# Reasonable member of the electorate, or idiotic, entitled college student? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 1, 2018, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287 "2018-10-01T21:26:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287/61 "2018-10-04T12:03:16Z")
> [@Kropotkin](#): > > These are first year students (so no brainwashing by “radical” profs) at a non-elite university. Aren’t you dismissing possible indoctrination by [left-wing schoolteachers](https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2017/jun/24/secret-teacher-school-echo-chamber-leftwing-views-labour)? > [@Guardian newspaper](#): > > As teachers, we are bound by the 1996 Education Act to present different political beliefs impartially and to not promote partisan political views. Yet, probably unintentionally, my school is often an echo-chamber for the leftwing views of its staff and its students’ parents. > > Views that fall outside the accepted liberal-left spectrum get short shrift in my staffroom. [Again:](https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/02/to-survive-as-a-tory-teacher-you-have-to-keep-quiet/) Edit: oops, forgot to add that during my time working with schools I saw this first-hand. > [@Spectator](#): > > According to my former colleagues, history teachers in an urban English state school, anyone who votes for the Conservative party is ‘thick’, the British Empire was ‘unambiguously evil’ and capitalism leads to ‘mass inequality and misery for the vast majority of working people’. The only answer was, you guessed it, socialism. Yes, the cliché of the Little Red Book-carrying schoolteacher is alive and well. [And again:](https://order-order.com/2018/09/24/teacher-labour-conference-teach-children-not-tories/) > [@](#): > > Sion Rickard, a teaching assistant and “cover supervisor” who teaches classes of children was applauded and whooped at Labour Conference for shouting that “If we give [children] a proper education… we’ll probably not have any tories because we will have brought up our kids properly.” That’s all from this side of the Atlantic, of course. Opps. Forgot to add that during my time with education in the 1990s I saw this first-hand. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287/62 "2018-10-04T17:41:14Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > And that is exactly the Camel and Straw fallacy. 😃 Er, no it very explicitly is _not_. The fallacy as you presented it was the assumption that the final straw was somehow more important than the other straws because it was the last one laid that brought the total past the point where the camel’s back breaks. The logic I’m trying to point out here is that if there aren’t enough straws to break the camel’s back at all, then _none_ of the straws is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. And, again, you can’t make this assumption prior to voting unless you believe yourself to have some idea of how the rest of the votes will go. Here’s another example that might make things easier to understand. Suppose there are two political parties: Republicans and Democrats, but I don’t like either one of them, so instead I’m considering voting for Mickey Mouse. Then I say to myself, “Hey self, you do realize that whether you cast your vote for Mickey Mouse or stay home, it won’t effect the outcome? In either case the chance of Mickey Mouse winning is zero, because he doesn’t have sufficient popular support to win in any case.” Under that scenario, does the Camel and Straw fallacy say that it’s important that I go cast my vote for Mickey Mouse, and that if I do it will be impactful towards the final result, for…some reason? ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287/63 "2018-10-04T18:13:08Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > nder that scenario, does the Camel and Straw fallacy say that it’s important that I go cast my vote for Mickey Mouse, and that if I do it will be impactful towards the final result, for…some reason? That depends entirely on whether or not you care if the politicians know that you don’t like either of the available options. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287/64 "2018-10-04T18:35:09Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > That depends entirely on whether or not you care if the politicians know that you don’t like either of the available options. I question whether making a garbage write-in vote sends any stronger of a message than simply staying home does. If we’re talking about third party candidates that are ‘real’ enough to have their name printed on the ballot, here is my thinking on those: If you cast a protest vote for them while your preferred primary candidate has any chance of winning, then you’re a fool - and the camel and straw fallacy explains why! Every vote you don’t give your preferred primary candidate is a slice taken from their chance of winning, which is a tiny little vote for the guy you hate most. Even if you’re quite confident your preferred primary candidate has enough votes to win without you, refraining from supporting them is falling for the fallacy (and results in Trumps). Which means there are only two scenarios where it makes sense to vote for a third party in a first-past-the-post two party system: 1. You literally hate all the primary candidates equally, and don’t care at all which of them gets in. 2. Your primary party candidate has literally no chance of winning regardless, even if _nobody_ wasted their vote on the third party, meaning that your vote is worthless and yours to throw away as you wish. