Here I'll add a bit to this, with an excerpt from "Politics Is Not a Poem," a chapter of Against Democracy. Note that "political liberties" here by stipulation refers specifically to the right to vote and to run for office; it does not refer to free speech or association.
The political liberties [n.b., here "political liberties" = right to vote and run for office] are ineffective ways to communicate our attitudes to others. A vote is not an expressive instrument. It’s like a piano with only four keys and which breaks after playing one note. We might add that the strings tend to be out-of-tune and rusty.
In the last US presidential election, I voted for a certain candidate, regarding him as the lesser of two warmongering, corporatist, paternalistic, plutocratic evils. A colleague voted for that same candidate, regarding him as a truly positive change he could believe in. Suppose someone else voted for that same candidate because he wanted to fit in with his friends. Suppose a fourth person cynically voted for that candidate because he wanted to hasten his country’s demise. What did any of our votes express to others? Just by knowing whom someone voted for, you cannot infer what someone meant to express.
Now, when I reveal to others how I voted, we know how they are likely to take it. If they agree with my vote, they’ll tend to think I’m a good person, and if they disagree with my vote, they’ll tend to think I’m selfish, bad, stupid, or evil. (See chapter two.) So my vote doesn’t easily communicate what I want it to communicate to others.
Or, suppose I run for office. What does that communicate? I might claim that I want to change the world for the better, but every politician says that. Regardless of my communicative intentions, running for office tends to communicate that I am power and status-hungry.
So, exercising the political liberties is ineffective if we want to communicate with others. Still, sometimes we just want to express our attitudes to ourselves, rather than to others. In private, the heartbroken boy might delete photographs of his recent ex-girlfriend. Here, the point is to express finality to himself, and to perform a closing ritual to help him move on. Or, in private, a person might paint his room black and red, thus expressing his fidelity to the Marxist revolution to come. I might wear a Slayer T-shirt even on a day when I don’t bother leave the house; in doing so, I express my commitment to awesome thrash metal. No doubt some people use their votes this way. So, while the political liberties have little value in expressing our attitudes to others, they have some value in expressing our attitudes to ourselves.
Still, we have many other better outlets for self-expression. Even if someone wants to communicate his political attitudes to himself, he can usually best do so without exercising the political liberties. For example, the citizen could donate money to the candidate, write a poem, or build and burn an effigy. And if someone wants to communicate with others, then writing letters, joining online forums, creating websites, making YouTube videos, and the like, are much more effective means of communicating than voting or running for office.
The idea that we have a duty to vote because we have a duty to express ourselves is weird. First, we don't usually have duties to express ourselves or to express our opinions. But, second, even in special cases where we do--for instance, maybe you need to speak up to avoid complicity with injustice in special cases--it's bizarre to think that we have a duty to vote rather than write a letter to an editor, engage in public protest, or donate money to a good cause. Voting is ineffective and communicates very little. The latter three actions are more effective and more communicative. Why does the supposed duty to communicate/express oneself point to a duty to vote in particular rather than a duty to do something that effectively communicates or expresses one's views? Isn't voting a rather crummy way of communicating what one thinks?
It's sort of an obvious point which defenders of the duty to vote ignore. The problem, it seems, is that lots of political scientists, political theorists, and philosophers fetishize democracy and democratic participation. They want to believe in a duty to vote, so they come up with half-assed arguments on behalf of such a duty, and then fail to consider the implications of their own arguments. Just as philosophy of religion is largely Christian apologetics, democratic theory is largely democratic apologetics.
Sue: "I think you should communicate your distaste for poverty!"
Chris: "I did that by giving $10,000 to a GiveDirectly. Not only did I communicate my concern, I actually made lots of people better off. Isn't it better to help than to communicate that you want to help?"
Sue: "Well, sure, that might actually help, but I think you should in addition cast a vote for the candidate who complains about world poverty slightly more."
Chris: "My bad. I mistakenly thought we were having a serious conversation."
I wrote an entire book on criminal justice reform and another book on resisting police injustice. Doesn't that better communicate my concern than...voting for the one of the chief architects of the American police state, a person who wrote the 1994 crime bill?
Some might say voting is better because voting is how we exercise power. They might say that, sure, giving $10,000 to an effective charity communicates concern, but not as much as...casting a vote. After all, to cast a vote is to exercise power. But this naively ignores the dynamics of aggregation and collective action. Our individual votes don't matter much. Voters know this and act accordingly--it's precisely why they are ignorant, irrational, ideologically agnostic, and misinformed, and why they use their votes to express their non-political commitments. Individual votes are close to worthless and people act accordingly.
You might wonder: If individual voters are close to worthless, why do people fight so hard for a right to vote? I already covered this in Against Democracy, but I'll post about this again soon.