I’m a young man, and have voted in a very few local and national elections. I did this primarily for the “experience” of making the pencil cross and putting the folded form into the ballot box. Now that I’ve had this rite-of-passage experience a handful of times, I’m seriously considering stopping for good. That is, I’m withdrawing completely from the political process. My justification is the following: my one vote makes no difference, so there’s no point casting it. (The only way I could make any kind of impact in the political world would be by getting involved very heavily, and I sure as hell can’t be bothered or be motivated to do that.)
I’m NOT saying that everyone should stop for this reason - this is something for me personally to (not) do. Can anyone give me a good reason why I should vote? And should I feel guilty for not voting? - if yes, why, given that it makes no difference to the result?
right, direct democracy. nobody would have time to do anything besides be a politician. business/manufacturing/food production ect ect. would come to a screeching halt. let’s vote to make him do that…
I’m 50+ yrs old and have never voted in my life, for the simple reason no candidate has impressed me enough to win my vote, period…
People are horrified, saying “but you MUST vote for somebody or your vote will be wasted”, but I don’t see it like that and am certainly not going to vote just for the sake of it…
All of the above. But you should at least vote in the primaries of some party or another because you and a couple of buddies with your own leaflets can swing an election there. Free beer works too.
If the system’s so f***ed up, why not run for office yourself and change things, so that all the other joe schmoes out there with 1 measly vote can actually feel their vote will make a differenece?
Sort of like joking that you’ll have a nice steak while the dude at macdonalds pops a zit in your hamburger and gives it to you with a goofy smile, while overcharging.
Still… I’d take zit burger over like, dirt and having flies on me. No wait… that exists so I can have the standardized burger in the first place.
hmmm, something struck me as I was reading your post CS. I totally understand the frustration and feeling of irrelevance that voting creates.
However, and this isn’t an attack, I think that you’re reason not to vote is flawed.
What if we applied this logic to breathing? I can skip one breath, and it doesn’t matter. But, can I stop all together? Not without disastrous consequences. To me, voting seems a little like that.
Or maybe it’s the reverse of when you were a little kid and wanted to take a rock from somewhere and your mom said “but if everyone took one what would it look like?”
What would democracy look like if no one voted? Plus, do you really want to let senior citizens with nothing better to do run our society?
Probably not too dissimilar to how it looks now. Hell, if we had proportional representation then the last UK general election would have resulted in a hung parliament (the logical end of all representative democracy).
Oldphil: Most likely yes, but I’d never be in that position…
Theonefroberg: I didn’t say the system was fucked up, and I’ve already stated why I’m not gonna get involved in anything myself. I’m not a whinger, just a cynic.
Gemty: Exactly, one missed breath makes no difference If the number of votes cast in my borough for council elections dropped to single digits (the equivalent of having stopped breathing) I’d probably start voting again.
You must act as is if your maxim was universally valid. (j/k) But if everyone chose not to vote, I think we would be in quite a mess, not saying we aren’t now tough. lol
Direct democracy has no guards at all against the rights of political, religious, and ethnic minorities. We at least have some now. I don’t think direct democracy can even work on such a large scale as it would have to these days. Though, it would be fun to execute Satyr or De trop. I’m still not sure which one is hated more.
If you were to think about all of your actions in terms of their ultimate difference on the world, you’d decide not to do anything with this logic. I mean, if you were to die, there’d still be 6 billion other people milling around, so who cares?
It also might help if you didn’t think about voting as just an attempt to get your guy in office; it’s just a part of overall political awareness, and it can do something for you even if it doesn’t swing the vote.
Alun: I don’t agree with that. From someone else’s POV, yes, I’m as worthless as my vote, but from my POV, I’m one of the most valuable things in the universe, whereas my vote is still worthless.
Also, voting did do something for me the first few times, but the novelty has worn off now.
Carleas: I know every vote counts, but does each individual vote make a discernable difference? No. You said: “It’s factually false to claim that it makes no difference to the result.” I agree, but only with respect to the tally, not the ranking of candidates. Unless - and this is highly unlikely - the top two are neck and neck, the removal of my vote wouldn’t affect the final ranking, and would barely affect the total votes cast.
Yes, it’s easy to vote, but why even waste 10 minutes on it if it’s pointless? I could spend 10 minutes every 4/5 years counting blades of grass too, to the same effect on politics.
Lastly, exactly, the way to influence politics is to get involved, and I’ve already said that I don’t want to do that.
Let me remind people that I’m not encouraging other people not to vote (although if they don’t want to, that’s np for me). I’m not campaigning against democracy here; rather, I’m just being a teeny bit lazy
Strangely its actually how a massive amount of sporting, community, charity and voluntary groups work and work perfectly well all over the world. In fact the biggest sporting organization in Ireland the GAA is completely based on direct democracry at grassroots level (they tend to be reactionary auld fucks but the actual structure of the organization doesn’t “make†the members) Even weirder many businesses have incorporated anarchist direct democracy to make them more efficient. With good electronics it doesn’t have to be meetings all the time. And it has worked well in the past
Maybe it should start that way and build up nationally from that basis
meantime
The GAA is the largest sporting organisation in my small country - just recently finished the rebuild of an 80,000 capacity stadium, budget of millions etc etc(they do have elected officials - on massive salaries - but only for a year - lower down it’s entirely recallable)
The SAC anarcho syndicalist union in Sweden is run entirely on this basis - membership around 30,000 (thrid largest union in teh country)
A substantial proportion of the country of Spain was run on this basis form 1936-1937
running a nation is far more extensive than running a union. does the union have a military? police force? fire department? does the union regulate business and enforce the regulations? does the union act as a charity for non union members? government is a terrible thing, but anarchy doesn’t work with humans.
OK this is a political argument and it shouldn’t be here and I don’t think either of us will shift easy but anyways
Of course the trivial answer is - well if humans are so “bad†why put the tiny minority who openly canvas for and say they want power in charge?
Beyond that I dunno
A. You’re entitled to your opinion of course (good of me I know! )
(everyone’s got a “view” on human nature - some are very convenient to the tiny minority that rule us.
I’ve no interest in making their lives easier for them)
B. I point you towards the link on Spain
C. What sort of system would you describe the internet as or this forum?
)