Why some smart people don't vote.

[Valjean]

A choice between Hitler and Mussolini is clearly no choice.
America is an Oligarchy. Candidates for high office are vetted and funded by monied interests. Voting rarely, if ever, produces substantive change. Real change comes from dissent; from boots in the streets. Abolition, woman's suffrage, black civil rights, anti Viet Nam, United Farm Workers -- voting would never have made progress on any of these.

Today, though, politicians -- Republicans in particular, suppress dissent by keeping the populace insecure, frightened and distracted by irrelevancies.
In Hong Kong pro democracy protesters are taking to the streets to protest government-chosen candidates. In the land of the free, apparently, we couldn't be bothered. Just work with the system and all will be well.

 

[bilby]

I think people are conflating apathy with laziness.

In this context, I think they are the same thing; The difference is that it is called 'apathy' by those who think it's OK, and laziness by those who think it isn't.

 

[bilby]

A choice between Hitler and Mussolini is clearly no choice.

On the contrary; neither is a good choice, but Mussolini is fractionally less awful than Hitler.

Of course, if your choices are all as bad as Mussolini, or worse, then the third option - armed insurrection - is better still; but that is certainly not the case in the USA right now, despite what a handful of right-wing tin-foil hat wearers might think.

 

[Valjean]

Please critique:
If you vote, you abdicate your right to complain.
Your participation in the system implies a tacit acceptance of the results.

If you sit down at a poker game and lose your shirt, don't complain. You lost it fair and square. You agreed to the rules and results when you sat down.
Had you lost your money but not played, on the other hand, then you have cause to complain.

Vote, and you're agreeing to play the game and accept the results.
Don't vote, and the results are being imposed on you.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

by those who think it's OK

Or they think it's understandable.

 

[Bronzeage]

Please critique:
If you vote, you abdicate your right to complain.
Your participation in the system implies a tacit acceptance of the results.

If you sit down at a poker game and lose your shirt, don't complain. You lost it fair and square. You agreed to the rules and results when you sat down.
Had you lost your money but not played, on the other hand, then you have cause to complain.

Vote, and you're agreeing to play the game and accept the results.
Don't vote, and the results are being imposed on you.

No, this is not correct. Participating in the system does not end with the cast of a vote. Voting is the least possible participation. It is not the end of participation.

A voter agrees to abide by the results of the election and nothing more. Voting is what we do because most of us have lives to live and the sensible thing to do is hand the job of running the country over to someone who has the time. The voter can express pleasure or displeasure at anything the elected do between elections.

Those who don't vote are also free to bitch and moan, just as well. That's one of the basic rules of places where they have elections.

 

[bilby]

The right to complain is not contingent on the right to vote; Indeed, in the USA, the right to complain is enshrined in the constitution - there is no provision that free speech ceases to be a right if one chooses not to vote. In other democracies, the right may or may not be so explicit; but it is fundamental to democracies that there is a right to complain about the government.

Failing to take the opportunity to have even the minuscule influence that voting provides is foolish, but it is your right to be a fool should you so choose. Explicitly rejecting that opportunity is even more foolish - the one in four or one in five non-voters who are trying to 'make a statement' by not voting fail completely in their objective, because as far as those in power are concerned, they are making the same statement of apathy, laziness and/or acceptance of the status quo as the majority of non-voters.

If you really want to influence the way your country is run, you not only have to vote; you have to be actively engaged. Join a political party; raise funds; hand out flyers; go to meetings; write your congressman; stand for election; discuss politics with your neighbours and friends; put a sign in your front yard; help people to get to the polls; start your own political party; go to Washington or your State Capital, or to a politicians local office, and tell your representatives what you think face to face; organise petitions; sign petitions others have organised - there are a huge number of options available to you to try to influence things.

If you don't care enough to do these things, then by all means complain - that is your right. But please don't act surprised when nobody takes any notice of your complaints.

