# Voting is a waste of time. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 29, 2010, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-waste-of-time/565681 "2010-12-29T03:41:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![shiftless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@shiftless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shiftless)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-waste-of-time/565681/61 "2011-01-03T16:49:47Z")
Voting is ALMOST completely pointless. My vote is one tiny nudge in a system with over 300 million other people nudging the system, like Brownian motion. And that nudge is usually restricted to either a little to the left or a little to the right. While it doesn’t ensure that every outcome is optimal, far from it, it does help prevent some extreme outcomes and I think that is the whole point. If we wanted the optimal outcome from every political action we would have a dictatorship (the dictator would decide what optimal means.) The last two times I voted the wait was over an hour yet I go back. My vote counts for so little but the stakes are so high that it works out to be worthwhile in my opinion. Personally, I believe that not voting is a vote for neither of the two tired, old parties and one day someone is going to find a way to tap those apathetic citizens. ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-waste-of-time/565681/62 "2011-01-03T16:52:11Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > Note my use of the word “exactly.” Unless you know _exactly_ what the vote is going to be, there is no mathematical fact. But that part is simply false. It doesn’t matter if the error is ±3% if the margin is 13%, now does it? There’s no reason why you have to know “exactly” how the vote will be…just who wins. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-waste-of-time/565681/63 "2011-01-03T17:46:45Z")
That completely ignores the fact that an actual election must take place. People can’t be relied on to vote the way they answered in the polls, or even to turn up at all. The number of very close elections in the last few years highlights that – It doesn’t matter if you think you know who is going to win _regardless of your margin of confidence_. Until the vote happens, nothing has happened. And when things happen, shit happens. Voting happens in the real world with actual humans interacting with the physical world. With the number of contested elections that have taken place in the last few years, it’s frankly laughable to say that a vote is of infitesimal value. You simply don’t know when rubber hits the pavement how things are going to work out. In that case, the proportion of your one vote to the total number of voters is not what tells you what the value of your vote is. And in the vast majority of elections, you are not talking about hundreds of millions of potential votes. Most elections are decided with much smaller electorates. Furthermore, which poll do you take as the gospel truth? They veer wildly over time, with candidates frequently trading places. ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-waste-of-time/565681/64 "2011-01-03T18:34:34Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > That completely ignores the fact that an actual election must take place. People can’t be relied on to vote the way they answered in the polls, or even to turn up at all. The number of very close elections in the last few years highlights that – It doesn’t matter if you think you know who is going to win _regardless of your margin of confidence_. Until the vote happens, nothing has happened. And when things happen, shit happens. Voting happens in the real world with actual humans interacting with the physical world. > > With the number of contested elections that have taken place in the last few years, it’s frankly laughable to say that a vote is of infitesimal value. You simply don’t know when rubber hits the pavement how things are going to work out. In that case, the proportion of your one vote to the total number of voters is not what tells you what the value of your vote is. > > And in the vast majority of elections, you are not talking about hundreds of millions of potential votes. Most elections are decided with much smaller electorates. > > Furthermore, which poll do you take as the gospel truth? They veer wildly over time, with candidates frequently trading places. And yet not one of those contested elections has been decided by one vote. Hell, in Gore/Bush, the side with more votes _lost_! And are you suggesting that the importance of voting and the value of one vote vary with the size of the electorate? And the tightness of the race? Is that your position? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-is-a-waste-of-time/565681.md?page=3)