“Don’t vote-it only encourages them!”

This ancient bumper sticker joke is one of the slogans adopted by the Edible Ballot Society, a small Canadian group that follows the proud tradition of parodic critiques of establishment democracy. The notion is a familiar one — voting doesn’t make a difference because the whole thing is rigged. Candidates only get to be on the ballot by selling out to The Man. Why bother to pick one tool over another?

But whether you eat your ballot, burn it or quietly scrawl “burn in hell” across it, you are making a statement. The statement is: Please ignore me.

That statement can be made in an organized fashion, as in the case of ballot-eaters or the organizers of a ballot-burning campaign in this year’s referendum on First Nations treaty negotiations in British Columbia. Or it can be made by those who get their jollies from chucking rocks at riot cops. It is certainly being made by a much larger number of younger citizens who simply avoid politics.

When Canada’s federal Liberals won their third straight majority government in November 2000, only sixty-one per cent of eligible citizens cast a ballot. The abysmal turnout bumped Canada from its place among high-participation democracies — like Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, Uruguay, Chile, and Brazil — and relegated us to the slough of apathy that prevails in places like Poland, Guatemala, Egypt and the United States. Post-election surveys confirmed that the sharp drop — down by six percent from the 1997 federal vote — was largely due to an even greater drop in voting by one demographic group: People born after 1970.

In recent studies of voter (and non-voter) behaviour, activist critiques of democracy do not register. What studies do show is that the number of people who do not vote is strongly correlated with the number of people who are clueless. In a 1990 survey carried out for the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing, a dismal five per cent of Canadians could not name the prime minister. In 2000, the number in a similar survey was eleven per cent. The decline in knowledge was greatest among young adults.

Luring younger voters into the system is certainly a top priority for the presently headless New Democratic Party, whose declining support through the 1990s follows the falling participation by younger voters like a hangover follows the fifth martini. Yet the problem affects all Canadian political parties and, indeed, most modern liberal democracies, which have seen declines in voter turnout of varying severity over the past decade.

If this Great Democracy Drop-Out continues, we face being ruled by governments whose corroding legitimacy can only fuel a vicious circle of further alienation, still lower turnout and a spiral into inherently unstable oligarchy where power over the many is concentrated in the hands of the few.

Of course, some people don’t vote because they believe the words on another old bumper sticker: If voting could change anything, it would be illegal. They’re too smart to fall for the con. They’ve exchanged passive voting for an active quest for political or social change, usually within a patchwork of organizations that are often lumped together under the banner of anti-capitalism or anti-globalism.

But the alternative to electoral participation is marginalization. That’s how democratic electoral politics works. All parties have core supporters, but, in order to win a majority, they must extend their support by appealing to other groups, usually on an issue-by-issue basis. If one of your group’s defining characteristics is that you don’t vote, then don’t look surprised when vote-seekers demonstrate no sympathy or concern for your priorities.

This isn’t to dismiss valid concerns about Canadian democracy. It’s true that democracy needs to be more than an event that happens every few years in which you mark your X and go home and bar the door. And it’s hard to argue with the view that the government appears to be a revolving door of the same business interests and party fat cats. But this criticism doesn’t support abandoning the system in order to save it. If you want to fix the government, it’s a bit odd to announce that your first step will be to avoid the government. This is like announcing you’re going to fix your bicycle by reassembling the toaster oven.

If you want big changes, there are only two options: revolution or peaceful takeover. For a revolution, you need lots of people who aren’t squeamish. Or you can make like the Ottawa Committee of the World March of Women who earlier this year launched a “Revolutionary Knitting Action in protest against corporate greed and globalization” by inviting women of the community to knit or crochet one-foot squares to be assembled into “a ‘soft’ barrier of knitted yarn as a way to reclaim public spaces from the elite to the common good.”

In the event that the mass knitters of Ottawa fail to bring global capitalism to its knees, that leaves the less socially exciting option of trying to change the system by, you know, getting involved in the practice of politics.

Today’s younger activists could kick ass in mainstream political parties. Do they realize how few votes it takes to nominate a candidate? Or perhaps they secretly fear that their commitment, or that of their fellow-travellers, is so shallow that it could be uprooted by a few executive meetings or, God forbid, taking a seat in the Commons.

Activists need to lead their peers, not like sheep back into the fold of electoral politics, but as a powerful block of voters and policy makers. Not convinced? Consider that in both Canadian and American elections, the lower the turnout, the better the odds that the incumbent will win. Or that the next leadership vote for the Liberal Party of Canada, which is restricted to paid-up members, will have more impact on Canada’s federal government than the last two general elections combined.

Organized nonparticipation — like burning or ingesting ballots — is a waste of effort that might go into actual reform of actual politics. The better course is to persuade people that, if they fail to exercise their franchise, it will get flabby — and it may not be there when they really need it. This kind of mass persuasion is something that many younger activists are very good at.

Taking part in protests like those in Quebec City or Calgary is, of course, a healthy outdoor activity that gives young people a chance to make new friends and learn about the value of co-operation. But it’s not going to fix the system. And dropping out of mainstream politics is an excellent way to ensure that your life is circumscribed by a bunch of aging white guys whose primary ambitions are to pay off their pals, leave their name on a building and die in the arms of someone less than half their age.

So before you drop out, remember this. Democracy is a lot of things, many of them untidy, some of them embarrassing. But it’s not supposed to be the solution; it’s just a process by which we try to grant a government a public mandate. Mainstream politics is a nasty, dirty, smelly, noisy sort of monkey house. You can stand on the outside and throw peanuts through the bars. But if you really want change, you have to go inside and get dirty.