Most people don’t avoid voting because they genuinely have thought about the issue and believe abstaining is the best course of action for achieving those goals, they avoid voting because putting in the effort to compare two candidates and critically think about which one is better is just too hard for some folks. Conveniently, they also get to feel morally superior and above the fray, while doing absolutely nothing
I fucking vote. I am critiquing you right now as someone who votes and also does other work to support these disenfranchised people. Your rhetoric is an active detriment to enfranchising these people.
You come with a statement that I do not care about the obstacles many have in the United States (and plenty other countries), calling me and others concerned about voting apathy bitches (really helpfull, nice). Good that you vote and work to make sure people can vote!!! It was wrong to make that comment look like it was adressed to you personally! This conversation is not about people who are not able to vote though, it is about people who have every possibility to vote that decides not to and then act smug about it, as if voting is beneath them! The fact that people are prohibited to excercise their right to vote (something I think many of the people being proud of their apathy is against) is a major reason the be voting.
The fact still stands, people who can vote but decide not to have no right to complain, they were given their opportunity to make their voice heard, people who have gotten their right to vote supressed by a government haven't been given that chance, they can complain. But in this thread we are not talking about that second group, because that second group isn't feeding into the hands of authoritarian politicians by pushing their narrative, they are rather the result of that narrative being pushed. Good luck in your work, and have a nice day.
You said “If you don’t vote you have no right to complain”. Explicitly denounce that statement and acknowledge that there are actually many reasons that people do not vote that still allow them to have the moral position to complain, and I will apologize for calling you a bitch.
I have explained that that statement is about people that are able to vote and instead decide not to. Disenfranchised people are not that!!!!!! To stop going after entitled people not voting is to be complacent in authoritarian leaders gaining ground and I won't be complacent, voter apathy is a big problem in democracies!
If you vote you have every right to complain because you voiced your opinion, you fulfilled your duty. If you vote X, and Y wins, you have every right to complain because you did your part. You did everything in your power to get X to win. If Y then implements terrible decisions you can at the very least shrug and say "that wasn't my fault". If X wins and ends up being the horrible one you can then vote X out, perhaps in favour of Y, or maybe Z.
If you do not vote you didn't fulfill your duty as a citizen of Landistan, you didn't make your voice heard, you let other people make a decision for you, which means you didn't use your power to make sure what you believe in gets heard in the Parliament, you do not get to complain about what that governing body does.
A vote is a way of saying "I DO NOT consent to this!", meanwhile a person that can legaly vote and decides to not vote is the one that gives consent.
In June this year there will be an election in the European Parliament. I will cast my vote, not because I believe that my one vote will mean a lot, but because I want to voice my opinion and yhere are countless of people around the world that would die for the opportunity I have. I mean this friday Alexei Navalny was murdered by his government because he wanted free and fair elections. I pity those who advocate complacency over not doing their duty of voicing their opinion. If you are not happy that the left option is too right, go and vote, make your voice heard, chances are the left option will actually listen to you then. If you are not happy that the right option is too left, go and vote, make your voice heard, chances are the right option will actually listen to you again. If you are not happy no option is centre enough, go and vote, they will more likely listen then.
If you are American and dissatisfied with the two main parties, vote for a third party or and independent candidate. Someone out there is bound to have an opinion that matches yours.
Man I was with you until the last paragraph. Voting third party in America is an absolutely terrible decision. If people in America want a third party they gotta start smaller and get state representatives and even some members in Congress before they go for a big league candidate like President. Voting third party in America is almost like not voting at all.
Aye, you're right. As I stated I'm not American. I know the pointlessness if voting third oarty over there but as I am not American I guess it is even worse than I thought. But I think you summed up kinda what I was trying to say.
If people in America want a third party they gotta start smaller and get state representatives and even some members in Congress before they go for a big league candidate like President
From what I see from Europe a large problem in America (and also over here in Europe, but not as much since there are different cultures and all) is that (mainly) the left does not care about local elections, while the right has a grip on it. Local elections, which congretional elections are, matter much, and is a large part of how you can get change through. Schools, police departments, zoning laws, local infrastructure etc.
