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

[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.