The Electoral Double Bind: Why You Cannot Vote and You Cannot Not Vote

Introduction: The Perfect Trap

Imagine this scene. A parent says to their child: “If you hug me, you are an affectionate child. If you don’t hug me, you are ungrateful.” Whatever the child does—hug or not—it is interpreted as confirmation of the parent’s narrative. There is no way out. There is no free choice. There is only a logical cage in which both options serve the same power.

This is what psychiatrist Gregory Bateson called in the 1950s the “double bind”: a situation in which a person is forced to choose between two options, but both options strengthen the control of the one who imposed the choice.

Now transport this dynamic to the heart of modern democracy. You are told: “If you vote, you participate in democracy. If you don’t vote, you renounce your right and let others decide for you.” Once again: whatever you do—vote or not vote—you legitimize the system.

This is not a coincidence. It is a structural design. We call this trap: the electoral double bind.

1. What Is the Double Bind? Bateson’s Lesson

Gregory Bateson studied it in dysfunctional family contexts, but the model is universal. A double bind has four characteristics:

1. Two asymmetrical parties: an authority (which sets the rules) and a subordinate party (which must choose within those limits);
2. The authority defines the space of permitted choices—and presents it as “freedom”;
3. Every choice made by the subordinate party is used to reinforce the authority’s control;
4. The subordinate party cannot exit the game, because even the refusal to play is reinterpreted as a move inside the game.

Bateson noted that victims of double binds develop decision-making paralysis, existential anxiety, or apparently irrational behaviours—not because they are “sick,” but because the system does not allow a coherent response. Now let us apply this pattern to the electoral system.

2. The Electoral Double Bind: The Hidden Structure

1. The two parties: the authority and the subordinate voter
   The authority is not a single individual, but the system of parties, backed by electoral laws, media, institutions, and cultural narratives. The voter is the subordinate party: he is granted the “freedom” to choose, but only among predetermined options, often all belonging to the same spectrum of power.
2. The permitted choices: a menu with no exit
   Electoral law defines: who can stand as a candidate (often only those backed by a party), how one votes (symbols, blocked lists, coalitions), what counts as “participation” (only the vote, not boycott, not active abstention). All of this is presented as “democracy.” But in reality it is a closed menu: you can choose between A, B, or C—but you cannot say: “None of you represents my will,” and you cannot propose D.
3. The manipulation: distraction, urgency, simplification
   The voter is: distracted with personalistic debates (who is nicer?), frightened with apocalyptic scenarios (“if X wins, it will be the end”), confused by simplifying reality into binary slogans (“with us or chaos”). The result? The voter does not vote for a programme, but to avoid the worst fear—exactly as Bateson’s child hugs the parent not out of love, but to avoid the accusation of ingratitude.
4. The neutralisation of out-of-range choices
   If a voter tries to exit the system—writing a name that is not a candidate, casting a blank ballot, abstaining en masse—the system ignores the gesture. The null vote? It does not count. Abstention? It is distributed proportionally to the parties (in many systems, it increases the power of the big ones). The blank ballot? Often treated as null. Refusal is not recognised as a political act. It is treated as background noise.

3. The Paradox of Abstention: The Coup de Grâce

Electoral law turns abstention not into a form of protest, but into a gift to the parties. How? In many systems (Italy, Spain, Mexico, etc.): seats are allocated on the basis of valid votes, not registered voters; therefore, the more people abstain, the fewer votes are needed to win; a party can obtain a majority with 30% of registered voters if abstention is 50%.

But worse: in some systems (e.g., Italy’s Rosatellum), seats not assigned due to lack of quorum still go to the most-voted parties. Result? Abstention does not weaken the system—it simplifies it. It lowers the threshold of legitimacy required.

Thus, the voter is trapped: if he votes, he legitimizes an option that does not represent his will; if he does not vote, he implicitly hands his “power” to whoever wins with fewer votes. There is no way to say “no” that is recognised. This is the heart of the electoral double bind.