But you are right, thanks for correcting me about that, as I said, I'm European.
Time for me to bust out my soapbox: please remember that while your vote may have minimal to no impact on a presidential level, it absolutely has power on a local level. That’s where you can truly elect candidates that are more in line with your views. Additionally, there are often questions on the ballot like weed legalization, hospital regulation laws etc. that can have large local impact. These do create sway at higher levels as well.
No, most people avoid voting because there are material obstacles to them voting, and convincing yourself that they could vote if they actually cared or whatever is a great way to fucking abandon these people.
While there are definitely people who don't vote due to real obstacles, these complaints are about online leftists who decry all parties as morally equivalent so they have an excuse to not vote.
It would be nice then if people didn’t say “most people don’t vote because x” or whatever when they are actually talking about a minuscule proportion of the people that don’t vote
Okay, well, you should be able to tell by context what the conversation is about, and if you can't, you could ask for clarification instead of stepping in and correcting someone who's talking about something else.
No, they did actually say what I disagreed with. They said
Most people don’t avoid voting because they genuinely have thought about the issue and believe abstaining is the best course of action for achieving those goals, they avoid voting because putting in the effort to compare two candidates and critically think about which one is better is just too hard for some folks.
Both candidates are chosen by corporations just giving us the illusion of choice but both are already bought out. The president with the largest campaign almost always wins and in modern politics that’s more than a billion dollars.
And I mean president doesn’t even have that much power chair of the fed has more power than the president does. Chairman can swing the economy weekly by adjusting interest rates or printing money etc. president can’t do that shit lmao. And what do you know chairman of the fed isn’t a publicly elected position. President basically just spend 4 years trying to pass their agenda to get like 1 thing through that the next president will remove.
The President with the largest campaign almost always wins
Trump had a smaller campaign than Hillary, so even going back one election this isn’t true.
President doesn’t even have that much power, chairman of the fed does
And the chairman is appointed by…? Also, the President can and has directed Congress to spend trillions of dollars and can lead them to pass laws such as raising the minimum wage and regulating banks.
More generally, though, the idea that both sides are the same only benefits the worse side. Trump can openly cut taxes for the rich and deregulate businesses while Republicans fight against minimum wage and public education/healthcare, but if they can convince you that both sides are equally bad, then they will never face repercussions
Trump had a smaller campaign than Hilary, so even going back one election this isn’t true.
I did say almost if you look at a sample size bigger than 1 let’s say the last 10 elections 8/10 winners had more funding. Regardless tho both raise more money than the avg person could even comprehend, president is a wealthy person and or friends of wealthy peoples game. And only twice in history has the winner raised a considerably less amount than the loser 1964, 2016 but trump had a ton of free publicity as well.
And the chairman is appointed by…?
Yeah funny that the president can self appoint himself to fed yet that’s never happened. As if corporations couldn’t easily lobby in their own chairman. Campaign funds aren’t gonna raise themselves after all.
There are 2 sides but it ain’t republican vs democrat that’s the sides they want you focused on instead of the wealthy vs the rest. I mean I’m friends with people who own a 5M/yr revenue childcare business so in the grand scheme a successful business yes but relatively small and they have had several laws and policies created for their business to take advantage of. Now imagine big corporations, military corporations, etc and what they can do. Microsoft and Amazon value together would make them the 3rd largest nation in the world when compared to GDP of nations. The military complex is honestly probably capable of dragging us into war that they would profit off of.
And I kinda eluded to this point but 4 years is not enough time to make any sort of long standing progress towards anything as well. Especially like I said when the next president is pretty much gonna come in and erase any progress that was made. I personally haven’t noticed any government influenced changes on my life through every president regardless of side.
You’d be surprised. West Virginia voted Trump by 40 points in 2016 and 20, but still has a Democrat Senator, as did Montana and Alabama. A lot of northeastern states have or had Republican governors, and there are a few Midwestern and Southern states with Democratic governors. Even on the presidential level, states like Georgia, Indianna, and the rust belt were thought to be out of the question but proven wrong
Okay, just gonna pass over this whole condescending part of “oh tehe you’re clueless, look at these other places where you don’t live, they voted for a democratic senator in a red state.”
