I live in Palm Beach County, Florida. My vote came as close to counting as any in history!!!
I was one of the disputed absentee ballots in Florida in 2000, so yes - my vote did make a difference in a presidential election that was decided by 300 votes.
I think if you’re eligible to vote and do not, then you should think twice before criticizing our country in any way that could have been affected by your vote (which is pretty much everything). I live in a poor section of Memphis now, which has twice as many democrats as republicans, yet I vote whenever possible even though I know my candidates will not be elected.
Remember, thousands of Americans over the past 230 years fought and died to give you the right to vote, and if they thought it was that important I’m not going to just take it for granted.
Bob55, the issue for me is not whether or not a vote is important, but what I could be voting for. And all the votes I have aren’t for anything I would vote for. This is far from being apathetic about the state of world, national, state, or local affairs.
If the government seriously wanted my opinion, they have the means to get it, or at least ask for it. They do not. I suspect this is largely because they do not care about my opinion in both a literal (captial-M Me specifically) and an abstract sense (little-m me, an individual among many), but my suspicions matter little when the fact remains. They want to know what I think about the political class who is paraded before me like some dog show. Well I think they suck, basically, and if we lived in a democracy it wouldn’t matter who was in the Senate because they should be informing their own opinions from little-m me (among other sources), not assuming their opinions are correct simply because they won an election.
Do you suppose I should vote for fictional or dead people to show such an opinion? How should I vote? Maybe you should tell me, because I’d hate to bitch without justification.
Out of all the officials, elected or about to be or on the ballot for all levels of government, that I’ve written only one took the time to respond to me. Once. It is almost encouraging because her response indicated she had read my letter. That is not a plus for “voting”, however, lest anyone draw that false conclusion. (Well, barring some typical form letter from the White House that demonstrated mine wasn’t read before the response was sent out, which makes me wonder how many crazy-ass letters they receive on a daily basis.)
But if the probability of the lection being decided by one vote is .00006, and if the outcome of the election makes a difference of just one cent for each US citizen, and voting costs $100, the expected value will stil be highly positive. Moreover, there aren’t 100,000,000 voters in a presidential election. There are 50 elections for electors, and ech of those elections have considerably less than 100,000,000 voters. However, I don’t see how Mueller got .00006 from the given formula.
But none of this changes my belief that voting makes sense from an altruistic point of view. The probability argument doesn’t convince me, although I haven’t been able to come up with a rebuttal yet. You have given me something to think about!
erislover: The purpose of an election is not to find the perfect candidate, it’s to choose among the options that actually exist. Even if you don’t think that either of the major candidates are worthy of your vote, there are the third party candidates. Or you can write in the name of someone you admire. And/or yourself. Or “none acceptable”. Not voting isn’t the only way to express displeasure.
F.U. Shakespeare: while that technically would be honest, isn’t dishonest on some level to vote for someone just to say that you did (thereby implying that you did so because you agree with them)?
I live in Leon county Florida, and I didn’t vote in 2000. I thought it wouldn’t matter. Do you know how people look at you when the votes are being recounted the third and fourth time, and you didn’t vote? By the way RevTim, I’m sorry to tell you, but we threw yours out. 
Thank you for keeping a better government at bay.
I do not support a political class. As long as candidates tell me what they support rather than me telling them what they should support, I will not vote.
I am not fit to be president / run for congress, why should I vote for myself?
I KNEW IT!!! :mad:
OK, confession time: I didn’t vote in 2000. I had moved, and the office of elections lost track of me, so I never found out my polling location. I might have been able to sort it out in time to vote, but I didn’t try. I admit I should have, especially since my county turned out to have such… interesting results.
A lot of people here seem to be bragging about the fact that they have voted in the past. I suppose it’s possible that people vote for purely altruistic reasons, but somehow I doubt it.
Here’s a link to a study that found the REAL reason why people vote-
That’s a nice link, surreal. Thanks.
The top line’s just 3, since p=1/2. Plugging in N = 100 000 000 works for me.