# Voting is a self-insulting when things are not improving.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-self-insulting-when-things-are-not-improving/606629
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [December 18, 2011, 10:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-self-insulting-when-things-are-not-improving/606629 "2011-12-18T10:21:52Z")
**Posts on this page:** 16
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Reza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reza)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2011, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-self-insulting-when-things-are-not-improving/606629/41 "2011-12-19T08:33:57Z")
> [@davidm](#):
>
> Are you so sure that a revolution would lead to something better?
>
> If you want the system to change then you have to participate.
And, participation in my opinion is not necessarily line up and routinely drop my vote, but help others learn to think before they act. To raise public awareness is much worth than voting.
---
### Author:  [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2011, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-self-insulting-when-things-are-not-improving/606629/42 "2011-12-19T08:56:56Z")
From “Freakonomics” by Dr. Leavitt: [Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything - Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner - Google Books](http://books.google.com/books?id=mXQVbIRkHegC&pg=PT212&lpg=PT212&source=bl&ots=B4SqpH8YrG&sig=PcSbVluuY_-jbeIaxr5kYoKdM_Q&hl=en&sa=X&ei=dPzuTs6kIsje0QHSr-HiCQ&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&f=false)
Within the economics departments at certain universities, there is a famous but probably apocryphal story about two world-class economists who run into each other at the voting booth.
“What are you doing here?” one asks.
“My wife made me come,” the other says.
The first economist gives a confirming nod. “The same.”
After a mutually sheepish moment, one of them hatches a plan: “If you promise never to tell anyone you saw me here, I’ll never tell anyone I saw you.” They shake hands, finish their polling business and scurry off.
Why would an economist be embarrassed to be seen at the voting booth? Because voting exacts a cost—in time, effort, lost productivity—with no discernible payoff except perhaps some vague sense of having done your “civic duty.” As the economist Patricia Funk wrote in a recent paper, “A rational individual should abstain from voting.”
The odds that your vote will actually affect the outcome of a given election are very, very, very slim. This was documented by the economists Casey Mulligan and Charles Hunter, who analyzed more than 56,000 Congressional and state-legislative elections since 1898. For all the attention paid in the media to close elections, it turns out that they are exceedingly rare. The median margin of victory in the Congressional elections was 22 percent; in the state-legislature elections, it was 25 percent. Even in the closest elections, it is almost never the case that a single vote is pivotal. Of the more than 40,000 elections for state legislator that Mulligan and Hunter analyzed, comprising nearly one billion votes, only seven elections were decided by a single vote, with two others tied. Of the more than 16,000 Congressional elections, in which many more people vote, only one election in the past one hundred years—a 1910 race in Buffalo—was decided by a single vote.
…
It goes back to the incentives behind voting. If a given citizen doesn’t stand a chance of having her vote affect the outcome, why does she bother? In Switzerland, as in the U.S., “there exists a fairly strong social norm that a good citizen should go to the polls,” Funk writes. “As long as poll-voting was the only option, there was an incentive (or pressure) to go to the polls only to be seen handing in the vote. The motivation could be hope for social esteem, benefits from being perceived as a cooperator or just the avoidance of informal sanctions. Since in small communities, people know each other better and gossip about who fulfills civic duties and who doesn’t, the benefits of norm adherence were particularly high in this type of community.”
In other words, we do vote out of self-interest—a conclusion that will satisfy economists—but not necessarily the same self-interest as indicated by our actual ballot choice. For all the talk of how people “vote their pocketbooks,” the Swiss study suggests that we may be driven to vote less by a financial incentive than a social one. It may be that the most valuable payoff of voting is simply being seen at the polling place by your friends or co-workers.
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### Author:  [@Reza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reza)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2011, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-self-insulting-when-things-are-not-improving/606629/43 "2011-12-19T08:58:14Z")
> [@Ace309](#):
>
> Hello, **Reza**! I know this is a practice essay, so I hope you don’t mind if I offer some comments about your writing, rather than the substance of your essay.
>
> The first is that you use ‘self-insulting’ as a noun. It is actually an adjective. You could instead write ‘Voting is a self-insult,’ but that isn’t a phrase I hear very often so I would stay away from it.
>
> Another option would be to rephrase the sentence: “To vote when things are not improvement is to insult yourself!”, although that is a bit awkward.
