Election day

[unixronin]

To be a citizen in a democracy, representative or direct, is not just a privilege.  It is also a responsibility, to keep that democracy on the right track and see that it does not go astray.  A citizen of that democracy who has the right to vote, who is happy to partake in the privileges, but who cannot be bothered to exercise the responsibility of using their vote, is only half a citizen.

I went out and voted today.  Did you?

(It was an optical-scan paper ballot, by the way.)

Comments

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

I haven't yet, but will when I get off work this evening.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

Voting is a civic duty. It is not a right. Yes, I have voted. That makes three of four voters in my household that have been to the polls. The last one goes when she comes home from school.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

There's a reason I picked this particular usericon for this post. It is the character chugo, standing for duty and loyalty in the samurai code of Bushido.

It is indeed a duty. However, it is a duty which not every citizen of every democracy has had the right to perform. Universal suffrage is taken for granted now, but historically it is comparatively rare. This is the larger context in which I chose my words.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

I missed the icon's meaning. My Orient background comes from China.

[gdmusumeci.livejournal.com]

I voted about two weeks ago (this permanent absentee thing is pretty nice).

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Permanent absentee?

[gdmusumeci.livejournal.com]

Yup (http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/elections_m.htm#perm) -- they basically just mail you a ballot and you mail it back every election.

[plutosonium.livejournal.com]

Indeed I did.

I have a friend here who "doesn't care to vote." Her parents never voted, and neither has she. I wish I could think of an argument that would get through to her for why it's important.

[radarrider.livejournal.com]

It's simple. Just tell her, "If you don't vote, you can't bitch." The rest of the argument should flow naturally from there.

[plutosonium.livejournal.com]

Nope. While I was sitting there, flabbergasted, she pointed out that she doesn't bitch. Which is true.

[nephthys510.livejournal.com]

Are they well-informed people? Are they intellectually curious about their country and it's place in the world? Or do they just go with the flow?

If they don't understand the issues and what is going on, I'd rather not have them vote at all.

[plutosonium.livejournal.com]

She's more of a go with the flow type.

However, I personally feel that it's one's civic duty to make one's self aware of the issues at stake and vote. We all have a role in determining the path the country takes.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

There is a pretty strong case for "rational apathy" in voting. It is along the lines of, your vote doesn't matter in the whole tide of the election, type of thing. It leads to a paradox. If you don't vote because your vote, individually, doesn't matter, fewer people vote, so their ballots have a disproportionate influence.

I just fall back on the privileges and obligations of citizenship. Part of the obligation is voting. But I still sometimes cry singing the national anthem.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

The horrible thought just occurred to me that if enough of the right people didn't bother voting because their individual ballots didn't matter, instead of the slim probability of President Hillary Clinton, we could be looking at President Dianne Feinstein.


I need to go scrub my brain out with bleach now.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

I'm using lysol! Ewww!

[zaitcev.livejournal.com]

I am not completely convinced that making everyone to vote is desirable. So, someone does not care for their stake in the franchize. That's fine, more is left for me.

[nephthys510.livejournal.com]

Well said

[fatcook.livejournal.com]

My Husband and I are going to vote tonight. This the duty my many-greats fought for me to have and I'm not going to let them down. Other than a couple of school bond elections, I haven't miss a vote since I registered when I was 18.
I turned my Husband into a voter simply by dragging him to the his local polling place when we were dating. Up till then he had registered but didn't vote.

VOTE!: It's just not for the few.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Why should I vote, when it's highly statistically improbable for my ballot to have any influence on the election whatsoever?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Well, as radarrider points out, if you don't vote, you don't have a leg to stand on to complain about the result.

But more importantly ..... No, there's little chance your ballot will be the one that turns an election. It is statistically improbable for your ballot, individually, to influence the outcome of the election. The same is individually true of every ballot that will be cast in this election, and every ballot cast in 2004. Likewise, it is statistically insignificant that any given hydrogen atom in the Sun will undergo fusion in any specified second.

Nevertheless, the Sun continues to burn; and 62,040,610 of those individually statistically insignificant ballots resulted in the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004 by a margin of only some three million votes.

What does it cost you to vote? Are you willing to take the chance of being the one vote by which some electoral race significant to you is lost? Remember: The chance of your individual ballot being significant is not one in [total number of ballots cast], it's one in [margin of victory or loss for your candidate]. Remember also that the more people don't vote because they can't be bothered, don't care, or don't believe their vote matters, the more elections will be decided by voters who don't even care about or even understand the issues, they just go out and reflexively vote a straight party ticket, just like Daddy and his daddy before him.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Your argument follows from a false premise. Many, many people will vote regardless of whether or not I do. Specifically:

* The fact that most of the electorate is stupid is independent of whether or not I vote, so I'm perfectly within my rights to complain about their stupidity

* The closest statewide election I can recall is several hundred ballots are presidential Florida 2000 and a gubernatorial race I can't remember. For the sake of argument, let's say the margin is 100. If I don't vote, my candidate wins by 99 or loses by 101. No difference, esp. if the random noise due to counting error is comparable to or greater than margin/total.

* The only way my not voting affects the choice of others to vote is by talking about it like this :)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I didn't say other people wouldn't vote because you didn't. But what if you don't vote, and a hundred of your best friends who have very similar political leanings also don't vote because of very similar logic?

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Yes, we should whisper :P

Wasn't it your idea to combine the ballot and tax return? I would probably bother bubbling for my candidate if i were already sitting down to compute my pound of flesh. I also suspect that the electorate would be much more libertarian-minded under such a scheme ...

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

So do I. I think it probably brings new sharpness to the question of who will best serve you in public office if you're making the decision right after being painfully reminded of how much of the fruits of your labors your "representatives" spent last year.

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

yes i did!