Centerfield

This is satire right? Otherwise, I can just listen to my kids (late teens and early twenties).

Civic duty is civic duty. I won't compromise on that.

You didn't vote for your mother? Dark loneliness shall envelope you ...

But if you and the other 10 people who didn't had voted for you mom, she would have won.

My response to those who say it doesn't matter is, "Just imagine if one half of the people who don't vote becuase it doesn't matter did. That would be more than all of the people who currently vote."

Won't win any arguments becuase it is inherently unwinable. It is a shame that we can not get at least 50% of the voting age population to vote; but the setup of the system does a lot to deter active participation due to lack of choices.

Obviously, no single vote is going to change the outcome of an election. But process is important. I vote in Maryland and my vote really doesn't mean much because the Democrats are probably going to win regardless of whether I vote or not (which is ok with me). But the process of mobilizing people is important. And collectively, people's votes do make a difference.

Marc is right. But it doesn't matter if the race is totally lopsided or incredibly close, one vote doesn't change the outcome.

And if an election ever came down to just one vote, they'd have a recount anyway :-)

Also, for clarification: the only reason I did not vote for Mom is that I was living and voting in another state. :-)

I think the problem is that ignorant folks think that their vote, by itself, should have some magical power to affect the outcome of the election, without any other factors coming into play.

I think it's not the vote itself that matters.

It's the IDEA that leads to the vote that matters.

To be precise, it's the EFFORT the person with the IDEA makes, to convince others to accept the same idea and vote accordingly.

You vote for what you believe in, sure. But if you don't believe in it enough to go out and convince others to believe in it too, then you have nobody but yourself to blame when your vote doesn't matter.

It's not the system that makes your vote useless. It's your own unwillingness to promote the things you believe in (or possibly your unwillingness to believe in sane, reasonable things).

If you had cared enough about your mom's school board membership to convince ten other people to support it, then your IDEA would have led votes that really did matter.

As it is, the message you sent your mom was that she lost the election because her own offspring didn't believe in her enough to even vote for her, let alone convince other people to vote for her.

"I don't vote because my vote doesn't matter" is just a lazy and ignorant way of saying "I don't care enough to make my ideas matter".

Bait offered? Bait taken.

It is indeed strictly true that most of the time, one's single vote does not "matter" in the very narrow sense of being decisive all by itself. Virtually all elections are determined by more than one vote.

But so what? What could be a more trivial insight? After all, collectively all the votes "matter" since they determine the outcome.What kind of a knucklehead would suggest that "to matter" derives only from the ability to have ones action's be solely decisive of the outcome? Imagine if soldiers declined to fight to defend their country because their life or death didn't result in enemy surrender.Pretty fricken' moronic.

Further, it's hard to refute the notion that the attitude that has been expressed above does matter quite a bit even if the actual vote may not. All those who help propagate this attitude serve to foster the apathy that inhibits change and preserves undesirable aspects of the status quo.

So even if you think your vote doesn't "matter," vote anyway because cultural attitude matters.

Move to Arizona. Then you may win a millionaire dollars for voting!

It doesn't even matter who you vote for. Just push the funny little buttons...

bk:

I am that kind of knucklehead. :-)

Yes, it's an entirely trivial point to say that one vote does not matter, mathematically.

OTOH it raises an important challenge of psychology and sociology: how does a society get people to do things that the Rational Economic Human would not do? Voting, not littering, getting soldiers to risk their lives (to use your example) -- far smarter philosphers than I have wrestled with the question.

I do vote. Even in primaries (sometimes). I believe it is a vital duty, regardless of how competitive the elections are.

As to your point my attitude: lots of organizations try to encourage voting by saying every vote makes a difference. To me that's unpersuasive because it is literally not true. I wonder if they'd be more successful by promoting the vote as a civic duty (my guess: probably not. I'm just a nerd.)

Or maybe we should consider Rational Economic Human, and give $5 to everyone who votes.

Partisanship in Congress is increasingly becoming a problem. I blame the moderates. Not the moderate Congressmen, the Blue Dog Democrats, etc. Moderate voters. There may be flaws in the system we have in America, but there is an easy way to fix it: voting. The far right and far left are able to control the different parties not through lies and deciet, but because they care enough to register in advance, know who they want in office, and show up and vote at every election.

They don’t need to be told they can change the world. No one has to scream at them to “Vote or die”. They don’t complain that one vote never changed anything. They don’t nitpick over the exact percentage their vote counts in a national election. They don’t throw their hands up and shrug that “my vote really doesn’t matter”.

What they do is vote. They add one drop to the ocean, and one grain of sand to the beach. If every moderate and rational and reasonable person decided to throw caution in the wind and just care enough to find someone who best fit their vision for this country, not just for President, but for Senator and Representative and State representation, then we could all be better off and happier with our government.

There are a million reasons not to bother, we may even debate them here from time to time. But there is one reason to bother: It can and does matter.

- Burr

It probably goes without saying that the fact that lots of people agree with you, especially in primary elections, is the reason that the choices in the general election are frequently between extremes.

wj -- was that comment directed at me? If so, I must disagree.

If everyone had my attitude -- that every citizen should vote because it is a civic duty -- I don't see why that would cause more extreme candidates to appear in the general elections. Just because more people vote is no reason that more extreme candidates would appear. The winner still needs 50.1% of the vote.

As for primaries, it's hard to generalize. In most states primaries are only open to party members. I don't believe the civic duty to vote means we all have to join political parties.

Paying people to vote would cost money. Instead, I think we should institute a $510 voter tax that gets refunded to you when you show up to vote. This would function as an apathy tax.

All the leftover money could get awarded to one lucky voter in a lottery. That way, you'd be incentivizing voters while keeping voting voluntary, taxing the most apathetic, and NOT spending tax dollars while doing those things.

As for primaries, it's hard to generalize. In most states primaries are only open to party members. I don't believe the civic duty to vote means we all have to join political parties.

It is indeed hard to generalize. Every state is different. But I would note that to vote in "closed" primaries just means registering with a letter in the party slot--it doesn't mean going down to party headquarters and singing Kumbayah or participating in blood initiation rites.

Some of my very best friends are hard-left Dems who register as Republicans to vote for the worst candidates in the primaries. How you use your vote is up to you. Broadening a party's base by registering for the other guys is a tradition I'd like to see more of. The country would be better for it. After all, neither party will treat you like an intelligent adult come election time, so why should you treat honestly with them? FORCE them to be Big Tent!

I know that sounds tongue-in-cheek, but I'm serious.

Tully,

Actually, it was directed at the comment (which I'm not succeeding on spotting right now) which suggested that there would be very few seats actually changing hands. If I recall correctly (and I'm a little sleep-deprived right now, so I may not) it was from someone who has said elsewhere that he sees no signs of any seats changing hands -- in his neighborhood. Could even have been you, I suppose; I simply don't recall.

I, on the other hand, see signs of my gerrymandered Republican district electing a Democrat. Which makes me inclined to think that there may be the big wave of changes that some have forecast. In both cases, I believe that what we see at home colors what we expect in the country as a whole.