I would vote anyway. Maybe he won’t punch in his ballot hard enough and his vote won’t get counted 
I like my candidate to know that he got my vote, even if s/he doesn’t win. Maybe the increased numbers will cheer them up, or they will see that x% of people turned out or whatever.
You should go vote, if nothing else than to get the little “I Voted” sticker to wear the rest of the day.
I simply can’t conceive of someone I know voting the opposite of the way I do on every single issue. Even if we were both mindless robots, with one checking all the [D] boxes and the other checking the [R] boxes, what about the initiatives, the bond issues, the primaries, the offices where indies stand a real chance of being elected?
As many have said, and I’ll mostly echo, this sort of thought really bothers me. Yes voting is a “right”, but it’s really a civic responsibility. And I have to wonder… Will you always find EVERY Democratic candidate for every seat preferable to all other candidates from all other parties for the same seat? Will he always feel the same way about the corresponding Republican candidate? What about the elections where one of the major parties isn’t even bothering to put up a candidate (because the incumbent is practically unbeatable), but an independent is running; how would the one who’s prefered party vote is the independent is Libertarian or Green or Constitution or…?
What bothers me slightly more is that this sort of thinking assumes that the independent literally has no chance and never will. As long as this sort of thinking perpetuates, it will, and we may not see some real (and much needed, IMO) change in the two major parties. It also perpetuates the “lesser of two evils” philosophy, with which I vehemently disagree. I did not vote for Bush or Kerry in 2004 because I thought both were unsuitable for the job; I would rather vote for whom I thought would do the best, than for whom I thought would screw up least.
I also have to ask, do you both always vote the straight party ticket? Is it not possible that a member of the opposite party could do a bang-up job? For instance, I live in Northern Virginia, which is about 55-60% Democrats; however, our Congressman is a Republican and was recently re-elected by a huge margin (something like 65-70% of the votes). I have yet to meet a Democrat (even a staunch one) who has not said he’s doing a great job; I imagine that’s true of many Democrats given that many of them had to have voted for him to have gotten that kind of victory. Now, I’m a Libertarian, and more often than not vote for the Libertarian party, but I voted for him over the Libertarian candidate; similarly, my Democratic mother voted for an equally well respected Republican in the next district over and, other than him, has voted the straight [D] ticket her whole life AFAIK.
Bottom line, there’s just too many variables to consider to override my sense of duty with regard to voting, specifically since most ballots have several items for consideration. It is a bit different with the concept of pairing, because all congressional votes are always binary, and I imagine the pairing can be done on a case by case basis; whereas here, it is almost never binary and would not be done on a case by case basis.
I asked this more as a philosophical/intellectual question than as me asking for personal advice. I doubt that in reality I’d ever not go vote (though I don’t vote in every single local election–for example if I have no knowledge of any of the issues on the ballot, and even in elections that I do vote in, I don’t vote on everything, but only on the stuff/peope I know something about or have an opinion on) but I was just sitting around thinking about what things were going to be like when I moved in with my Republican boyfriend and the whole voting thing crossed my mind. I didn’t really think it was a 100% solid strategy or anything (and as I said, not one I’d actually be likely to enact) but the idea seemed interesting enough to warrant discussion. It seems to have not really gone so much as a discussion of the concept as I had hoped, though, and seems to be more about people trying to talk me, personally, out of not voting.
So, you can all relax and rest assured that I’m not going to stop voting, ok? The question is more an abstract one than a practical one: given a ballot of two candidates and nothing else on the ballot, and given two people who know they will vote opposite, what reasons are there to vote vs to go camping together instead? Assume these two can be trusted to not go vote behind the other’s back.
To me, this is the height of civic responsibility. If you know the issues/candidates, then get your butt out there and vote. If you don’t know what you’re voting on, don’t mess up the results by randomly checking boxes.
I would add that I applaud people who take the time to actually read ballot measures before voting on them (I do. I read the text of the proposed law, and all of the for/against arguments), but please read them at home, not while you’re standing in the voting booth!
