Interesting way to look at the 2016 election
https://twitter.com/HeidiBriones/status/1255558100636950533/photo/1
A number of times in recent Presidential elections the number of people who didn’t vote was more than the number who voted for the winner. It appears that there has been no Presidential election since 1908 in which more than 65% of the voters voted for President. There have only been five Presidential elections over all American history in which more than 80% voted:
Those who don’t submit ballots allow others to vote for them, not necessarily as they’d like. Abstain; accept being suppressed; then you just do not fucking matter. That’s why GOPs are so big on voter suppression and disenfranchisement - they can only “win” by canceling constitutional voting rights. That’s part of why GOPs are scum.
Dave Wasserman (Cook Political Report), who always keeps my optimism in check, calculated that 23 million likely Trump voters did not vote in 2016. I hope that the “likely Hilary” voters outnumbered them but that number scares me to death. Rachel Bitecofer (Niskanan Center) says that, while Trump will probably see a surge in vote totals this November (based on her study of the midterms), a blue wave is building that will dwarf it in turn. I just hope it’s distributed well enough.
/joking: It has come to my attention that many of you do not read all my posts. :mad:
The last time that Did.Not.Vote lost a Presidential election was in 1904 when it was narrowly defeated by the very popular Teddy Roosevelt.
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I understand why people don’t vote.
I vote, and I think everyone else who can, should. But, on an individual level, the choice not to vote is not an irrational decision. If you do a cost-benefit analysis comparing the likely results of you, as one person, voting vs. not voting, you might well conclude that, for one person, the costs outweigh the benefits.
My understanding is Oregon with automatic voter registration and mail in ballots has turnout close to western Europe levels. Around 70-80%
I agree with you – everyone who can vote, should vote (and furthermore, some people who currently can’t vote ought to be allowed to vote). A lot of decisions come out badly if we look at a cost-benefit analysis of our individual action, in isolation.
This is where societies benefit from having a rules-based system of ethics… If I steal a candy bar from the store, the harm inflected is minimal, and maybe in a strictly utilitarian sense it’s worth it because I really love chocolate. But if everyone steals a candy bar, maybe the store raises prices to cover the loss, or maybe they even decide it’s not worth carrying candy bars at all – and everyone suffers. So it’s a good thing most of us subscribe to the ethical rule of “don’t steal (not even the cheap stuff)”.
Similarly, I think we’d be collectively better off if more people considered it their civic duty to vote, regardless of how unlikely it is that the their one vote decides the election.
Shhhhh. You’re right of course, but spread that message when you’re chatting with rednecks, not here among the blue-necks we want to vote!
Even in a small town election where your vote has a 1% chance of changing the outcome, and a convenient nearby polling station means you waste only $5 of your time voting, voting is “uneconomical” unless the value to you of your preferred candidate is $500. Voting against Trump, even in a swing state, is uneconomical unless you’d give up a decade or two of salary to oust the man!
Picking up your trash instead of littering is similar. Tossing your picnic waste instead of packing it to the next trash-can will have no cost to you — even if you return to that site, you won’t see that trash (if only because it’s lost in the piles of other litter).
This is the very strong case for making voting mandatory.