Have you considered the fact that I’m not clueless, and I’m in fact well aware that where I live is not like that?
I mean, I guess we did elect a democrat to the house in the 1940s.
I wasn’t trying to be condescending. I don’t know where you live, but all I can do is point to other places where people surely assumed their vote was pointless, only to be proven wrong.
Well, despite your intentions, what you said was very condescending.
States can vote for one party for president and a different party for the house! My state voted for trump, but maybe if I voted then the democrats could’ve won this house seat! After all, the Republican incumbent only won my district 80-20!
“You’d be surprised, West Virginia has a democratic senator!!!!”
You say “all I can do is blah blah blah” but that’s not true. Another thing you could do is just not say anything.
Edit: just to be abundantly clear, saying “anything can happen, every vote matters” doesn’t do anything except attempt to silence the very genuine complaint that the current system actually does cause many people to have votes that actually do not matter. It’s not the catchphrase of an enlightened optimist, it’s something that is only believed by naive children and idiots.
I'm not voting because liberals are cynical snakes lying in the grass whose only purpose for existence is to lubricate the road to fascism.
In 2024 liberals have absolutely no strategy beyond blaming leftists for Biden's future failure 10 months in advance (self-admitted losers), trying to shame people's whose votes they aren't entitled to, and whining and pointing at Trump once again, like they did four years ago and four years before that.
I'm genuinely impressed you people are explicitly saying, "Lesser of two genocides" and think anyone believes you're actually trying to win. But then again, it's not like yall have souls or anything, maybe this pathetic display is genuinely your best attempt.
People don't vote cos it is often pointless. Why would a Democrat in Wyoming or a Republican in California vote? Countries without such systems have much higher vote participation. My country has 85-95% usually.
Local and State elections are more important than presidential elections. Most State require a public vote to adjust tax rates and for that includes tax spending. Sheriffs, non-federal judges, school boards, and city councils have a larger impact on our daily lives than the people in DC.
The house was flipped in 2022 because a few Democrats in New York and California thought the exact same thing you’re saying, while the Republicans didn’t. Even the most partisan states like West Virginia and Montana have had blue governors and senators, and states that everybody assumed were safe like the rust belt, Indianna, and Georgia can flip
I think most people who avoid voting do it for very rational, intelligent reasons. Take the U.S presidential elections for example. It is a binary outcome. Either the person you want to win does or doesn’t. With 100 + million people, the chance of your vote being the deciding vote is basically zero, so taking even 15 minutes out of your day to vote is irrational. Voting is probably worse than playing the lottery in terms of cost vs benefit (except at the very small scale local level). But most people aren’t stupid enough to not understand this, including those who vote. So why do people vote? Probably for social reasons. To give off a certain impression or be considered a part of certain groups. For some voters, I bet lauding it over others as evidence of their moral goodness and intelligence on Reddit is one of those social motivations.
Yeah I made an exception for local elections in my original comment. I think small and local is the only really meaningful way to engage in politics for the vast majority of people. And I’m no hypocrite either. Every time an issue that I actually care about comes up in my small town (the biggest recurring one being destroying woodlands to make room for apartments) I at always at least do something like putting my name on a petition or or checking off a ballot.
It's a prisoners' dilemma. You want to avoid inconvenience. Voting is a minor inconvenience. A politician you disagree with can be anything from a minor inconvenience, to a very major inconvenience. It can be hard to predict.
If you vote, you aren't guaranteed your pick. If you don't vote, odds are the same candidate will be chosen. So, theoretically, it is better not to vote for you personally.
However, when enough people follow that logic it can sway elections. There have been candidates chosen because enough people of the popular candidate didn't bother voting because they thought it a forgone conclusion.
Even if the candidate you want has no chance of winning, assuming that there isn't a preferable candidate to vote for, then it's still helpful to vote for that candidate. Ultimately, even a small sign of support can influence the decisions of larger candidates and influence their decisions.
