Voting is not a waste of time! It is time-consuming and slightly painful, but I always get a cookie and cup of juice afterwards and I can take off the bandage by bedtime.
Voting takes no more than a few minutes.
Waiting in line, and working one’s way through the election judges can take longer than a few minutes. Have you ever voted?
I didn’t mean that you got more votes, I meant that if a lot of people listened to you, then it would make a difference. One way of evaluating the ethical validity of a position is to examine what would happen if it were widely adopted. One person crapping in a river may not make much of a difference = a whole city doing it does.
In fact lots of people don’t vote, judging from our horribly low turnout. Do you think we are better off for this?
Are you aware of the new way of donating, begun after the Haiti earthquake, in which people donate a dollar or so by texting? Our NPR station has started this also. Oddly, the strategy you are pooh-pooing here seems to work.
Right. Among other things, Palin and Biden being one heartbeat away from the presidency are exactly the same. And tell that to the widow of a loyal soldier who got his ass shot off in Iraq because that scumbag Bush had to show he was more of a man than Daddy. :rolleyes:
In my town the issues were a bit bigger. The idiots wanted to bring the As in here, costing the city a fortune, in a place not near public transportation, and guaranteed to clog up traffic. Fortunately it got stopped, but if it hadn’t the guy sitting in even worse traffic than we have now might have decided that voting was a good idea after all.
I go early, and there is seldom a line, which is disappointing, actually. I make up a cheat sheet, because around here you can’t tell the propositions without a scorecard. But voting almost never takes longer than getting a burger at Wendy’s.
I think enough of voting that I take the day off and work as an election judge. Living in society gives us obligations, as well as rights, and casting an informed vote is one of those obligations, just like paying taxes. It certainly takes less time than doing my income taxes.
One reason I care about turn-out is that I’ve seen a correlation between turn-out levels and the responsiveness and honesty of local governments. Not a perfect one, of course (Chicago has high election turnout and a dishonest government, for instance), but in my experience a disaffected electorate that thinks “They’re all the same” gets the government they deserve.
So self-determination means nothing to you?
You’re not talking about voting anymore. You’re talking about getting “a lot of people [to listen] to you”. That’s called campaigning, not voting. If I get 1000 people to listen to me, would it matter if I voted or not? No. The results would either be 1000 or 1001…still no difference.
You’re cheating by trying to get more than one vote for yourself. You’re saying “If I vote, then 1000 people will listen to me, and if I don’t vote, then no one will listen to me.” Clearly that’s false, and clearly it’s the listening that’s important, not the voting.
That’s a terrible way to go about your business. That only works if the action in question has the ability to sum up. As I pointed out earlier, it doesn’t. Votes cancel each other out. They don’t sum like poop in a river or donations to Haiti.
And if I stopped and asked myself “What would happen if everyone did this?” then I’d never get anything done. “I can’t buy this shirt, because if everyone did it, we’d all look the same!” “I can’t eat lunch there. If everyone did that, it’d be too crowded.” “I can’t talk right now because if everyone did that, it’d be too loud in here to hear anyone.” “I can’t order the pizza before the game because if we all did that, we’d have too much pizza!” “I shouldn’t play the guitar in the park because, my god, what if EVERYONE did that?!” “I shouldn’t try to get into this university because if everyone did that, I’d never get in.”
No, there are very very many things, both big and small, that are right and proper DIRECTLY BECAUSE no one else (or not many others) are doing them. Like I said, if you didn’t vote, then I would have to. But since you do (and many others will), I don’t have to.
I think we’re no worse off for this. If those people voted, you’d most likely get the same guy elected anyway.
Huh? I said it did work.
By giving reasons not to vote you are campaigning, aren’t you? Not to mention social pressure. If not voting were considered slightly unpatriotic, like spitting on the flag, there would be higher turnout. Adding to the not-voting statistics validates not doing it.
