Voting Worthless?

[woolfe9999]

I don't think voting is useless. Both major parties are more alike than not, true; in our system of government they have to be. But there are still differences, some of which are surely important to the vast majority of people. If none of the differences are important to you, then at least you can select which candidate you think would do a better job. If the two parties' similarities are anathema to you, you can at least vote for a third party, which if nothing else moves the polity a bit in that direction.

I don't think I disagree with you here, but I want to add something. The political parties are actually quite different. Often the result of electing one POTUS or congressman/senator of one party versus another makes little difference in resulting national policy because that policy is determined through a process of compromise in a system where each party has enough presence to check the power of the other. If that was not so, I suspect we'd see a radical difference in policy. Which is to say that if one voting bloc or another suddenly decided that voting was worthless, we'd probably see quite a lurch in one political direction in our actual governance.

 

[Moonbeam]

There are a number of ways that voting can be improved but I don't see them every happening. NONE OF THE ABOVE should be on the ballot as well as voting in an order, your first pick but if that pick does not win then my vote goes to choice two and if not two to a third choice. In this way a third party would have a chance. Or we could have a parliamentary system where the congress is proportional to the vote.

 

[a777pilot]

To all that voted "Yes": Please don't vote on 6 NOV 2012.

Thank you.

 

[Moonbeam]

People already know their vote doesn't count. Most people don't vote, but fanatics always do. So money stirs up the fanatics with useless issues and create so much bull shit that the apathetic avoid the scene. This is how the rich govern.

 

[fskimospy]

Eskimospy makes a good point that voting individually makes no real difference, but this is true of virtually everything we do. Why clear ground when you can't live on bare ground? Why dig a trench and pour a foundation when that's not a house? Virtually everything worth doing takes substantial amounts of time and/or substantial amounts of help - why should selecting a government be any different? Just be thankful you have that opportunity to do your small bit. And don't forget the primaries; voting in primaries, and donating time and money, can have a bigger (if still small) effect on the direction of the country than does voting in the general election.

That's not really the same thing. I mean there is the famous saying that if you seek to move a mountain you need to start with a stone, and that's totally true. The thing is that a poured foundation is a concrete (har!) step towards a goal that if you continue to work towards it will eventually be accomplished. If you keep working at it the odds are 100% that you'll have a house sooner or later.

Voting is a step that you can only take once, and it is a binary outcome for utility purposes. Either your vote is the one that swings the election to your preferred candidate in which case it matters a TON, or your vote was completely meaningless and you wasted your time. Even in tiny voter turnout situations of just a few hundred votes the odds of the election being exactly tied without you are so impossibly small as to be not worth worrying about.

It's just a big confusing problem that people struggle to answer. We obviously need people to vote, but it's pointless for each individual to do so.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Voting is not worthless but the deck is definately stacked against the average person since Corporation are people they may be able to get to vote the next time the GOP gets into power.

You are sadly delusioned if you think Republicans are the problem. If it's a politician it's a liar and the problem. It doesn't matter if their is an R or a D by their name.
Republicans may be more pro business, but Democrats are more keep the poor down and unmotivated so they won't succeed and won't have to vote for someone to keep their gubment checks coming in.

 

[spittledip]

Voting is not worthless per se, but the system is now set up such that your choices come down to two sets of idiots, neither one of which cares about you or the welfare of the country.

I don't know how the system can be fixed either, it's been co-opted from within.

I agree with this.

Also, the culture is what determines who the candidates are and controls the political scene. The real trick is to fix the culture. Of course, we all have different ideas of what needs to be done to fix the culture and what the end result should be.

 

[woolfe9999]

Game theory definitely supports the contention that voting is a waste of time, but so does just a statistical analysis. Your vote is one among millions, and it only matters if your candidate wins by one vote. Pretty unlikely.

You are right though, other people voting is very important. Speaking in game theory terms everyone's best outcome is them not voting but their candidate winning, but naturally if everyone does that we all get the worst possible outcome. (sort of like a prisoner's dilemma, but it doesn't fit exactly with millions of 'prisoners') Our best bet is to tell everyone else how important it is for them to vote while avoiding it ourselves. Of course as Nebor's article noted, there are other aspects to voting like the ones you mentioned. There's a social aspect to it, a good citizenship feeling to it, etc. If the goal is to elect a preferred candidate however, voting is irrational.