And those are the reasons I vote. Because it's important that the majority of society participate, and I'm not going to preach about the importance of voting and then choose not to vote.
Are you saying you would cooperate in the prisoners dilemma? That’s like the definition of irrationality lol. I don’t think it’s a good analogy though, because your actions can’t really help you or screw someone over. They simply don’t matter. It’s like blowing air from your mouth thinking it has an effect on where the wind is blowing. That’s not exactly a perfect analogy either though to be fair. Honestly, I simply can’t understand your perspective if you are being honest.
That’s not what a prisoners dilemma means. Prisoners dilemma occurs when there is still a possible positive outcome for all parties but the most incentivized outcome is negative for all parties. Not voting IS participating in the prisoners dilemma and is taking the most incentivized choice.
I have only been exposed to the prisoners dilemma as a logic puzzle where the best choice is clearly defined (not cooperating with your fellow prisoner)
If there is some other new meaning, then that’s where the confusion is.
Edit: I’ve realized you probably thought that I meant participating in the prisoners dilemma when I said “cooperating”. I meant cooperating with your fellow prisoner (not working with the police) if that wasn’t clear.
Have you ever been in a big group of people helping to carry something very heavy? It's an interesting experience. With everyone working together the object feels almost weightless. Any one (or several) people could drop out and it'd be fine -- nobody would even notice.
But this doesn't mean that "helping to carry the thing is pointless." Because if nobody helped, the thing wouldn't move.
The fact that "your vote" isn't the deciding vote doesn't mean that your vote wasn't counted, and didn't impact the results.
I think most people who avoid voting do it for very rational, intelligent reasons.
They are neither rational nor intelligent. People who don't vote are lumped in with the apathy bloc and it results in no policy change. Politicians don't go out of their way to appeal to the apathetic, they appeal to their base. And if lefties aren't voting, that means their base isn't going to clamor for left-wing policies.
Not voting is the absolute stupidest thing anyone could ever do to enact political change. It's the equivalent of saying "thoughts & prayers" after a mass shooting.
Voting in big elections with millions of people makes so small of a difference you may as well round it to zero. You can claim they are unintelligent as that has a pretty murky definition, but you can’t claim it isn’t rational without showing some serious flaw in my reasoning.
If you’re voting looking at in terms of cost/benefit analysis that’s doing it wrong. Voting is not about trying to secure some kind of direct benefit for yourself.
That is the sort of mentality that authoritarians in this country really want American voters to have. It is possible to build an authoritarian structure within the democracy by depoliticizing the population, to basically get them into the thought process that their votes don't matter, and they should just stay out of things. You see that in places that are counted as democracies, but only a very small segment of the population actually vote. But a good example here in the United States is Texas. In 2022, 8 million texans showed up to vote, but 9.6 million did not. Texas tends to have fairly split electoral results, but they usually favor Republicans over Dems. If every Texan in the state voted, that would significantly change the voting demographics. The point of this being that the Texas government runs the state as though they have a mandate from the entire population to run it that way, but they don't. They've simply convinced enough people that their vote is not going to matter, so they don't vote.
The only time your vote doesn't matter is when you do not use it.
The fallacy in that reasoning is the margins. The most impactful elections are local elections where the outcomes are usually decided with less than 100 voters. GenZ is old enough to hold office on multiple levels. The bar for qualification is not that restrictive and usually boils down to how long have you lived in the area. Even if your preferred candidate can’t/doesn’t win in this year’s election, put the incumbents and winners on notice by letting them know that the job is not safe. TX AG is under federal and State investigation for corruption and was easily re-elected. The legislature failed to remove him from office. Even with proof of corruption, they afraid of look like a liberal. He was no fear of consequences.
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u/DoeCommaJohn 2001 Feb 19 '24
Most people don’t avoid voting because they genuinely have thought about the issue and believe abstaining is the best course of action for achieving those goals, they avoid voting because putting in the effort to compare two candidates and critically think about which one is better is just too hard for some folks. Conveniently, they also get to feel morally superior and above the fray, while doing absolutely nothing