It takes something like an hour and a half for me to vote each time and most of the time I couldn’t give a rat’s ass which of the two horse’s asses begging for my vote should get it. I have to fit in voting either before work or after. Before work means I’m going to be late so it’s after work, then I’m really late starting for dinner, etc. At my polling place, there is always a huge line but anyone who looks handicaped or who is over 65 or who just happens to know somebody, gets to go to the front of the line, which is very frustrating when you are late and still have a huge wait ahead. Old folks just wonder in constantly, say hi to the official, then wonder over to the poll booth while the rest of us second class citizen cool our heels in line. So, for important elections I make the effort, otherwise I skip it.
I vote when I feel led to. But more and more I feel like no one in the current system really represents my values. And I am constantly amazed by cynical, smart people who nonetheless idealistically feel that if I really want to make a change I can get up and vote people in who will make that change for me. Yeah, as long as what I want is what everybody else wants!
I’m also not so naive to believe that if I lose my job, that the President can do something about it. I believed in Obama, or at least believed that he could change things. I see now how much his hands have been tied, by contrary opinions, by public opinion, by stupidity, by his own ineptitude at times, and of course by muleheaded stubbornness on the other party. He accomplished some of the things I wanted but seriously. How would I ever have stopped the Iraq/Afghanistan war with my one vote? I would have so preferred so much not to dump all those billions of dollars down the toilet. I could have told you - never get involved with Afghanistan, there is no curing it. Still, if we had to, there are better and different ways than ever getting involved in a war.
Then there was Gitmo, and there was the “too big to fail” crap, and homeowners being allowed and encouraged by frankly criminal people to buy houses far too expensive for them. I would have liked to see these people punished, but more importantly, I’d like to see protection that it wouldn’t happen again. Where do I go and whom do I vote for to see that we are protected? Not the rich, they don’t have my best interests in mind. Guess what you need to be to run for any major office in this country?
FILTHY FREAKING RICH
Yeah. I am jaded, disenfranchised, and bitter. Regardless, my life is pretty good, on the whole. I have a job, thank goodness. I can get loans to back to school. I can get birth control. I can get an abortion, safely and legally if i need to.
So I’m pretty content, and the things I want changed, the protection for the rich at the cost of the middle class and the poor, that’s never going to change, because the rich run everything and claim not to.
A reporter asked her if Obama was a Muslim. Her answer went something like, “No, [pause] as far as I know”. This made me doubt her honesty. Surely she knew better. So I concluded she would do anything for a couple votes. I think she came to regret it enormously.
Yes.
I give her a lot of slack for Obama’s “Was Clinton the first Black President” answer in an interview where Hillary Clinton was present.
I’ll be 66 on our next Election Day! I’ve always been adamant about voting. Every votes counts, blah, blah, blah.
It only became really obvious to me what a crock of feces that concept was when Bush the Junior was elected. The whole Electoral College thing made me recognize that my vote here in Maine is absolutely meaningless.
This year there are 6 or 8 keys states in play. Maine’s not one of them. I’ll continue to vote in all our local elections and participate in our Town Meeting form of government but since my vote at the national level doesn’t mean bupkis, I think I’ll cast it for Howdy Doody.
I’m of two minds about this. I have voted, and mostly have voted in every yearly election, but typically not in special elections, but I’ve become increasingly jaded with the whole system and I’ve given consideration to just not voting anymore. I haven’t decided for sure if I will vote this year or not, but I can at least give you my thought process to help you understand.
I turned 18 in 2000, so that was my first election and, as it turned out, one of the most important ones in recent history. I was raised Republican, and though I wasn’t particularly fond of Bush, I was less fond of Gore, so I voted for Bush. Over the next few years, as my views turned more libertarian, and as Bush proceeded to do things I strongly disagreed with, I couldn’t vote for him, but I also found Kerry detestable, so I decided I just couldn’t vote for the lesser of two evils anymore and I made a point of evaluating all of the candidates on the ballot and selecting the one I most agreed with. I found one I agreed with on about 90-95% of the issues, so he got my vote. This was how I operated for the next several years. In 2008, it seemed to basically be a vote of “more of Bush” or “something else”, so I couldn’t vote for the latter, especially since it was even worse, and while I felt Obama was probably preferable to McCain, his “something else” was often either unsubstantiated or something I also disagreed with. I again voted third party.
In general, I just hate the idea of how people feel like they have to vote for one of the major parties, where it’s as much or more voting against the other guy than for your guy, as particularly will seem to be the message with a lot of the votes Romney will be getting this year. Whenever I’ve mentioned that I’ve voted third party, I often get a response of “why are you throwing your vote away?” Most of them will freely admit they’re not all that happy with who they’re voting for, but still do it anyway. I try to respond with “I’d rather vote for who I think is best for the job, not the lesser of two evils. As long as everyone keeps thinking I’m throwing my vote away, I am.” Maybe one day a major party will start to see more and more losses to the third parties and make enough adjustments to their stances to pick us back up, but that just won’t happen as long as people won’t actually hit them in the only way it counts, votes.
And that’s just the thing, it continues to just reinforce the idea that my vote really doesn’t matter. And, especially for presidential elections, I’ll be in line already having done all my research, and I see the person in front of me comparing the Republican and Democratic sample ballots. It frustrates me that I’ve tended to look at voting as a civil responsibility that has an obligation to do research and seriously consider, and I see people deciding because some piece of paper says so, or because one candidate is more attractive than the other (I’d heard from some women voting Clinton and Obama for that reason, and some men voting McCain because of Sarah Palin). So, really, by voting, even if I’m voting in favor of another party that has nothing to do with it, I’m legitimizing the system by participating in it.
