Because if you don’t care enough to find out what’s going on, presumably you don’t care enough to act. It’s not necessarily totally reasonable, but I think by and large it’s a fairly accurate statement. Of course, many who are educated are so disgusted by what they know that they can’t stomach voting for anyone.
Yes.
IMO 90% of “get out the vote” campaigns are done because the people doing them are targeting groups they expect to tend to vote their way.
Begbert2, those reasons do, indeed answer my question. I can relate to the idea that my vote won’t make much of a difference, and likewise the idea that politicians, regardless of party affiliation are all pretty much of the same stripe, but I’ve managed to overcome such a fatalistic attitude myself.
I’ve heard an American describe their choices when voting in a federal election refer to her choices as “evil” and “diet evil”, but if you’re left leaning, don’t you thing there’s a greater chance that the Democrats are even a little closer to your ideology than the GOP ?
I used to vote Green for the same reasons. I knew they hadn’t a chance of winning, but at least I could send a message. " Hey…left wing idealist here,this is the closest party that represents the world I want to live in "
At least, it let them know I was interested,and watching.
And if the margin is really that close among well-informed voters then it really doesn’t matter which side wins. Both have equally legitimate positions.
Apathetic, uninterested voters generate ‘common-mode error’, meaning that their ignorant votes will tend to collect for all candidates equally and cancel out (assuming the election is set up properly, with randomized names and such). As a result, there’s no point in forcing them to vote.
I agree with the OP.
Often I’ve helped on a Get out the vote drive, and when those people would then ask me who to vote for I felt like telling them just to forget it.
Mob rule is not democracy.
I recommend voting against all judges. There is something wrong about the whole judicial side of the ballot, and it massively favors incumbents. So I try to dilute that, rather than worry about them. The decisions were essentially made when the ballots were printed. Those candidates don’t stay up late on election night.
begbert2, I am a reformed non-voter, so this is coming from one who has been there.
You are most likely not alone in thinking it is a lost cause. If true, this factor tends to make it look even worse than it really is, because people who believe this tend not to vote. And not just voters: In areas where the opposition does extremly well, parties tend to view it a lost cause as well, so go off to spend thier money on battles they think they can win. There is a substantial feedback mechanism here. While it does take some critical mass to get things moving, turning out for the underdog can make future elections closer, and might, over time, turn the tide. As long as those who wish for change beleave it is impossible, they will be proven correct.
I can also affirm that it feels good to vote for a candidate I support, or against one I don’t even when I am pretty sure the masses won’t agree.
Sure, a little, but mostly because the Republicans have gone completely nuts. But it still seems to me that voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for an evil…and of course I have the several other reasons for not voting (at least two of which are laziness. I’m not pretending to be a noble abstainer, here.)
And Kevbo? Idaho’s not exactly a swing state. I just checked and while we’re not quite as arterial as I thought we were (there actually are redder states!) this is not going to be a level playing field any time soon.
IMHO this discussion is mashing up a whole lot of divergent issues.
To me, if someone has made to the polling station, they are by definition not an apathetic voter. They may be uninformed about certain candidates and issues on the ballot. I certainly am about Judges, County Drain Commissioners, etc. In those cases I do not mark a choice on the ballot, and I encourage others to do the same.
Also, I would not identify begbert2 as an apathetic voter. Instead, they have applied reason and made a concious choice in not voting. I find some of the reasons given quite compelling. Due to gerrymandering and the electoral college, if you are in the severe minority for your district/state why waste your time voting? Again, this is not truely apathy.
Finally, here in the good ole US of A we do not have the ability to cast a vote for “none of the above”. If this were an option I would predict that the voter turnout would be much higher. The only way for a voter to express this choice now is to not vote. Unfortunately, that kind of vote is not counted. Again, this is not apathy.
One of the rights enjoyed in a true democracy is to NOT vote.
That said, I have a friend who constantly reminds me that one vote counts. I maintain my vote doesn’t count a ripe fig in most elections and my voting will not change the outcome of most races in the slightest.
But that isn’t always true in local elections, where the total vote count for one office may be in the hundreds or less. Recently, one town chairman candidate received exactly the same number of votes as his opponent (about 150, I recall). They decided to settle it by tossing a coin, and candidate A won the toss. Whereupon candidate B forced a recall, and won by 2 votes.
And one local started his campaign on the Sunday nite before the Tuesday election. He just started callling friends and told them to write in his name even though there were candidates already on the printed ballots who had filed in a more timely fashion. He won.
Other than the screaming, and the wailing as they are driven before the whips.
Tris
Of course that’s the case, but it’s not the point. Often, “get out the vote” campaigns are meant to rustle up the voting bloc that cares, but believes its votes won’t count. If the voters believe their party will definitely win, then they often won’t bother to vote, leading to a reversal of the expected result. The fact that they didn’t vote doesn’t mean they didn’t care or didn’t know who to vote for; it means they felt there was no point in trying. Hence the “get out the vote” effort: convicing the people that if they bother registering their opinion, it’ll matter. Those campaigns probably result in a more, not less, accurate reflection of informed public opinion.
Additionally, these campaigns are fairly informational-- they want to appeal to you in order to get you to vote, and to appeal to you, they tell you things about themselves. They turn uninformed peole who are statistically likely to agree with them into somewhat more informed people who do agree with them, or know enough not to agree with them. Granted, the information provided is skewed, but it is information. Then, the term “uninformed” just becomes a matter of degrees.
I also think there’s somehting significant in what was said earlier in a post I can’t find at the moment: That the greater the number is of people that vote, the more accountable officials feel to public opinion.
On the issue of why I’m inclined to vote:
It’s true that for the bigger elections, my vote will rarely count. I’m Democrat in a blue state, and it’s rare that the elections would be close enough for my vote to matter. But there are local elections and, more importantly, issue-specific ballot intiatives that are NOT foregone conclusions and which are the closest thing to direct democracy that exist in the US. I intend to be part of that.
Ordinarily I would agree with this completely. The problem arises when there is high correlation between apathy and votes for a particular candidate in a particular geography. Apathy can mean indifference between two candidates and thus random choice or indifference between two candidates and voting with a perceived group of people. The former should have no effect on the outcome, the latter can have a tremendous effect.