>
> I like your use of ‘going down the drain.’ I would consider rewriting this sentence. To me, it sounds a bit more natural to write ‘I believe voting passively…’ than to write ‘I believe to vote passively…’. Also, ‘agree to’ implies an explicit agreement; we might agree to a repayment agreement, for example, or other contract. ‘Agree with’ has a connotation of approval. If I lived in a fascist country, then, I would not agree to the system, but I never explicitly agreed to the laws of my country anyway. I do, however, agree with many laws in my country, and so if I thought the values, morals, and ethics underlying the system were wrong, it would make more sense to say I did not agree with the system.
>
> I hope that distinction is clear!
Thank you so much. 🙂
Yes, self-insulting sounds adj, and here it should be in a noun format. Thanks.
Later, (after posting the text), I realized that I should have written “agree with” instead of “agree to”. And about the system and the laws and values, yes you are right, but the point is that I disagree with both (system & laws), that’s why I said that.
I couldn’t find any specific guidance whether to use a “gerund” or an “infinitive” after the verb " to believe". Thanks for reminding it. Keep up the good job.
Distinction is crystal clear!
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### Author:  [@Reza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reza)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2011, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-self-insulting-when-things-are-not-improving/606629/44 "2011-12-19T09:08:27Z")
> [@davidm](#):
>
> I didn’t see the part at the bottom about it being a practice essay. I also didn’t realize that **Reza** was not in the U.S.
>
> **Reza** , I bet you didn’t think you’d start such an argument with your practice essay. 😃
>
> Welcome to DU and I hope that we haven’t frightened you away.
Hello Dave, (if u don’t mind)
1- You’ve lost your bet, since the reverse is true. 🙂
why? (Because I wanted both; have members discuss over the subject, and comment my writing, and raise my awareness and knowledge of things & thoughts over there, and improving my English! Oh, that made Killing three birds with one Stone!!
2- Thanks, and, Why would you? 🙂
I’ve been to lost of forums and websites over the internet for ages. I know the ropes.
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### Author:  [@Reza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reza)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2011, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-self-insulting-when-things-are-not-improving/606629/45 "2011-12-19T09:13:49Z")
> [@Rigamarole](#):
>
> The OP’s sentiment is exactly what people were saying in 1930s Germany; a place where things had also gotten really bad economically.
And what happened next?
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### Author:  [@Reza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reza)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2011, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-self-insulting-when-things-are-not-improving/606629/46 "2011-12-19T09:16:39Z")
> [@Ace309](#):
>
> **Reza** has been posting practice essays here for a while. His English has improved markedly over the past few months, due in part (I’m sure) to the helpful comments the Dope has given him. He won’t be too distressed, I’m sure. 🙂
Like +++++
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### Author:  [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2011, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-self-insulting-when-things-are-not-improving/606629/47 "2011-12-19T09:40:40Z")
> [@Reza](#):
>
> Hello Dave, (if u don’t mind)
>
> 1- You’ve lost your bet, since the reverse is true. 🙂
>
> why? (Because I wanted both; have members discuss over the subject, and comment my writing, and raise my awareness and knowledge of things & thoughts over there, and improving my English! Oh, that made Killing three birds with one Stone!!
>
> 2- Thanks, and, Why would you? 🙂
>
> I’ve been to lost of forums and websites over the internet for ages. I know the ropes.
I was concerned that you might be a young person practicing essays for school. Now I see from your profile that you’re an adult, so of course you are not bothered by our debate.
---
### Author:  [@Reza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reza)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2011, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-self-insulting-when-things-are-not-improving/606629/48 "2011-12-19T11:56:11Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> Okay, responding to the message:
>
> Democracy does work. Even if all you’re doing is throwing out one bunch of incompetents and replacing them with a different bunch of incompetents, you’ve still put the first group of incompetents out of office. And they don’t want to be out of office. When the price of incompetency becomes losing office, then you will be motivating office holders to be less incompetent. As long as you’ve got two choices, the candidates will do enough to be your first choice rather than your second choice.
>
> And now responding to the text:
>
> “Self-insulting” isn’t really a word used in English. You’d be better off saying voting is pointless or voting is meaningless.
>
> It should be “would tell you” instead of “would talk back to you”.
> It should be “a forthcoming election”.
> “If I should care a lot to the society I live in” should be “I care a lot about the society I live in”.
> It should be just “not a single benefit” instead of “no solitary benefit”.
> It should be “earth” not “earthy”.
> It should be “can I convince myself to vote” not “can I convince my sanity to vote”.