As to the point of the OP though, he seems to be talking about a feeling of alienation from our political leaders because he feels they don't represent him. (probably correctly) How can a candidate appeal to 150 million people (or so) each on an individual level and represent each of them well? I just don't think that such a thing could ever be possible, and so the flaw is not with the candidates.

Correction, the rational thing is to tell *like-minded* people that it is important to vote, and to tell non like-minded people that game theory says voting is a waste of time. That is what serves the individual interests best.

As to alienation, it tends to be widespread when things are not going well economically. There is no reason to believe that elected officials in this democracy or any other are somehow getting worse in the present day but that is indeed a widespread perception.

 

[Siddhartha]

The 2012 POTUS race will have a major impact that could last at least 30 to 40 years with just who is placed on the US Supreme Court.

I think voting, at least at the federal level, should be mandtory for US citizens. This would deflate the importance or impact of the single issue voter and give the country a government the majority really wants.

 

[werepossum]

I don't think I disagree with you here, but I want to add something. The political parties are actually quite different. Often the result of electing one POTUS or congressman/senator of one party versus another makes little difference in resulting national policy because that policy is determined through a process of compromise in a system where each party has enough presence to check the power of the other. If that was not so, I suspect we'd see a radical difference in policy. Which is to say that if one voting bloc or another suddenly decided that voting was worthless, we'd probably see quite a lurch in one political direction in our actual governance.

That's certainly true. Whenever one party or the other scores a really big win, it considers itself to have a mandate and dares to do more of the things it would like to do, as opposed to the things it has to do. If liberals have a small turnout in a particular election, it drives the failed Democrat politicians to court them more, but it also drives the successful Republican politicians to the right by reducing the potential downside. Likewise, a small conservative turnout allows Democrats to govern further to the left.

That's not really the same thing. I mean there is the famous saying that if you seek to move a mountain you need to start with a stone, and that's totally true. The thing is that a poured foundation is a concrete (har!) step towards a goal that if you continue to work towards it will eventually be accomplished. If you keep working at it the odds are 100% that you'll have a house sooner or later.

Voting is a step that you can only take once, and it is a binary outcome for utility purposes. Either your vote is the one that swings the election to your preferred candidate in which case it matters a TON, or your vote was completely meaningless and you wasted your time. Even in tiny voter turnout situations of just a few hundred votes the odds of the election being exactly tied without you are so impossibly small as to be not worth worrying about.

It's just a big confusing problem that people struggle to answer. We obviously need people to vote, but it's pointless for each individual to do so.

It's true that voting can only be done once in each election, but it can be done over and over again in one's life. Although you are correct that one individual's chances of deciding an election is small, the aggregate effect isn't negligible even though one's chances of ever being the deciding vote is admittedly small. I suppose a better analogy would be building a damn by placing small stones, some of which wash away in the current. You need a lot of like-minded people placing stones to ever achieve a dam. In that sense you could say voting is worthless, but I'm not quite so individualistic as to think that anything that can't be done alone isn't worth doing. If nothing else, sex puts that idea to bed - so to speak.

 

[fskimospy]

It's true that voting can only be done once in each election, but it can be done over and over again in one's life. Although you are correct that one individual's chances of deciding an election is small, the aggregate effect isn't negligible even though one's chances of ever being the deciding vote is admittedly small. I suppose a better analogy would be building a damn by placing small stones, some of which wash away in the current. You need a lot of like-minded people placing stones to ever achieve a dam. In that sense you could say voting is worthless, but I'm not quite so individualistic as to think that anything that can't be done alone isn't worth doing. If nothing else, sex puts that idea to bed - so to speak.

Oh I don't believe that voting as a concept is worthless at all, just that it is worthless and irrational on an individual basis. There are many collective action problems that are similar.

 

[VtPC83]

To all that voted "Yes": Please don't vote on 6 NOV 2012.

Thank you.

