I suppose, but the best we can each do personally is just to vote and be thankful for the privilege instead of worried about the minimal unavoidable cost of doing so. These days, if Dems tried to push a must vote policy, they'd be attacked as freedom haters, and we all know the GOP will never push that policy because it would hurt them.Sure, but that seems more like an argument for changing incentive structures for voting on a policy level as opposed to an argument for why individuals should vote.
I suppose, but the best we can each do personally is just to vote and be thankful for the privilege instead of worried about the minimal unavoidable cost of doing so.
My friend told me that I should vote because every vote counts, but then that got me thinking. If votes are counted per state and not individually and unless the state is 50/50 or near that status with republican and democrat voters, then your vote really does not count. Like in Texas, without a doubt it's a Republican state, so if I wanted to vote democrats, it really makes no difference as the majority will be republican anyway, so doesn't that mean my vote does not really matter?
I don't think anyone would refute that. Yeah it's possible, just like winning the lottery is possible, but that shouldn't be someone's sole reason for voting. It shouldn't even be the primary reason.If that works for you that's great! Again, if people are saying "I know it doesn't have any chance of affecting the outcome but I think it's valuable for other reasons" that's their business.
My issue was with people who kept arguing that it does affect the outcome and I think the math on that is pretty hard to refute. (I haven't seen anyone even try yet)
I have a personal interest and I work in public policy analysis. Policy analysis isn't for influencing individual voters.
As for me 'thinking like a right winger', that seems like short for 'disagreeing with you'. If you want to vote thats great. Lots of people vote because it makes them feel good or to avoid public sanction or out of a sense of civic duty. I fully understand that.
None of that in any way changes the logical and mathematical facts here. Your vote is so incredibly unlikely to decide an election that virtually any effort you might expend doing it is an overall loss if electing someone is what you care about. That's just math. It's not right or left wing. It's just what is.
I think you are the one missing the math on this one. Let me ask you a question that should clear it up for you. Elections have outcomes, someone is elected. That means that votes create change. So my question to you is, if my vote is so incredibly unlikely to decide an election whose vote does decide it?
That's literally the same logic that people use when buying lottery tickets: "Someone's got to win!"
Do you think playing the lottery represents good odds for you? If not, it seems that the math is favoring my position pretty strongly.
Not the same thing at all, if you had any idea what you were talking about you would know that. Voting is a collective abstraction. Each person's vote counts for exactly the same as every other person's vote. If no votes matters, then nothing would ever happen. There could be no outcome of a election. But that is not the case. In actuality all votes matter equally mathematically. You argument would mean that one billion minus one still equals one billion.
Not the same thing at all, if you had any idea what you were talking about you would know that. Voting is a collective abstraction. Each person's vote counts for exactly the same as every other person's vote. If no votes matters, then nothing would ever happen. There could be no outcome of a election. But that is not the case. In actuality all votes matter equally mathematically. You argument would mean that one billion minus one still equals one billion.
Lets break this down to a much smaller scale. Lets say there are 10,000 people who are going to vote. You have candidate A and B. You are going to vote for candidate A when you get to the booth. You are the 9,000 person in line. When you get there to vote the count is 6,000 for candidate B and 2,999 for your candidate A. Is it worth it for you or the 1000 people behind you to even bother? Your guy cant win regardless even if ALL the people behind you voted for your candidate.
That is the situation most people face nowadays with almost real time polling and then you have the EC on top of that to nullify many peoples votes if you are one of the minority in your state politically. Even getting rid of almost real time polling would help motivate some people to get off their butts as you wouldnt know at all where your state was sitting till the following day for example.
There is a difference between saying that the conclusion of an election is determined before all the votes are cast as to saying that none of the votes matter. It is like a waveform collapse, we start with many possible solutions, with some more likely than the others, but we don't know which one will be expressed until we observe the waveform.
The argument that one vote does not matter is exactly the same as saying that one billion minus one is still one billion. Yes, once you reach one billion the other numbers after that don't matter, but all the ones before it is necessary.
It's most definitely not, because the question isn't "can we get enough votes to add up to a billion?"
The question is: "if your vote did not occur, would the outcome of the election be different?"
The math on this is super clear. The odds of the answer to my question being "yes" are so infinitesimally small as to not be worthy of consideration. As I've mentioned before it is true that the odds are not zero, so in that sense your vote 'matters', but it does not matter in any way that a normal, rational person should account for in their lives.
Once upon a time it did matter...My friend told me that I should vote because every vote counts, but then that got me thinking. If votes are counted per state and not individually and unless the state is 50/50 or near that status with republican and democrat voters, then your vote really does not count. Like in Texas, without a doubt it's a Republican state, so if I wanted to vote democrats, it really makes no difference as the majority will be republican anyway, so doesn't that mean my vote does not really matter?
"Now many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome — good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
And if your goal is to get the winning touchdown no one would play football. The goal of voting is not to be the one person whose vote made their candidate win.
It doesn't, and as far as I can tell, nobody is arguing that it does. We all know it is a collective thing, not an individual thing, and the more people that decide it is an individual thing the more our country suffers for it.People play football for fun and personal satisfaction, which is related to why some people vote. It is not germane to this conversation. The goal of voting is to make your preferred candidate occupy the office he or she is running for. Since your vote does not make your desired outcome meaningfully more likely, logic says you shouldn't bother.