> You used several redundancies. “Nothing and nothing” was the most obvious but you also used “mismanagement and corruption”, “statistics and reports”, “improvement and progress”, and “wrong and faulty”.
> “Spitting out right up your own head” isn’t an idiom I’ve seen in English. You might try “spitting in your own face” instead.
Thank you for your comments. 🙂
1- The point of my compound word was sth more than meaningless. I meant to stress that it is like insulting yourself.
It should be “would tell you” instead of “would talk back to you”.
2- “talk back to sb” means “to answer sb” , in the text it says “when I say this sb would answer to me like that. (please adivse why I can’t use this phrasal verb here. Thanks)
It should be “a forthcoming election”.
3- Yes, I should have sued indefinite article for “forthcoming election”. By the way, that was a good slip which reminded me to ask this question. We use “a” and not “an” for a vowel noun like “election” which precedes by a noun starting with a consonant?
4- If solitary means: used to emphasize that there is only one of something [= single]:
- The solitary goal of the match
5- Why I can’t use in “solitary benefit”, implying even not a single benefit, in this sentence?
6- If one can doubt someone’s sanity as in “she doubted his sanity”, can’t convince it as well? Even poetically? [Please advise, I’d love to learn more].
7- “Nothing and nothing” was an attempt for an emphatic tone, though I was aware of being criticized.
For “mismanagement and corruption” , I think mismanagement can be the result of the death of knowledge and capability in someone which can lead to a failure, while corruption can be done by a person who’s very skilled and knowledgeable but s/he is doing it in the wrong or dishonest way. That’s why I used both.
For “wrong and faulty” I can’t think of any explanation I just used them.
For “improvement and progress”. I see improvement in something which has become better than before. And in “progress” I see something has moved forward and now is different from the previous status not necessarily only improved by its quality but changed to a better version or something new was achieved. [Yet, I’d love to learn if I’m mistaken about the concepts].
8-
A- It’s an idiom in my own language; it is: “upwards spitting”. And who can spit in his own face not doing what my sentence said “spitting out right up your head”
B- Dose “spitting in your own face” imply that one is doing it in the way I worded?
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### Author:  [@Reza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reza)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2011, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-self-insulting-when-things-are-not-improving/606629/49 "2011-12-19T12:15:24Z")
Nemo,
Sorry about the item 3,
I made a mistake in my reply. I thought that I’ve written my sentence with the word “forthcoming” but forgot to use an article. And now I see that you suggest using “forthcoming” instead of “upcoming”. why? 🙂
Longman example at the entry of “Upcoming”:
[only before noun]
happening soon:
the **upcoming** elections
Thank you.
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### Author:  [@2nd\_Law](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2nd_Law)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2011, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-self-insulting-when-things-are-not-improving/606629/50 "2011-12-19T13:32:59Z")
> [@2nd\_Law](#):
>
> I find it interesting that the OP lists her location as “Tehran.”
> [@Reza](#):
>
> cuz this is where He is from and lives!
Sorry about getting your gender wrong there.
I was trying to point out that the election you were referring to in your essay is probably not the election coming up in the USA in November 2012, but the election coming up in Iran in December 2011.
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### Author:  [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2011, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-self-insulting-when-things-are-not-improving/606629/51 "2011-12-19T15:49:50Z")
> [@Reza](#):
>
> …
> A- It’s an idiom in my own language; it is: “upwards spitting”. And who can spit in his own face not doing what my sentence said “spitting out right up your head”
> B- Dose “spitting in your own face” imply that one is doing it in the way I worded?
In English, I think the closest idiom to this would be “spitting into the wind”. If you spit into the wind, the wind will blow the spit right back into your face.
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### Author:  [@Reza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reza)
#### Post date: [December 20, 2011, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-self-insulting-when-things-are-not-improving/606629/52 "2011-12-20T05:00:02Z")
> [@2nd\_Law](#):
>
> Sorry about getting your gender wrong there.
>
> I was trying to point out that the election you were referring to in your essay is probably not the election coming up in the USA in November 2012, but the election coming up in Iran in December 2011.
1- Not at all. 🙂
2- Could be referred to yours too. I talked generally.
What’s your prediction for Nov. 2012 election?
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### Author:  [@Reza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reza)
#### Post date: [December 20, 2011, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-self-insulting-when-things-are-not-improving/606629/53 "2011-12-20T05:01:34Z")
> [@davidm](#):
>
> In English, I think the closest idiom to this would be “spitting into the wind”. If you spit into the wind, the wind will blow the spit right back into your face.