I guess you are assuming that only Democrats/liberals would feel this way about voting. That is incredibly short sighted and single minded. Congratulations on not adding anything valuable to this dicussion.

 

[Patranus]

It all comes down to the perversion of the commerce clause.

If the commerce clause was enforced thought its actually meaning and intent then corporate lobbying would become irrelevant.

 

[airdata]

On a local scale where so few people actually get out and vote, voting does matter.

On the presedential level, voting is pointless and a waste of time other than to say you did it. Case in point, 2008. I voted for the first time. I voted for Barack Obama ( crappy decision. still better than letting somebody like sarah palin get such a high seat ) McCain/Palin won my state. So, my vote counted for nothing.

 

[fskimospy]

On a local scale where so few people actually get out and vote, voting does matter.

On the presedential level, voting is pointless and a waste of time other than to say you did it. Case in point, 2008. I voted for the first time. I voted for Barack Obama ( crappy decision. still better than letting somebody like sarah palin get such a high seat ) McCain/Palin won my state. So, my vote counted for nothing.

Nope, voting doesn't matter on a local scale either. Go see when the last time a vote in your precinct was decided by a single vote was.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Nope, voting doesn't matter on a local scale either. Go see when the last time a vote in your precinct was decided by a single vote was.

The 2004 state of Washington governor's race required 2 recounts and a court decision, with Gregoire winning by only 129 votes out of 2,805,913.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Gregoire#2004_Gubernatorial_Election

Local votes do matter.

 

[gevorg]

Local: yes, to some degree.

Presidential: no, won't bother, its corrupt to the core.

 

[fskimospy]

The 2004 state of Washington governor's race required 2 recounts and a court decision, with Gregoire winning by only 129 votes out of 2,805,913.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Gregoire#2004_Gubernatorial_Election

Local votes do matter.

So in the absolute best case scenario you could find your personal odds of affecting that outcome were 0.77%.

What other things in your life do you go out of your way to do that pay off 0.77% of the time or less?

 

[Moonbeam]

Only people in Ohio will determine who is the President.

 

[a777pilot]

I guess you are assuming that only Democrats/liberals would feel this way about voting. That is incredibly short sighted and single minded. Congratulations on not adding anything valuable to this dicussion.

If I had meant just Democrat/liberals I would have said that. I didn't.

Oh, by the way if you don't vote on paper ballots you have not really voted anyway.

 

[Infohawk]

Our two-party system is especially unhelpful right now. You have Democrats acting like their tired economic stimulus is enough to save the economy and you have Republicans acting like destroying government will save the economy. Instead, the paradigm has changed but neither party has any new approaches. A vote for either party is a vote for a third-world America at this point.

 

[a777pilot]

Our two-party system is especially unhelpful right now. You have Democrats acting like their tired economic stimulus is enough to save the economy and you have Republicans acting like destroying government will save the economy. Instead, the paradigm has changed but neither party has any new approaches. A vote for either party is a vote for a third-world America at this point.

Then don't vote.

Thank you.

 

[Fern]

-snip-
but with the ONLY people we have as choices. I would rather not vote than vote for anyone currently in office (or trying to get into office). It is clear no-one, on EITHER side, has anyone's best interests in heart besides their own.

"Life sucks and then you die."

Along those lines ^, sad but true fact is that sometimes (or a lot) in life you only get to to choose the 'least bad'. And that is not an inconsequential thing either.

Fern

 

[VtPC83]

The 2004 state of Washington governor's race required 2 recounts and a court decision, with Gregoire winning by only 129 votes out of 2,805,913.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Gregoire#2004_Gubernatorial_Election

Local votes do matter.

Isn't that 128 more votes than 1?

 

[Fern]

Yes, from a mathematical perspective voting on an individual basis is completely and utterly worthless.
-snip-

True, but only from that perspective.

Is not throwing your trash, or your car's old motor oil on the ground "completely and utterly worthless" because it doesn't make a significant dent in 'pollution'? Sure. Individually it doesn't count for much of anything, but collectively it sure does.

I don't think we would tell someone not to bother to recycle their oil because their individual act is meaningless.

Fern