And that’s pretty much where I am now. I’m not a fan of either major party candidate. I’ve started some research on the third parties that will be showing up on my state’s ballot, but even still, even though I do agree pretty well with one of those candidates, between just feeling like I’m throwing my vote away and not wanting to continue to legitimize the whole fixed two party system, I’m seriously considering just not voting.
Good for you. Voting is an exercise in futility, and it just encourages the scoundrels.
Because I’m not really jazzed about either of the candidates. I’m still waiting for a viable fiscal conservative without the religious component. But I can’t rouse myself to go vote for a fringe candidate (whenever I take those ‘who should you vote for’ tests I always end up with the Libertarian candidate) because I know it will do no good.
This is why. I don’t find it fun, and so long as everyone else keeps voting, it doesn’t mean anything. If people were to quit voting all of a sudden, then I’d start voting again.
BTW, not that anyone said it in this thread, but the first person that questions my patriotism or says “don’t vote, don’t complain” is getting punched in the mouth with my Army Commendation Medal.
I don’t remember that; I do remember everyone lambasting her for saying, “I take him at his word,” and insisting she really meant she didn’t believe him. I also remember thinking she found the question very distasteful, as if she honestly did not want to dignify it with an answer.
In the US I vote in federal elections only. I vote in Nevada, but I don’t live there. I don’t feel qualified to vote for anything less than federal.
In Australia there’s compulsory voting, so I vote for everything.
I do vote now, but, when I was 18, the reason was that I didn’t know where to vote: in my college town or back home. They told us a lot of stuff about voting, but that never came up. I personally assumed I couldn’t vote in my college town because I didn’t really live there, and going home on a Tuesday was out of the question.
I personally think they should have had voting booths on campus. That would make it clear.
Excepting a certain “feel good” sensation, It is irrational to Vote!
How much is it actually worth to you to get your man elected to Congress instead of his opponent? $1000 ? I’ll bet it’s much less than that unless you have some specific business interest on which the candidates take opposite stands. (As a thought experiment, ask yourself if you would spend $1000 if a genie told you that would magically reverse the election result.)
So … $1000 . What’s the chance your vote will affect the result? Much less than 1 in 1000 in all but the closest races(*). So, mathematically the value of your vote is less than $1000 / 1000 or $1. Given the value of your time and cost of gasoline, it probably costs you much more than $1 to vote. It might be worth $20,000 to you to affect a Presidential election, but the chance your vote decides the outcome is probably less than 1 in 20000 even in a swing state.
Irrational to vote! This is no secret; it’s probably been discussed at Freakonomics etc.
This is an argument in favor of encouraging voting or even making it compulsory. A recent Atlantic Monthly quotes Sasha Issenberg explained that American voting rates declined with secret ballot. (Even if voter choice is kept secret, the fact of voting should be published to shame non-voters.)
(* - Someone will mention the close Florida vote, but it wasn’t known a priori that it would be that close.)
The chance your vote decides the outcome is about 1 in infinity, since one vote is less than the error in vote-counting.
In the last 100 years, there was not one federal race decided by one vote.
If you make it compulsory, it is not a “right” anymore.
While I’ve seen a lot of stuff in this thread that I don’t really agree with, this is the first thing someone has said that has made NO sense whatsoever.
Do you -really- think the “scoundrels” would care ONE BIT if, say, only 5% of registered voters turned out to vote? Of course not. It makes no difference to them how many people voted for them or didn’t, just that they got more than the other guy. The only way they would care about how many people voted is if they needed some sort of minimum percentage to vote for them in order to take office. And that will happen when hell freezes over.
So seriously. How is it “encouraging them”? Go out and vote for a third party candidate, and THEN you’re doing something that might be construed as not “encouraging them.” Otherwise, you’re just making it easier.
Also, the concept of “my vote doesn’t matter” multiplied by the number of people who think their votes don’t matter equals a number of votes that matters. So the whole idea, mathematically, is a fraud. Big numbers are made of small ones.
It’s a responsibility.
I don’t think everyone should vote in every election, but I think everyone should seriously consider doing so.
I believe in voting for third parties when possible. The vote will probably not effect the election, but a significant percentage of votes going to a third party might give their positions some legitimacy.
A couple reasons come to mind. By voting, I would be endorsing American’s political system (unless I wrote in, but that’s a fucking joke). I have a serious problem with our two-party system, and I despise the electoral college. This system has failed to elect a candidate with a majority of the popular vote more than once, and we haven’t changed it yet. Fuck that, I’m not participating in a shitty broken system. I will reconsider once they fix it.
More importantly, I don’t live in a battleground state, so I know my vote won’t affect anything. I know this becomes problematic when done on a large scale, but I don’t tell other people not to vote. I can’t affect what other people do or don’t, so I do what’s most convenient for myself.
I’m really tired of the oft-trotted “women fought for your right to vote!” (my mom always says this). I am grateful that women fought to get the right to vote. Do I think I’m disgracing their memory by refusing to vote, myself? Not any more than I think stay-at-home-moms are a disgrace to feminism (which is to say, not at all). The freedom to vote means I have the freedom to CHOOSE to vote. If I couldn’t choose to vote or to refrain from voting, I’d be pretty fucking pissed. But I can choose to vote, which also means I can choose not to vote. Because it’s up to me and not the government, I don’t see a reason to feel bad about going to work on election day.
In this thread I learned that voting in Australia is mandatory and would love to hear more about that. It sort of shocked me.