Thanks. And is it frequently used and common?
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### Author:  [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)
#### Post date: [December 20, 2011, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-self-insulting-when-things-are-not-improving/606629/54 "2011-12-20T10:20:42Z")
> [@Reza](#):
>
> Thanks. And is it frequently used and common?
It’s relatively common and people know what it means. It’s a way of describing a futile task.
> **[be spitting in the wind](https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/be+spitting+in+the+wind)**
>
> Definition of be spitting in the wind in the Idioms Dictionary by The Free Dictionary
There’s a well known song from 1972 by Jim Croce that uses the phrase “you don’t spit into the wind”.
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odkIEDi2x0g)
If you want to describe voting as a waste of effort than “spitting into the wind” would be perfect and people would know what you mean.
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### Author:  [@rhubarbarin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rhubarbarin)
#### Post date: [December 20, 2011, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-self-insulting-when-things-are-not-improving/606629/55 "2011-12-20T17:21:46Z")
> [@davidm](#):
>
> Are you so sure that a revolution would lead to something better?
>
> If you want the system to change then you have to participate.
No, revolution is a crapshoot really. Our country isn’t so bad right now. I might participate in a revolution, it depends on what sort.
I disagree with both Republican and Democratic agendas on almost every level, so I don’t see how participating in a system where these are the only parties with any power at all will lead to to kind of change I’d like to see.
I’m crazy, okay? I’d probably get kicked out of any political organization I tried to join. I think 99% of people who seek political power are unfit to hold it.
---
### Author:  [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2011, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-self-insulting-when-things-are-not-improving/606629/56 "2011-12-21T02:05:57Z")
Why, how about this? Here’s a little essay I found among the Yahoo! News reader comments just earlier today, that I thought was worth saving:
> [@](#):
>
> Posted by “ **The Storm** ” on Yahoo! News reader comments.
> 20 Dec. 2011
>
> THE ONLY WAY WE CAN LOSE IS IF WE DON’T VOTE
> …………………………………………………………………..
> NOW is the time to make sure that the systematic denial of the right to vote that Republicans are making happen all over our country is thwarted. This has been already enacted on many state levels and unless these laws are repealed or removed they will be in effect for the 2012 Presidential election. More important they will be in effect for STATE elections. Republicans are using the myth of voter fraud as a reason to deny certain people’s rights. Go to Protecting the vote. Org to see the facts and if you are effected………….
>
> These Republicans are the same people who won elections using Swift Boat and WMD lies. Birth certificates and voter fraud are this years tall tails that just won’t go away. They will stop at nothing, even taking away your RIGHT to Vote.
>
> Check your state regulations now. DON’T WAIT. Many states that have Republican Governors have used emergency rulings and back door tricks to get these laws on the books. They have even stopped early voting as well as ballots being sent by mail to our service people over seas. What would normally be considered a basic American right is being used as a way to deny 5 million Americans their right to vote solely for Republican political gain.
>
> If you need a photo ID then get one now. DON’T WAIT. Help others to get what is needed. Mobilize and force the law makers in your state to understand that voting is sacred, and it’s denial should not be used as a tool to win elections.
>
> CALL YOUR LOCAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY OFFICE AND MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE CORRECT DOCUMENTS IN ORDER…….
>
> Demand that these laws be repealed. Do something now even if only to cut and paste this post and put it on as many chat rooms and forums that you visit. The time will go by very quickly and Republicans are going to be happy with the more Americans that can be turned away on election day. A key new law in some states will stop people from registration the same day of voting as well.
>
> The Justice Department is actively investigating these discriminatory laws. These new laws have been designed to target certain people and this is the part of the Republican effort that is most harmful.
>
> This is a real affront by Republicans to win by taking away our rights…It need not happen if we are all prepared…….
>
> If you question if this information is true, then please do the research and learn all about this issue. Contact your State House NOW……
>
> Their targets are young and old and are especially seeking to discriminate against people of color including Hispanic people. They realized the power that you have and will do all they can to take away that power. DON’T WAIT. Hold on to the most important right for all Americans. Your Vote….
>
> They won elections in 2010 based on JOBS and all they have done is to take away voter rights, women’s rights and Education rights. NO Jobs, just ideological folly that can only lead to a totalitarian form of government. DON’T WAIT. Secure your right to vote NOW…….
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