They say the same thing in the USA, where some 85 percent of the population are apparently 'apolitical' since they don't bother registering a vote.
Nor that it's the point, but Kelman was born in 1946, when it was about 65 percent that didn't vote, and it's been going down since then throughout his lifetime. In the modern day (i.e. long after this was written), about 60% of people vote.
If there was any possibility that the apparatus could effect a change in the system then they would dismantle it immediately.
They are dismantling it in many places in the US, I think specifically because there's starting to be a possibility again that it can effect a real change in the system.
Countries that have no elections, or only rigged elections, are regarded as failures.
You don't have to get into any kind of back-and-forth with me about this if you don't want to, but I am curious -- do you honestly believe that countries that don't use voting are not markedly less successful at giving the freedoms to their citizens that the writers here clearly believe are important?
That's one of my key points about the overthrow of "the system" in general -- a lot of times, the structures of power that replace voting if voting gets done away with are much, much worse. The type of injustice that exists in the modern American system is significant but what are you wanting to replace it with that you're asserting would have more justice? I mean, maybe. I would want to hear the details. But I think asserting that there's no reason why people would not want to be in a place that operates without voting is weird.
elections in practice have served well to maintain dominant power structures such as private property, the military, male domination, and economic inequality. None of these has been seriously threatened through voting
This part, I agree with. Just voting for the candidates presented and nothing else is guaranteed to perpetuate systems of inequality. Fully agree there for exactly the reasons that Ehrlich states. I think where we differ is:
... and so we have to work for change outside the electoral system (absolutely true IMO)
... and so it doesn't matter if we vote or not, no matter how stark the difference between any two particular candidates (absolutely false IMO)
... and so voting is irrelevant and the whole thing is a fake which we don't need (fuckin what, have you ever studied a society with big concentrations of power that doesn't use voting, and what a fuckin nightmare it turns into?)
That is my take on it. IDK, I skipped around to read up on more but my reaction was much the same to any selected sections I found. I think the problems they're describing are very real and difficult bordering on intractable. I think the solutions they're prescribing for them are likely to make the exact same problems very much badly worse.