Votes or non-votes only cancel out if matched with votes or non-votes from the other side. Do you find someone on the other side who doesn’t vote before you don’t? And there is no guarantee they will cancel out. Say people on the extreme left or extreme right choose not to vote because they don’t get the exact candidate they wanted. That would skew the results to the other direction. Is that a plus for their position?
Try again with an ethical question.
If I announce that I’m going to vote for someone you think is the biggest dumbass on the planet, that means you feel you don’t have to vote?
I thought your point was that tiny little donations, like tiny little votes, weren’t important.
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We’re not debating whether or not campaigning is useful. I said it’s a different issue and you’ve responded with “but you’re engaging in it”. I fail to see how that rebuts my argument that it’s a different issue, and thus irrelevant.
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It’s neither a plus or a minus for their position, because they lack the ability to change the outcome. What will happen will happen. The same person will take office. There isn’t anything to be skewed- the choices are discrete. If a candidate takes 51% of the vote or 99%, it’s irrelevant. So the extremists failing to vote doesn’t change a damn thing.
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Why? “To vote or not to vote” is no more a question of ethics than “to order pizza or not order” or “to play guitar in the park or not”.
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That’s the opposite of what I said. It was a contrast, not a comparison.
Campaigning has nothing to do with it. Pooping in the stream is wrong whether or not you try to convince others to do it also.
Extremists not voting can change 51% to 49% - and that does make a difference. I’ve already said that voting in stockholder elections is pointless because a small vote does not change anything. However, there is going to be one vote that makes it go from 49.999% to 50.001% - who knows if this vote is his?
And in any democracy, voting is an ethical question. Elections do change things. Now, I am assuming that you and other people who should vote are intelligent and well-read enough to have reasoned opinions, whether I agree with them or not. Some illiterate with a 2nd grade education who votes for someone because he likes the sound of a name can sit out the election without me being upset. Someone who actually thinks government is inherently evil may be excused. But the rest of us should do it. I personally think this country would be in a lot better shape today of a few more Dems in Florida got off their duffs in 2000.
Every reasonable person knows that this vote isn’t. The only way it could be would be if he gets multiple votes or you use other tactics like campaigning. Otherwise, he gets one vote and that’s never, ever enough to turn an election.
You still seem to be under the illusion that one vote matters. It doesn’t. It’s not an ethical opinion; it’s not a civics question; it’s a mathematical fact.
It’s only a mathematical fact if you already know exactly how the vote will come out. So long as you don’t know how everyone else is voting, there is no mathematical fact.
It is a mathematical fact then that absolutely no one will win the lottery. Clearly one vote pushes someone from losing to winning. Just as in integral calculus, infinitesimals may be small but they are not zero, and each contributes.
Your vote may not do anything, but by trying to convince people not to vote, you are increasing the value.
The real argument for not voting would be statiscal analysis, which says we can be pretty accurate with a much lower number of individuals. I wonder if a lottery for whether you get to vote or not would work.
Your vote is one out of millions. Hundreds of millions, in some cases. So your influence (from voting alone, not campaigning or volunteering or whatever) is something like this much: 0.0000001% Unless you have a population of 1, no single vote will determine an election. Even if it ends up 50%+1, you still need that first 50%. Sure, you have an influence, but in large elections, that influence is infinitesimal.
Also, it’s not like a lottery at all. Or if it is, it’s like sharing the winnings with 50+% of the population. In a lottery, you have a statistically insignificant chance at a very significant prize. In an election (of suitable size), your influence is never more than statistically insignificant.
Isaac Asimov wrote a story, called Franchise, based on this very premise, taken to an extreme. The giant Multivac computer selects a single representative of humanity to interview, and based on the answers, it can determine how the election would have went, eliminating the need for an actual costly election.
We already do know how the vote will come out. We know months ahead of time. Election futures markets are damn near perfect a week (or more) ahead of time. We knew that a Democrat would win the White House a whole 12 months beforehand!
Voting is not some magical act. It’s merely a census of opinion. And that’s exactly what the hundreds (thousands?) of polls are.
Note my use of the word “exactly.” Unless you know exactly what the vote is going to be, there is no mathematical fact.