This thread made me want to share something I’ve been thinking about:
Some people seem to have an irrational, quasi-religious belief in the idea of voting for it’s own sake. An example: my sister once mentioned that she was busy some night because she needed to vote in the city election (for mayor, aldermen, etc). I asked how closely she followed civic issues, and she revealed that she knew literally nothing about any of the candidates and planned to simply vote for all of the incumbents. She seemed to think that this was somehow a positive thing, even though she was just adding noise to the election results.
A friend of mine once had a good reason not to bother–she said if she went, her parents would too and they would each vote for a different candidate. The three votes would completely cancel out.
This is the first election I’ve actually followed in any detail, and ironically I can’t vote. I would if I could though–then, even if things don’t turn out how I like, I could say I tried.
Not at all. I didn’t choose that analogy randomly. Just as each parent in a society has an interest in controlling the spread of infectious disease, each person in a republic has an interest in a responsible, responsive government in general, and in the promulgation of specific policies in particular. Some parents, however, choose not to have their children vaccinated because they are misguided as to the risks involved, and choose to trust to the immunizations other children undergo – the immunity of the herd – to protect their own children. But doing so reduces the strength of the group (because there are certain persons in the poppulaton who cannot be immunized whether they want to or not, among other reasons) and raises the chances of an uncontrolled outbreak and needless suffering. Each vaccination does make a difference.
Similarly, each vote makes a difference, because the vote totals are aggregates. If enough citizens on one side decide it is pointless to vote, then the other side will win even if it’s not truly representative of the opinions of the populace. By the “arrant nonsense” of your logic, we might as well decide on presidents or congresspersons or ballot initatives by flipping a coin.
Freedom is NOT free. If a person truly believes that one posiiton or the other on the Iraq war, or torture, or gay marriage, or abortion rights, or Social Security privatization, or health care, is correct, and chooses not to vote despite being eligible to do so, that that person is promulgating an idiotic position.
I am so sick of seeing ignorant posts like this, especially on this board. I make a conscious decision not to vote in every election because there isn’t a single candidate that comes any where near what I want in a president (that goes for other elections that are happening at that time as well). Why should I be forced to vote for any candidate that I do not want to run this country?
I’m liberal about some things, and I am conservative about other things. And the representatives for both parties throughout recent history have gotten it so wrong that I cannot respect a decision I might make to vote for someone who comes closest to what I want, when the closest is still unacceptable; my vote means more to me than to give it to the candidate who most met me part of the way. If you are comfortable giving your vote to a candidate who is short changing you in some way, that is your business.
So I exercise my right not to vote, and I’ll further exercise my right to complain about it after not voting, and there will be nothing on earth to stop me from doing so. It is my right to do both, and if you don’t believe that, you need to take a harder look at the founding documents of this country.
Because you can always vote AGAINST. Because even if you think both Senators Obama & McCain are clueless, chances are there is one of them you think more clueless or dangerous than the other. Because even if you’re underwhelmed by John Kerry, George Bush is worse. Because even if you find both major parties repulsive, you can still vote for a third party and assist in the incremental growth of that party.
Well, thank the Great Ghu that the only possible item to appear on the ballot is the Presidential choice! Nope, there aren’t any local races, nor any legislative initiatives, nor judicial races, nor schoolboard races, nor…
You are saying that it is my responsibility to choose the lesser of two evils, when it is not. Even if I tally the positives for both of the current candidates and find one to be slightly closer to what I want, I do myself and my vote a disservice in choosing someone who has other ideas about this country that rail against my own.
Both of these candidates are a joke, and neither of them need expect an endorsement from me simply because he is slightly less of a joke than the other. If my only choices for president are between Slappy and Booger, I’ll exercise my right to not shame myself for siding with either of them.
I’m not voting for a party, I’m voting (or not voting in this case) for a candidate. And in this instance (like so many others previous), they are all foul and undeserving of my vote, or the time it would take me to go out and cast it.
Euthanasiast, the clause I emphasized can be taken in at least two ways: you consciously decide to vote in some elections but not others, or you have opened to vote in no elections at all. Which is correct?
Let’s take this particular presidential election, and all other candidates for all other offices that I am currently aware of. My stance is that none of them meet the requirements for me to endorse them in any way, so I’ll not vote for any of them.
In the future, and if a candidate for any office meets the minimum requirements for my vote, he/she will get it.
However (and hypothetically speaking), even if I decided to never vote, ever, for any candidate no matter what the cause. Even if I just don’t want to be bothered with the whole process, it is my right to not vote, and it is further my right to complain about it after the fact.
If I chose to not vote, and then chose to later complain about how one candidate should have won out over the other, then I am a moron. But I also contend that I have the *right *to be that moron.
I don’t vote. I also freely complain, and do not care if others do so if they didnt vote. I won’t give excuses because it is not something I need to justify.
That said, saying someone can’t complain about candidates or government in general because they didnt vote is ridiculous. Even if you choose, for whatever reason, to not vote, the government still imposes itself, and its rules, on your life every single day, in ways that you have no control over at all, despite having a vote. If a reason was needed to complain, that alone is more than enough.
I am a registered Republican (registered a decade ago), and I have refused to vote since then.
I **absolutely **refuse to be forced to vote for “the lesser of two evils” with our current two-party only system. I think it’s a sham on our democratic process that other parties than Dem or Repub don’t even get a fair shot. You know, “By the People, For the People”.
I have also been fairly vociferous on these matters with letter writing to my “representatives”, quotes intentional.
Voting is the single most important thing that we, as citizens, can do to improve how our country operates. Them what doesn’t vote have no right to open their yap and complain about the government they wound up with as a result.
Doesn’t bother me any more than it bothers me that they’re not voting for my candidate. IOW, I’d rather a person not vote at all than vote for McCain.
Most people simply aren’t engaged enough to form a coherent opinion- and many of the people who are don’t have a BS filter.
If the alternative to a poor turnout which votes because of what Rush (or Michael Moore, for that matter) tells them is a horrible turnout which votes because they understand the issues, I’m all for it.
No, but it is a civic duty. Every citizen of this country enjoys the benefits of democracy, and there are certain duties that come along with those benefits, such as paying taxes. And voting.
I don’t care if you think both candidates are crooks and liars. I don’t care if you thinj the two-party system is flawed. I don’t care if you think your vote won’t count and is meaningless. It’s your civic duty to inform yourself about the candidates and the issues, haul your ass over to the polling place (or send in an absentee ballot in states where that’s an option) and cast your vote.
Yes, I would rather see someone not vote than cast an uninformed vote. That does not change my opinion that non-voters are abdicating their civic duty.
