whole. Like when you say all elections are forever doomed and rigged, you are helping them justify their rigged elections.
And they will answer: "Of course, if it’s so bad, then we should rule as kings. And no democracy for you whatsoever."

Instead, aim your criticism at the elections under the specific current regime. Because they made elections bad and unfair and impossible for you to find meaning in them. Therefore, you should attack the current state of events, not how it’s supposed to be.
Paint the ideal, paint the good picture, paint the future where you have more choices, where you know that your choice matters, where voting for one of the 10 candidates really feels like it could help them, could increase the chance they actually get elected. The future where you always have somebody who represents you, and they are not oppressed. They are as equal as any other candidate.

And here is the real beauty of it – the part that makes this worth doing at all. The opposition could not participate, either by forceful absence or just mere absence, it does not matter. They are still out there. And when you name the exact thing that is broken, they hear you. They pick it up and support your discontent, because they probably already know what has to be done: something has to change so their appearance in the system becomes possible again.

That voicing does real work for them. It gives them legitimacy. Interest to fight more. Understanding that their ideas have support out here. And potentially a direct connection to you.

No coordination is implied here. Each person decides individually. Everything already assumes that coordination is impossible or pointless. That is the whole point: voting your discontent lets any potential opposition grab the piece of legitimacy they were denied.

Because when you have elections that are completely rigged, you instead have a referendum on how much discontent there is. Based on that, the autocrat decides how much further they can terrorize you. Autocrats operate on perceived power – on everyone thinking they will win. That is the first thing you should shed. And external parties should help ruin that illusion too. It is not only your job.

The strategy – vote anyway, and make it count

So here is what I suggest. Two parts, and it applies to active actions.

First: always vote anyway.

Second: if you find that none of the candidates are satisfactory, or you are in a very rigged system, then do not vote for any of them – destroy the ballot. Invalidate it on purpose.
A destroyed ballot is a counted vote for nobody, which is the whole point. A proof of non-forgery. But most importantly – record it.

Record that you destroyed the ballot, and the explanation, and the demands. Why is the current system unsatisfactory? If none of the candidates represent you, announce it publicly. If the two, three, four-party system has a monopoly on representation and none of them represent you, announce that too. Attack the entire system at once, not a single party, and demand it reforms.

And here is the beautiful, safe part: even in a crappy authoritarian state you can call out the system without naming names. "No candidates appeared because our 5% barrier is shitty." What kind of autocrat would attack you for that? It is so innocent that potential persecution would just cause more outrage.

You are not trying to legitimize one party. You are attacking everyone at once. And the main battlefield is public opinion: not only your circle knows why it is shitty, but you give them a reason. Name exactly how it is rotten, so people can understand and pick it up.

The activity plus the hidden opposition plus the public discontent shows them they do not have the perceived legitimacy they think they have. Every destroyed ballot is a piece of legitimacy handed to the opposition that was never allowed to run.