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2018, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287/65 "2018-10-05T13:28:20Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Suppose there are two political parties: Republicans and Democrats, but I don’t like either one of them, so instead I’m considering voting for Mickey Mouse. Then I say to myself, “Hey self, you do realize that whether you cast your vote for Mickey Mouse or stay home, it won’t effect the outcome? In either case the chance of Mickey Mouse winning is zero, because he doesn’t have sufficient popular support to win in any case.” > > Under that scenario, does the Camel and Straw fallacy say that it’s important that I go cast my vote for Mickey Mouse, and that if I do it will be impactful towards the final result, for…some reason? The Camel and Straw fallacy says you should vote because each vote has a tiny effect. It does not say who to vote for; that’d require another calculus. You are committing the fallacy by looking at only whether or not the camel is standing, instead of looking at the incremental change in the weight on its back. A vote that doesn’t change who wins a race is still affecting the outcome by changing the number of votes. Each vote makes a difference; you may not value that difference, or its value to you may be less than your cost to make it, but the difference is there, nevertheless. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2018, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287/66 "2018-10-05T16:33:35Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > The Camel and Straw fallacy says you should vote because each vote has a tiny effect. It does not say who to vote for; that’d require another calculus. > > You are committing the fallacy by looking at only whether or not the camel is standing, instead of looking at the incremental change in the weight on its back. A vote that doesn’t change who wins a race is still affecting the outcome by changing the number of votes. Each vote makes a difference; you may not value that difference, or its value to you may be less than your cost to make it, but the difference is there, nevertheless. I will readily admit that if you go and drop a vote for Mickey Mouse in the ballot box is changes the number of votes in the ballot box. I will _ **not** _ agree that this makes any material difference or affects the outcome in any way, though, because that’s ridiculous. I mean, seriously. ---
**Author:** ![Cleophus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a88e57/32.png) [@Cleophus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cleophus)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2018, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287/67 "2018-10-06T22:00:57Z")
The optics of an election result are more nuanced than who won or lost. The ratio and the turnout percentage matter. ---
**Author:** ![fedman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/278dde/32.png) [@fedman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fedman)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287/68 "2018-10-07T10:16:23Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Maybe 1 = 2. > > But you know what? I’m going to take that back, and not because of the “maybe” part - but because (contrary to my prior position) I actually can think of an actual way that future elections could be impacted. In theory if there are people out there who will be demoralized by (for example) getting only 30% of the vote, but will become encouraged by getting 35% of the vote, then every\* losing vote matters. > > I don’t think that’s how it works for most people, but what the hey. I can retract if I wanna. > > \*ETA: Though of course if every losing voter voted, then encouraging them to vote next time matters not at all. if it’s a close election. say 50% to 48%, that might send signal that candidate/issue may not be as popular as thought, and maybe better opposition candidate ---
**Author:** ![fedman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/278dde/32.png) [@fedman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fedman)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287/69 "2018-10-07T10:22:05Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > The argument is that if you are certain that there is going to be a landslide against you, that the presence or absence of your vote has no chance of changing the result. The landslide aspect of this is important because the logic implicitly takes into account that lots of other people are making the same calculation. In my case, for example, I’m pretty sure the conservatives will take Idaho even if _every single liberal in the state_ gets out and votes. > > Note that this isn’t exactly an outrageous line of thought - political candidates accept it as valid too. It’s why they tend to only campaign in swing states - because getting people like me to vote _doesn’t matter_. > > Interestingly, one could apply the same logic from the other side: “we’re so certain to _win_ that they don’t need me”. And it wouldn’t surprise me if there were actually people on the winning side who don’t bother to vote for that very reason, though the fact that they’re voting for a winner provides an endorphin rush that the losing side doesn’t get probably gets them out to the polls a bit more regardless. this is reason I hate TV polls (winner) hours before polls close in western states is so pernicious, since it discourages voting. ---
**Author:** ![Tempe\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tempe_jeff/32/7328_2.png) [@Tempe\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tempe_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287/70 "2018-10-07T22:05:07Z")
I have had a crazy notion for years. Requiring ‘None of the Above’, be a choice on every ballot for those running for Office. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2018, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287/71 "2018-10-12T01:13:18Z")
