So I’m about to move to Ohio, see, where I will be moving in with my boyfriend* (with the intention of eventually getting married.) He’s a Republican. I’m Democrat. So here is what I’m wondering… if we know we disagree politically and that we’ll be voting for opposite things, should we both go vote anyway, or just decide to stay home and neither of us vote?
(I realize there are often lots of other things to vote on on the ballot, but honestly half the time I haven’t studied up and don’t know the issues, so I tend to not vote on those things anyway.)
*technically, we’ll both be moving into a new place together.
A family member of mine once proposed a pact in which both of us would abstain from voting for President (the relative is a staunch Democrat, I’m an equally staunch Republican). While this would have been convenient, I turned it down. It just didn’t feel right to me to become part of the nonvoting majority.
Only if there’s a serious reason that voting would inconvenience you, I think.
Reminds me of a story my dad used to tell about similar deals in the houses of parliament. If there was going to be a vote on a certain bill really late at night, after all kinds of incredibly boring speeches and so on, sometimes one of the representatives found find another on the other side of the issue.
“I’ll definitely be voting ‘for’ no matter what, and you’re a die-hard ‘against’ man, so what say we just skip the vote and grab a nice dinner down at the pub?”
(Having dinner with your opposite number is key, otherwise someone sneaky could try the ‘we’ll only cancel each other out anyway’ trick with several of his or her opponents.)
Considering how easy it is to obtain an absentee ballot by mail, I don’t think such a reason exists, unless a person is incapable of reading, writing, or opening an envelope. I voted once from a hospital bed in the ICU.
This pact seems to assume that you’ll always be at loggerheads even on local issues. I think that the real reason to vote isn’t the national elections, but the local ones. Even though you seem to have some major ideological differences, I suspect, given that you agree enough on some things to want to move in together, that you’d find that there are local issues you will both agree upon. Even if you get to that decision point through very different decision trees.
Same situation at my house. In 2000, my husband said we shouldn’t bother to vote. I agreed. Both of us sneaked to the polls. In 2004, he told me I had convinced him to vote Democrat. He admitted later that he lied. I guess he just wanted me to shut up.
I can’t not vote. It’s like a rejection of democracy or something.
Before the 2004 election I suggested this timesaver to one of my tennis buddies. He was going to Ohio to campaign for Kerry and I was going to PA to campaign for GWB, both of us going for the final three days. I said why don’t we both just go to a tennis camp for the weekend. He absolutely did not get my point. As it turned out both of us lost our states. So it goes.
Damn it people. Don’t you vote for your own reasons? I couldn’t care who my wife or anyone else votes for. I want to vote to be engaged and be part of the democratic process. I don’t care who else votes for whom.
This still takes place and is known as “pairing.” In various votes where a member will be unable to attend, he or she can arrange with a member of another party who will be voting the opposite way not to attend either. It is considered a courtesy. The arrangement is registered with the whips of the two parties, who see to it that it is followed.
Not all ballots are two-party or otherwise binary (yes/no proposals) – at least not here. In Israeli elections there are generally about 15 different parties vying for our votes. So “canceling each other out” in our context essentially means giving part of my vote to each and every party but the one I would vote for. Not exactly the intended outcome.
Also, what most everyone else has said – voting is (morally speaking) an obligation, not merely a right. Treat it as just a “right” to be put aside when inconvenient for you, and watch the right disappear when you do want to exercise it… :eek:
Well, you could take matt_mcl’s pairing right to the extreme. Set up an informal system at work, school, gym, neighborhood, etc., where people pair off not to vote. The final turnout at the polls would be a few thousand people who had no friends, colleagues, social skills or interests. They’d almost certainly vote for independent candidates, the ones who produce home-made signs with crayons, and set up terrifying Web sites. Might be interesting for a while.
It may be just me, but unless you’re the only two voting in the election, your votes aren’t going to “cancel each other out.” And there are often more than two sides to an issue or candidates for a particular office. I’m not saying your one vote or his one vote would be the margin of victory, but the more people who get out and vote, the more people who actually have a voice in running our society. So, yeah, both of you get out there and cast your ballots.
This reminds me of a Dilbert strip from several years ago. Dogbert uses this same logic on Dilbert, that since they disagree on everything they should both stay home from the polls.
The next day, Dilbert says, “Wait a minute, dogs can’t vote!” Dogbert replies, “Well, not directly.”