 

[rousseau]

Please critique:
If you vote, you abdicate your right to complain.
Your participation in the system implies a tacit acceptance of the results.

If you sit down at a poker game and lose your shirt, don't complain. You lost it fair and square. You agreed to the rules and results when you sat down.
Had you lost your money but not played, on the other hand, then you have cause to complain.

Vote, and you're agreeing to play the game and accept the results.
Don't vote, and the results are being imposed on you.

My critique?

If you say this non-ironically you're an annoying parrot.

I could write an essay on the subject.. but I'll not do that.

 

[barbos]

Does US permits voting against all candidates?
Smart people can use that option I think.

 

[Juma]

a common misconception: the problem is not security. The important requirement is that the voter must never be able to prove who he voted for.

Why is that a problem?

Because it should not be possible to buy votes. If there is no way that you can check what the voter voted (including no way to force the voter to prove what he voted) then buying votes is no good business.

 

[Bronzeage]

Why is that a problem?

Because it should not be possible to buy votes. If there is no way that you can check what the voter voted (including no way to force the voter to prove what he voted) then buying votes is no good business.

Vote buying on the retail level is the most expensive and least efficient form of election fraud. Successful fraud depends on access to the ballots during the counting process. This keeps the number of conspirators to a minimum.

 

[doubtingt]

I think people are conflating apathy with laziness.

In this context, I think they are the same thing; The difference is that it is called 'apathy' by those who think it's OK, and laziness by those who think it isn't.

I think much of it is neither laziness or apathy, but rather cowardice. They do not want to take a position and support anything, because then they'd have to defend that position. They'd rather just say that everyone else's position is wrong without offering any plausible alternative. If they don't offer their own position, then they cannot be wrong.

Another factor is naive notions that the government should conform to their own personal ideals, and since both parties are far from those ideals, "they are equally bad". But parties and individual candidates must be mish-mash of compromise, or they cannot be a democratic representative of the varied preferences and interests of the people they are supposed to work for. Even without corporate influence and even with perfect democratic representation, no party or candidate would be close to one's ideal unless one is themselves a perfect prototype manifestation of their community. Their are voters in your community that are "evil", thus in any valid democracy, there will be evil among the candidates and parties. Thus, the lesser of two evils is in fact the best that a valid democracy can produce. OF course coporations are basically violent sociopaths, so their influence is corrupting and makes things more evil than they should be. Their impact should be nothing more then the sum of the impact of the individual persons making the corporate decisions. However, there is still clearly some level of community representation within the parties or they truly would not differ on anything meaningful. Yet they clearly do. Their are often splite SCOTUS decisions and the nearly always fall along party lines. There are massive party divides on many important issues in health care, environment, education, science funding, etc..

The reason things don't seem to change much is not because the parties are identical, but because neither party has dominant control long enough to get any momentum. If the Repubs had the Presidency and a super majority in both Houses for 20 years, things would be very different (and much much worse), than if the Dems had the same level of power. Many voters naively think that their vote should determine who makes all the rules and thus should have massive impact. But that cannot be the case in Democracy. Your vote only impacts the odds of the relative ratio of the kinds of people sitting at the table as part of the negotiations.

 

[Jayjay]

Because it should not be possible to buy votes. If there is no way that you can check what the voter voted (including no way to force the voter to prove what he voted) then buying votes is no good business.

Vote buying on the retail level is the most expensive and least efficient form of election fraud. Successful fraud depends on access to the ballots during the counting process. This keeps the number of conspirators to a minimum.

And allowing voter to prove his own vote, or to vote in his home would make vote buying (or voter intimidation) slightly more efficient. And the beauty of it is that you don't need an inside man.

 

[doubtingt]

Political cartoons and memes are not the best way to communicate arguments (you often need more detail if you want to fully justify a position), but the advantage is that you get quick insight into the way a group of people think and feel. Why are there people actively opposed to voting? The perspective has always struck me as a little odd. These images are provided by a man who posted them in the Mensa forum.