> [@Kropotkin](#): > > For several years I have had university students take the quiz at [politicalcompass.org](http://politicalcompass.org). (No, it’s not perfect. Find me a better one and I’ll use it) They consistently and almost unanimously find themselves to be much further left and much less authoritarian than the major Canadian political parties, including the NDP. These are first year students (so no brainwashing by “radical” profs) at a non-elite university. They are struck by the fact that no political party comes close to representing their ideas and ideals. For many, not voting is an expression of that fact, and means they are not morally culpable when the government does something loathsome. There are some problems with this logic, but it is much sounder than labeling them apathetic might be. That’s not just a problem, but a foundational problem. As in, do they actually believe the things they claim to believe if they do not do what they can to work towards accomplishing it? If they are left wing, then the left wing candidates inherently have to better represent their ideals than the right. If you’re on the axis, then the only difference is that you are further along than the others. Anyone who is on the left side must have at least some beliefs that are aligned with everyone else on the left. This is letting the irrational belief that anything less than perfect isn’t worth fighting for. It is allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good. This trick only exists to allow those in power to limit their opposition. Maybe they need better classes at these schools to teach them this. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2018, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287/72 "2018-10-12T01:25:15Z")
Now for this other guy: there is no guarantee that Texas will go for Republicans. In fact, there is every indication that, if everyone voted, Texas would be bluer than it is. That assumption is unwarranted. It is at least in part because of thinking like his that Republicans always win. As for entitlement: he thinks he is entitled to live in a democracy without participating in it. A democracy is rule by the people, which means the people have a responsibility to govern. He is allowing a really small issue be enough that he shirks this duty. And then he apparently doesn’t even know that you vote on more than just candidates, or that specific candidates can have differences that transcend party. Alabama is Republican, but they voted for a Democrat. I wouldn’t say he’s entitled for being a college student, though. He’s entitled for being a guy for whom the vote is unlikely to directly affect him. And the fact this is being reported on means he is deliberately telling others to do the same. And that gets into Kantian ethics: don’t promote doing something that would be harmful if everyone did it. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2018, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287/73 "2018-10-12T01:31:08Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Er, no it very explicitly is _not_. The fallacy as you presented it was the assumption that the final straw was somehow more important than the other straws because it was the last one laid that brought the total past the point where the camel’s back breaks. > > The logic I’m trying to point out here is that if there aren’t enough straws to break the camel’s back at all, then _none_ of the straws is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. > > And, again, you can’t make this assumption prior to voting unless you believe yourself to have some idea of how the rest of the votes will go. > > Here’s another example that might make things easier to understand. > Suppose there are two political parties: Republicans and Democrats, but I don’t like either one of them, so instead I’m considering voting for Mickey Mouse. Then I say to myself, “Hey self, you do realize that whether you cast your vote for Mickey Mouse or stay home, it won’t effect the outcome? In either case the chance of Mickey Mouse winning is zero, because he doesn’t have sufficient popular support to win in any case.” > > Under that scenario, does the Camel and Straw fallacy say that it’s important that I go cast my vote for Mickey Mouse, and that if I do it will be impactful towards the final result, for…some reason? The problem is in wanting to vote for a nonviable candidate at all. The probability that neither candidate is better than the other is 0%. There is one who is closer to your ideals. You should vote for that one. There is one who will be worse for everyone, based on your ideals. You should vote against that one. Not voting and making a protest vote are equivalent. But only because neither are things you should do. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2018, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287/74 "2018-10-12T01:37:43Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > I live in NJ, and my (liberal) vote isn’t worth the paper it’s (not) printed on, either. In the last presidential election, the chance my state was going Trump was about 0.1%, and everybody knew it from the day he secured the nomination. There was no point for either candidate to campaign here, at best Clinton would come here to fundraise so she could run off to an “Important” state to campaign for votes. My district is solidly Dem, and so are both Senators, given the current political atmosphere. I always vote, but I don’t kid myself that it matters this time around. Maybe someday, but not today. But that someday will never happen if people don’t vote. The whole idea that Clinton couldn’t lose was exactly the reason why Trump won. Maybe it was true in your area in this particular time, but what we learned is that we cannot ever be entirely sure of that. And while it’s good that you vote, telling people their vote doesn’t’ matter is a way to keep them from voting. If enough liberals believe that, then what you say changes. There’s a difference with campaigning, due to there being limited resources. But do note that Clinton campaigned poorly, avoiding the states that decided the election. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2018, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287/75 "2018-10-12T17:24:22Z")