I've asked other people to do this but nobody has been able to. Show me the logic. Tell me in explicit terms how A -> B -> C. Show me how you declining to vote changes the outcome of an election in any plausible scenario. If you can't, that should answer your question.
People play football for fun and personal satisfaction, which is related to why some people vote. It is not germane to this conversation. The goal of voting is to make your preferred candidate occupy the office he or she is running for. Since your vote does not make your desired outcome meaningfully more likely, logic says you shouldn't bother.
I've asked other people to do this but nobody has been able to. Show me the logic. Tell me in explicit terms how A -> B -> C. Show me how you declining to vote changes the outcome of an election in any plausible scenario. If you can't, that should answer your question.
One mispelled word will not effect this paragraph.
I can use this exact same logic for nearly any collective action. Smoking does not hurt me because no one cigarette is going to give me cancer. Eating this pie will not make me fat. Missing this oil change will not harm my car. One mispelled word will not effect this paragraph.
You're trying to make so many different arguments regarding voting that you're confusing yourself. In no way does anything I've said matter with regard to other people voting because I have voted.You're avoiding the central flaw in your logic. The events of each person's choice to vote are not linked. Therefore the argument "if everyone stayed home then X" doesn't matter because you staying home won't make anyone else stay home. Playing the lottery is also economically irrational but I'm not going to buy a powerball ticket tomorrow because I think no one else will.
If you're going to make that argument you have to be able to show how me not voting makes everyone else not vote either. (Or at least some large number of other people not vote) If you can't do that it is impossible to say your vote counts in terms of electing someone. Assuming you're a relatively average American, then you should see the same holds true for everyone else.
I don't see any mathematical or logical way around this. If you've got one, show me. Go from A -> B -> C explicitly. Tell me hoe your personal choice leads to your preferred candidate losing.
You're trying to make so many different arguments regarding voting that you're confusing yourself. In no way does anything I've said matter with regard to other people voting because I have voted.
Votes are counted once they've been cast.
If my vote for candidate X doesn't count, then every vote for candidate X doesn't count. Why? Because if my vote doesn't matter, than any vote for X doesn't matter. Yet that is clearly not true, as candidate X loses without those votes.
But what if Y originally won and I voted for X, the loser? Again, you're saying one individual vote doesn't matter, then that means every individual vote for Y didn't matter. And yet, again, that is clearly false.
And none of that is based on me saying that my choice to vote influences other people to vote.
I get what you're trying to say. I could have stayed home unless it was a 50%-50% tie. But that doesn't mean that my vote doesn't count when it isn't a tie. You're trying to make too many different arguments.
If you want to argue that each individual vote matters less the more votes are cast, then I would agree. It's why if I'm the only voter, my vote is the only one that counts. But it doesn't follow that my vote or anyone else's vote doesn't count if every possible person votes. It just counts less.
"Less" is infinitely larger than 0.
Once upon a time it did matter...
now this douchenozzles goals have largely been realized...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw
Paul Weyrich who laid it out very bluntly... the less people who vote the more it benefits a certain group of voters. Of course any meme that discourages voting benefits the candidates that he wants... "You're vote doesn't count" "All the candidates are bought anyways."
The thing they don't want you to know is that if enough people voted in all elections (including their local government elections) and not just for Presidential elections your vote would matter a lot more... good thing for them the corporate messaging machine works so well... after all you're stating your doubts your vote counting...
*e2a*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPsl_TuFdes
video with audio properly synced.
....
No, you're not. We'll count and see.I'm making exactly one argument, and it's a pretty simple one.
My vote determining the outcome of an election has nothing to do with whether my vote counts or matters. Oh, and that's 1.The odds of your vote changing the outcome of the election are so small as to be functionally zero. Assuming that installing your preferred candidate is the reason why you're voting, such small odds make it a waste of time and therefore irrational.
My vote counts and matters as much as the other X number of votes and helps to get a candidate elected, so, yes, voting does help attain an economic goal, whether or not my vote is the "deciding" vote or not. Also, 2.If you cannot meaningfully alter the odds of achieving your preferred outcome by taking an action, the economically rational thing to do is not take that action. Basic economic utility.
No, the only faulty logic here is you continuing to make some unknown and unneeded point about other voters and my vote.This line of thinking relies on faulty logic. Nowhere in this argument am I making any statement about what aggregate votes do. This is an individual choice. This may be helpful, especially the freeriders part and the second type of collective action problem.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~mcguire/collact.html
You can't say that my vote is meaningless, doesn't count, and doesn't matter, if you can't say that about every single vote that was cast. And if you do say that every single vote didn't matter or count, then you are clearly wrong. You're trying to say that just one particular vote doesn't count. That is wrong. It adds a tally of 1. It counts.That's actually not what I'm saying at all, and it's the same single argument that you can't refute.
Again, show me how your choice to vote or not leads to your preferred candidate winning or losing in a plausible manner. If you can't do so, you're implicitly admitting it's irrational.
There's no way around this.
I think you are getting confused by the incredibly small numbers we are dealing with here. While it is technically true that .000001 (made that # up, but if anything it is probably too generous) is larger than zero, that hardly justifies taking 30 minutes or more out of your day to roll the dice.
This is the kind of logic the NYS lottery relies upon in order to dupe people into playing the lottery.