This is the not-my-fault argument. This may be a good analogy at least in part, but it wouldn't help the position, from my perspective. Accidents like this one are caused by too many people driving the wrong way. Fuck-ups in politics are caused by too many voters voting the wrong way. The big difference is that you will be part of the fuck-up regardless.

All the cartoons are wrong in various ways, but this one might be the most wrong. Non-voters and voters alike are involved in and impacted by the accident. They are all drivers on the road, forced to go where it goes and impacted by the rules of the road. Politicians are the road builders who decide where it goes, how many lanes, quality of construction, and the rules of the road. All of these impact both the good outcomes (people get where they want to go) and bad outcomes (accidents). Someone is going to make those decisions, and all drivers are given some input into who those people are. Whether you vote or not, you are responsible for the outcomes. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice (Neil Peart, Rush). Non-voters are choosing to leave it up to others to choose who the decision makers are, and that choice ultimately impacts the outcomes. Thus, they are responsible for the outcomes too.

Perhaps a better analogy is that we are on a ship out to sea. That is what existence is and there is no way off it except death. If everyone does nothing, then the ship drifts uncontrolled with certain eventual destruction by running ashore, into an iceberg, or other ships, or a deadly storm. Thus, decisions must be made about how to navigate, where to navigate, what things pose threats, etc.. Everyone cannot make those choices directly, so the passengers each vote to choose the decision makers. Non-voters choose to let everyone else do the choosing. Thus, they are indirectly impacting who the decision makers are by choosing to either to make themselves part of the choosers or not. Those that choose to vote are not any more responsible for the outcomes than the non voters, and may be less responsible. The voters that made an honest effort to make a good choice at least did what they could to reduce the odds of bad outcomes, even if some bad outcomes still occur. The non-voters chose to do nothing to help. They are less culpable than those deliberately making choices that are bad for most people but good for themselves, but more culpable that the people making an honest effort.

The only valid argument for not voting requires one of the following assumptions:
1) All choices are truly identical and have zero impact upon the probability of any possible outcomes.
2) Not voting will somehow cause a fundamental change in the entire system of which decision makers are offerred as options and how they make their decisions, AND, this change will occur soon enough and have enough positive impact that it will offset the damage done by not helping now to make the best choices.

#1 is demonstrably false
#2 has not plausible theory of causality to support it. There is no mechanism by which not voting will force a fundamental change in the system.

 

[Valjean]

Would it be proper for non-citizens or foreigners to vote? How about if they lived in the country in question?

 

[Sabine Grant]

Would it be proper for non-citizens or foreigners to vote? How about if they lived in the country in question?

Usually, non US citizens legally residing in the US are foreigners. Just like me. I am a permanent legal resident with the right to work legally in the US. I do understand why though except for specifically designated municipal/local elections, I am not allowed to vote when it comes to your executive and legislative branches. Even though the outcome of any Presidential election and Legislative is bound to affect me as I reside and work in the US.

Further, any reducing of the budget afforded to protecting the environment in Florida will affect me just like it will affect anyone residing in Florida whether they be legal immigrants or US citizens residing in Florida. Any budget cuts affecting education in Florida will affect me if and when my children are still schooled. Increase in student loans interest rates will affect me as it is bound to affect my children attending College. Not reducing those rates will equally affect me as they would affect my children. For legal immigrants such as myself with children who are US citizens, we will be affected by any legislature affecting them.

Further, a repeal of the AHCA would definitely affect me no differently it would affect US citizens enrolled in the plans under the AHCA Exchanges. My point being that being a legal resident and worker in the US does not make me less susceptible to be affected by the outcome of an election. I am as affected as US citizens are.

Because of that long term experience ( I became a legal permanent resident and legal worker in the US in 1983) if and when I become a US citizen via naturalization, I will enthusiastically become an avid US voter. I certainly will not view myself as being "too smart to vote".