This is a cute idea, but I don’t think the top of the ticket is constitutionally eligible. Not because he’s dead, but because he wasn’t a natural-born u.s. citizen. There is actually no constitutional requirement that candidates for the presidency be living.
It occurs to me that we anarchists could get everything we want from the state just by electing nothing but dead people to all public offices. But I don’t know whether it’s in strict accordance with agorism.
Anti-voting activists like to say they wouldn’t vote even against Hitler. But the question is, would they vote for Hitler – so long as he’s dead?
This is actually not that different from an idea I’ve been kicking around for awhile, which is forming an organized political party (i.e. the Anarchist Party). The platform would be to run candidates for office who pledged not to vote for any legislation, not to sponsor any bills (perhaps other than to repeal laws), and generally not do any of the things that lawmakers do.
If enough anarchists get elected to the house, the legislature would be more or less powerless to enact legislation.
Alternatively, we could elect plants. (See:Ficus for Congress)
Anarcho-syndicalist folk singer Utah Phillips once announced that he would run for president on the promise that, if elected, he would “shoot pool, scratch my ass, and not do a damned thing.”
“The platform would be to run candidates for office who pledged not to vote for any legislation, not to sponsor any bills (perhaps other than to repeal laws), and generally not do any of the things that lawmakers do.
If enough anarchists get elected to the house, the legislature would be more or less powerless to enact legislation.”
I believe something like this happened in colonial Pennsylvania. I’ve been thinking about running for City Council on such a platform.
Comedian Lewis Black supports electing Ronald Reagan to office again, which sadly runs into another non-corpse-related Constitutional limitation.
Maybe, like Jeremy Bentham, they could be “present but not voting”?
Heck, I wouldn’t mind even live politicians, subject to that condition.
Didn’t a bunch of dead people apparently vote for JFK? It would only be fair for live people to vote for the dead in exchange!