Is there some sort of exorcism you could perform on your boyfriend? Maybe if you could use a logical anomaly to imply Reagan was a liberal he’ll short circuit. Then you can program him as you will.
The last presidential election proved that Ohio needs every voting Democrat possible, “canceled out” or not.
An anecdote from the last elections:
My father felt so compelled in the 2004 election (spurred on, unfortunately, by conservative talk radio that he can’t avoid at work) to vote for the first time in in life. He made no attempt to hide he’d vote for Bush when he asked me to help him register online, but I did it, figuring civic participation was worth more than a vote cast for an administration I am embarrassed to have to call my own.
On election day, he voted Bush, and I voted Kerry, which I would have done anyway. I redefined it in my mind as “canceling out” my father, just as my wife considered her Kerry vote to cancel out her mother’s Bush vote.
Cut to Thanksgiving dinner 2006, when I am giddy about the solid electoral showing of the Democrats in congressional elections, and he admits that two years after his first vote, he chose to vote Democrats into Congress, embarrassed as he was about voting for Bush in 2004 and seeing some fallout of his decision.
Like I tell my dumbass 22 year old friend. He elected GW by not voting at all. THEN he won’t shut the hell up about him screwing stuff up. It REALLY is like going from the frying pan to the fire.
Vote or shut the hell up.
AHA! that’s it! Before you lived in Ohio, your boyfreinds vote went unchallenged. Now, you will be in Ohio and you will cancell out his previously uncancelled vote. Since the presidential elections are not done by majority vote, they are run by the electoral college your vote actually counts for more than it did before.
He only recently moved to Ohio. The last presidential election he was in Atlanta.
I honestly don’t think I could stand a significant other who is a Republican. Our world view would be so different that I couldn’t be in an intimate relationship.
The best strategy: Enter a pact with someone to not vote because “we cancel each other out” then go ahead and vote anyway. 
I wouldn’t have thought I could, either. Turns out it really doesn’t come up all that often. It seems like most of the differences fall into the category of having differing views on the importance of money.
In 2000, my husband (then boyfriend) didn’t get his absentee ballot for some reason. His sister never requested one. Their dad came to Chicago, picked up both, and drove all night and day to Michigan and back so that both son and daughter could vote at their local polling place. Dedication!
Husband voted for Gore.
Sister voted for…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Gore.
whew!
We were very worried she was going to vote for Bush, but he didn’t ask her until after she was done voting. She’s now very liberal, but she wasn’t so much back then. Their dad, a Democrat, knew the chance he was taking, but it was important to see his kids vote anyway, even if their votes canceled. I’ll never forget his example.
Balderdash! Unless one or the other is a close minded idiot, these things don’t matter that much. I have Republican freinds, and we get along just fine. People that get too hung up in politics aren’t fun to be around. To be honest, I don’t think they make very good politicians.
Go vote. There is no cancelling out. They count all the ballots and announce the total for each candidate. If they cancelled them out then the total would only be the difference. I would much rather see results that read:
Candidate A - 1,747
Candidate B - 1,649
than
Candidate A wins with 98
Candidate B
or
Candidate A - 528,747
Candidate B - 528,649
than
Candidate A - wins with 98
Candidate B
Besides that, you could influence the vote by saying the same thing to a number of political contrarians and encouraging them not to vote by the fact that yours will cancel it out.
Hear, hear. I used to play poker every week with a group that had (very) mixed political views. Since they were all intelligent people, the few political debates we had were entertaining and educational. And the “world view” of most of my Republican friends really isn’t that different from that of most of my Democrat friends. If you took religion out of the equation, the difference would be even less.
Another reason for “cancelled-out” pairs to vote, instead of agreeing to stay home, is that voter participation is tallied. The more people turn out to vote, the more likely candidates (and elected officials) will consider your local area and your local issues worth their time and attention. Yes, the mere two votes of a single pair may not bump the precinct or county or state percentage up much, but the net effect of many pairs staying at home (or not) adds up.
Cranky: that’s the best reasoning I’ve heard yet.
“I think money is extremely important!”
“Well, I think money is very important!”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Very important. Yeah right.”
“Go to hell!”