Gonna rearrange your post a bit to group topics… > [@BigT](#): > > The probability that neither candidate is better than the other is 0%. There is one who is closer to your ideals. You should vote for that one. There is one who will be worse for everyone, based on your ideals. You should vote against that one. Don’t be silly - there are certainly cases where a voter might think that no candidate is discernibly better than the other. Two obvious drivers for this are ignorance and equivalence. Ignorance - you don’t really know what evil lurks in the hearts of men. When there are not stark differences in the platforms offered, or if you aren’t a party-line voter and like elements of both stated platforms, the difference comes down to what the candidates will actually do when taking office - which is something candidates often lie about. If you haven’t got some idea of their personalities, then you could easy have no basis for comparison - and not have enough belief that there _is_ a difference to justify doing research. Equivalence. Picture a single-issue voter - one who cares about _nothing_ but their pet issue. If both candidates support the issue equally (as far as you can tell), then meh, who cares? In most cases you’d see these situations come up when choosing between candidates within the same party, like if you were to vote at a primary. (Which all people aren’t expected to do because it’s well-known that most people won’t care who wins.) But there have been times (many years ago) where I legitimately didn’t think it mattered who won the presidency, because regardless of who won they I believed they probably wouldn’t drive the country off a cliff. Would they do slightly different things? Maybe, but I didn’t really care; either way things would turn out fine in general - at least as far as I knew. That hasn’t been true for quite a while, mind you. > [@BigT](#): > > The problem is in wanting to vote for a nonviable candidate at all. > [@BigT](#): > > Not voting and making a protest vote are equivalent. But only because neither are things you should do. There’s a few different ways to do each, and they’re not the same. Making a joke vote or staying home because you legitimately don’t care is, in my opinion, perfectly fine. You’re not failing to voice your opinion, because you don’t _have_ an opinion. Making a joke vote or staying home because you’ve done the math and are absolutely certain your vote has no chance whatsoever of effecting the result is, in my opinion, fine, but not as fine as an apathy abstention. Note that you have to have a decent finger on the pulse of your community for this to be valid - and you can’t rely entirely on past poll numbers, because you yourself have been tainting those. And making a protest vote or staying home because you think that your victory is so assured that you can afford to throw your vote away on the third party candidate is _awful_, far and above a worse action than either of the above two. This is how a winning party loses. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2018, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287/76 "2018-10-12T17:38:25Z")
The most obvious of many indications that the answer is B) Idiotic, Entitled College Student: > [@](#): > > I never hear why I’m supposedly wrong, just that I am I find it utterly impossible to believe that _nobody_ has _ever_ confronted this nitwit with any of the obvious flaws in his position (e.g. the self-fulfilling prophecy fallacy, which is actually refuted right in the article itself by the observation that Texas has in fact elected Democrats within living memory). The above quoted statement is thus a classic example of spewing a pile of bullshit beneath which to hide the author’s ignorance and laziness. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2018, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287/77 "2018-10-12T18:32:58Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > For example, If the polling were to tell you that the vote would go 70/30 in favor of the republican with a five point margin of error and 99% certainty, then that means you have an extremely good mathematical basis to believe that the result will be the same whether or not you vote. It’s not a camel/straw fallacy - if _none_ of the liberals had voted the result would be the same. All the liberal votes are equally important - and in that specific scenario the level of importance they all share is that they’re all worthless - mathematically speaking. The problem as I see it is that your analysis relies on constant voter turnout- if the same numbers of voters turn out, and vote in the expected proportion, then yes, it makes little sense. But that’s kind of the point here- how many people like you or the OP feel like you can’t change things and don’t vote? ISTR that only 28.3% of registered voters turned out for the 2014 midterms in Texas. It wouldn’t take many additional voters that feel like you to change things- we’re only talking a little less than 4 million total votes cast. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2018, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287/78 "2018-10-12T18:49:31Z")
> [@bump](#): > > The problem as I see it is that your analysis relies on constant voter turnout- if the same numbers of voters turn out, and vote in the expected proportion, then yes, it makes little sense. > > But that’s kind of the point here- how many people like you or the OP feel like you can’t change things and don’t vote? ISTR that only 28.3% of registered voters turned out for the 2014 midterms in Texas. It wouldn’t take many additional voters that feel like you to change things- we’re only talking a little less than 4 million total votes cast. My analysis requires having a reasonably accurate finger on the pulse of the electorate, which would include an idea of what proportion of them are likely to vote, both with you and against you - being drastically wrong about this would be as bad as being drastically wrong about what the candidates’ political positions are. And again I’m only defending inaction if your side numerically doesn’t have the power to win even at its theoretical strongest and with your opposition at its theoretically _plausible_ weakest. That plausible is important - it’s why I don’t countenance staying home if you’re winning. It’s impossible to push a losing vote to a win\*, but it’s certainly possible to turn a winning vote into a loss. - without convincing people on the opposite side _not_ to vote\*\*. \*\* which has been the republican/russian party’s strategy in recent times. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasonable-member-of-the-electorate-or-idiotic-entitled-college-student/822287.md?page=3)