Not an anarchist, but interested in voting theory and alethiology.

Let’s start with alethiology (theory of truth), and work our way up. Truth is consistency. A true statement is a statement that is consistent with some standard of truth. Typically there are four standards of Truth: Coherence, Correspondence, Consensus, and Authority. Coherence is internal consistency – basically math. Correspondence is consistency with the physical world. Coherence and Correspondence are what we’d call Natural Truths. Put them together and you get mathematical relations of physical measurements – i.e. Science. When you start combining natural truths with limited information, perspectives, and a little bit of game theory two Social Truths emerge: Consensus and Authority. Consensus is consistency between people. Authority is consistency with respect to specific people. It’s really important to understand that Consensus and Authority are emergent properties – i.e. vague descriptions we use for complex systems, not specifically defined measurements. This is where voting theory comes in because people disagree quite passionately about how to make specifically defined measurements anyway. Who has authority? How consensus ‘ought’ be measured? There isn’t a correct answer, but you can define what measurement you’re going to use.

An election is a way of measuring a consensus of authorities: i.e. do the relevant people agree? Elections can implement lots of little rules to bias results one way or another, but they’re not inherently good or bad. They’re just systems. That said, in epistemology there’s a definition of knowledge as justified true belief – basically asserting there has to be a justification (evidence or reasoning) that is true (consistent with the relevant standard(s) of truth, and often preceding knowledge/evidence) and genuinely believed (you can’t be lying to our faces). So if we want to know something we can look at the justification and see if it’s consistent with whatever standards we think are relevant. We can look at the consistency between the claims of what elections are supposed to do (social truths), how the systems bias the results (coherence), and what the real world results are (correspondence).

Most governments claim to be “democracies” to claim they have the consent of the governed and point to the use of elections as evidence of that consent. The claim of “consent of the governed” is requires social standards of truth, but again social standards are emergent so we look a both coherence and correspondence. The justification is elections, that’s a purely a system - i.e. math and coherence, so there’s an argument to be made that might already be an insufficient justification on its own, but let’s give them the benefit and at least judge it. So, I’ll give my best attempts at turning the way elections work with some vague sense logical relations and in-our-heads models – you’re free to model these systems in your own way disagree with what I think are inconsistencies. You’re also free to break out a calculator and code do more formal modeling like they do in voting theory.

First inconsistency, elections are supposed to give governments the consent of the governed: i.e. authority derived from consensus. So, if someone is not apart of the consensus (not merely out voted or choosing not to vote, but not allowed to vote), then the is no authority to derive. This is problematic when considering felons, non-naturalized migrants, and tourists. Perhaps you can argue those entering a territory give implicit consent to be governed, but this gets increasingly problematic as time passes if you assume any decay of consent can occur.

Second inconsistency, elections are supposed to give governments the consent of the governed: i.e. authority derived from consensus. But, can consent be given if the consenting party cannot say no? i.e. is the derivation of authority valid? Most elections do not come with a lottery or ‘none’ option which might be a viable stand in for ‘no’. Similarly, does coerced consent count as legitimate consent? If the voting system corrupts the votes in such a way that “strategic”/ coerced voting skews the results, is the election legitimate? Elections don’t necessarily have to do this. I’ve made a go at designing a Ranked Lottery system that gives a lottery option without skewing the vote, but I’ve never seen another election system that didn’t do this.

Third Inconsistency, elections are supposed to give governments the consent of the governed: i.e. authority derived from consensus. Who exactly is the government? How much authority can administrative positions be given by an elected body before they become unelected and illegitimate bureaucrats? Typically, I’d find this argument a bit weak; however, it’s worth noting that both the president and the supreme court are not directly elected. They are in-fact appointed by consensus of congress. Given the current times, it might be worth asking when this allocation of authority becomes illegitimate.

I’m sure there are more, but I’m tired of writing and I think you get the general reasoning.