anarchists don’t have elections. anarchists have consensus and divide up or directly oppose each other if there’s unresolvable differences.

So, reading this post, I’m left with a couple thoughts:

1. Elections aren’t fraudulent just because you don’t like how they’re conducted. I can think of good reasons why orgs would structure elections in that way. Only counting votes from people present prevents absenteeism, and no voter anonmymity means that people are responsible for the fallout of their choices. Note that there are certainly counterarguments for each of these points, but there are nonetheless good reasons to have elections like this. Elections in orgs don’t have to directly mirror elections in your state to be considered valid, and in fact, they probably shouldn’t.

2. As others have said, most anarchist orgs don’t really have elections as such. The organization attempts to reach consensus with a few conditions, and if consensus isn’t reached, those that dislike the outcome just won’t participate or will leave and start their own org.

This left thing that you’re in sounds like it’s not explicitly anarchist, but it’s hard to be sure from what you’ve said. If it’s not anarchist, then I guess your choices are to play by their rules, or leave and form an explicitly anarchist chapter that does something similar. Although I should note that playing by their rules isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’m in plenty of leftist orgs who I’m not in 100% ideological agreememt with because they do good work. You’ve got to decide whether splitting is worth it or whether it’s better to maintain unity.

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One of the things that libertarians (a subgroup of anarchists) passed on to most anarchists is that decision process must be made by a group through consensus except for very special occasions of urgency, critical to make a decision, and a persistent insignificant minority unwilling to be convinced.

Both representation and the allowance of a majority to enforce their decisions to a minority are globally rejected by most anarchists. So to ask this is like asking what is the best way for muslims and jews to eat pork. Simple, no way!

An election process requires that all discussion has ended, the proposals to choose are clear, those who concentrate power and represent groups are also clear, and one group is going to force things on another group (or rest of the groups) by counting votes.

Having said all this and to keep track of history, the CNT (the most famous libertarian mass organization, a huge federation of non-hierarchical unions) was first in developing an election system as part of the decision making system. The earliest group using consensus for decision making were mormons’ in the US west within the committee of elders.

Note: Libertarian as in pro-capitalist and the resulting libertarian socialist “tag” are products of N.American propaganda and anti-communism, spread by people who are either on a payroll or have not read a single book in their life, and spill over to the english speaking world of such people. For the rest of us using such terms the American way is a laughing matter. Emma Goldman and Errico Malatesta were libertarians, Howard Stern is an obnoxious rich capitalist freak, pop-star!