4. “Democracy” and “Free Choice”: An Abuse of Language

Calling this system “democracy” is a semantic abuse. Democracy, etymologically, is “power of the people” (demos + kratos). But here the people: do not decide laws, do not directly appoint rulers, cannot revoke representatives, cannot reject the entire menu. What exists is an oligarchic selection procedure masked as participation.

And “free choice”? It is the freedom to choose among options you did not create, in a context you cannot modify, with consequences you cannot control. Like telling a prisoner: “You are free to walk inside this cell.”

5. An Electoral Law Without Double Bind: What Characteristics?

If we wanted to build an electoral law free of double bind, it would have to guarantee:

1. Real sovereignty of the electorate
   The voter must be able to define the options, not just choose among those offered (e.g., open lists, civic candidacies without party); he must be able to vote on principles, not just on persons (e.g., binding referendums on programmes).
2. Recognition of refusal
   The null vote or blank ballot must have effect: if they exceed a threshold, the election is annulled; structured abstention (e.g., disengagement campaigns) must be able to block seat allocation.
3. Revocability and consequences for the rejected
   If a politician loses trust (e.g., for betrayal of mandate), he must be excluded for at least one full legislative cycle; electoral defeat is not enough: there must be a real consequence for those who deceived.
4. Prohibition of unapproved coalitions
   Post-vote alliances (e.g., “Salvini + PD”) must not be possible without a new vote; the voter must know exactly who will govern, not a secret negotiation.

In short: the voter must have the last word—not only at the beginning, but at every moment.

6. Why the Double Bind Works: The Fraud of Sovereignty

The perverse genius of the electoral double bind lies in the fact that it simulates sovereignty in order to subtract it. The citizen believes he has power because “he can vote.” But in reality: he possesses no power to delegate (because he decides nothing before the vote); he transfers nothing with the vote (because there is no specific mandate); he controls nothing after the vote (because there is no revocability).

Here the reasoning connects to the principle “nemo dat quod non habet”: if you have no power, you cannot give it. If you cannot give it, the vote is a fiction. If it is a fiction, the entire system is a simulation of legitimacy.

The electoral double bind is the operational tool of this simulation: it forces participation in a game in which every move strengthens the one who wrote the rules.

7. References in the Literature: Who Has Seen Something Similar?

The idea of the electoral double bind, in the precise form outlined here, does not appear explicitly in well-known authors. Nevertheless, some have come close:

• Hannah Arendt, in On Revolution, observes that modern democracy has replaced public action with passive delegation, creating citizens who are “spectators” rather than “actors.”
• Bernard Manin, in The Principles of Representative Government, demonstrates that representative democracy was never conceived as a tool of popular will, but as the selection of elites through simulated consent.
• Hans Kelsen, while defending representative democracy, admits that the “will of the people” is a legal fiction, useful for stability but lacking empirical correspondence.
• Jacques Rancière, in Disagreement, speaks of the “police of participation”: the system decides who counts as a political subject—and who is merely “noise.”

But none of them described the mechanism as a structural double bind—that is, as a logical trap in which every behaviour (action or inaction) reinforces control. If this insight is new, it means it is a structure that others have normalised. And as Bateson said: “The double bind is not perceived until one has an external vantage point from which to observe it.” Here that vantage point is presented.

8. Consequences: Exiting the Game

If the electoral system is a double bind, then true freedom does not lie in choosing better inside the game, but in refusing to legitimize the game itself. This does not mean “doing nothing.” It means:

• Dismantling the fiction with legal analysis (as you do on democraticus.org);
• Building spaces of real delegation (revocable, specific, responsible);
• Making the invisible visible: helping others understand that they are not choosing—they are confirming.

Because the double bind loses power not when one chooses differently, but when one stops believing it is a choice.

Conclusion: Democracy Begins When the Double Bind Ends

The electoral double bind is the perfect trap of modern politics: it makes you believe you are free, while you are only free to confirm someone else’s power. But once you recognise it, the trap dissolves. Because true sovereignty is not in the vote. It is in the right to say: “This game does not represent me—and I do not intend to legitimize it.”

And when enough people say it—not with anger, but with legal clarity—the house of cards will collapse not by explosion, but by lack of credulity. Because no system can survive when we stop pretending that it is legitimate.