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[i2amroy]

Also there's the fact that there's a fair bit of voter burnout as well. You've got town elections, school board elections, state legislature elections, various state official post elections, house of representative elections, senator elections, various other national level post elections, and presidential elections. The vast majority of these have no real impact, but they exist almost solely to burn people out for the other ones.

And yeah, about the closest anything has come to a single vote was within several hundred. I by myself will never be able to make a difference; 999 other people and me together could, but never just me.

[TheDarkStar]

Also there's the fact that there's a fair bit of voter burnout as well. You've got town elections, school board elections, state legislature elections, various state official post elections, house of representative elections, senator elections, various other national level post elections, and presidential elections. The vast majority of these have no real impact, but they exist almost solely to burn people out for the other ones.

And yeah, about the closest anything has come to a single vote was within several hundred. I by myself will never be able to make a difference; 999 other people and me together could, but never just me.

I've seen a local election where the two main candidates were within a vote of each other. It rarely happens.

[i2amroy]

Sure, but do you remember anything that that local election then had an actual effect on? In my town the mayor and most other town-level officials are basically just people who shows up at grand openings to give speeches and rides on floats in parades. I can't think of one thing they've done recently that has actually had any effect beyond a tertiary one on me.

[Tawa]

How about these ones?

[penguinofhonor]

.

[SalmonGod]

Desired reaction to lower voting levels: "Oh no, we are losing legitimacy! Better go do what all those non-voters want!"
Actual reaction to lower voting levels: "Cool, I can disregard the interests of even more people! To the corruptionmobile!"

Unless lower voting levels overall also coincide with a higher level of people voting for candidates they actually want.  It's not that I abstain completely from voting.  I only vote on candidates that I would actually be ok with representing me.  There just doesn't happen to be many of those.  And if this isn't how voting is supposed to work, then the whole concept doesn't make a lick of sense to me at all.

I can't respect indignantly giving up any influence you have on that because your vote won't fix politics as a whole.

I think less about fixing politics as a whole, and more about how my vote actively perpetuates or worsens the bad stuff.

For example:

Wyoming recently made it a crime to collect evidence or data on the state of the environment.  If you follow the link to see who voted on this bill, you will find that Democrats voted for it, too.  In fact, just as many republicans voted against it as did democrats.  Exactly the same number, if you count the absence.

If I had voted on the following candidates, then I would bear responsibility for the passing of this bill.

Stan Blake (D)
Joann Dayton (D)
Ken Esquibel (D)
John Freeman (D)
Mary Throne (D)

And if I were to re-elect them after this purely for the sake of keeping a republican out of office, what message does it send?  "I can continue to do stuff like this and get votes, and all I have to do is support a little more cultural diversity than the republicans!"  That, to me, is actively perpetuating shitty politics.  If we don't vote for these people, then the message it should send is that there's room for genuine alternatives to present themselves and have a chance at competing, although I understand the reality is that the D&R are very tightly allied in setting up as many barriers to entry for alternatives as possible. 

But the worst barrier to alternatives is this good cop/bad cop routine that they have set up over the culture war.  Voting habits are so tightly wound around this, that it actively undermines any hope of genuine alternatives gaining any foothold.  The only way it will ever happen is if we stop allowing this act to be the sole determiner of our voting decisions.

[i2amroy]

I'll restate what I'm trying to say. The impression that you, yourself, can't have any influence is one of the major factors that dissuades people from voting. Personally I don't vote because I don't care due to the fact that the vast majority of candidates that I could vote on will accomplish literally nothing of note during there time in office.

For example the 112th Congress (this is the national level, mind you, so they have the ability to affect the most change) from 2011-2013 passed exactly two bills that had any effect on me beyond a tiny change to my tax amounts, and both of those were extremely minimal changes (one was naming a new post office in a nearby town). I'd be willing to say that (in the US at least) the vast majority of important legal changes don't come through the legislative branch, they come through the judicial one. And as a reminder for those who don't live in the US, in the US all of our judges are appointed, not elected. That means that beyond choosing who is the governor/president and hoping they pick aligned judges (which there is no guarantee of them doing, it's not too uncommon to pick judges that you are misaligned with as a way of appeasing the other party), voters have literally no way to control who is making those decisions.

[GiglameshDespair]

Not voting doesn't show anything.

If you spoil your vote, that shows "I don't support any of these", but not voting shows not a thing. You could have just been too lazy to vote for all they know and they don't really care to find out.

[SalmonGod]

Not voting doesn't show anything.

If you spoil your vote, that shows "I don't support any of these", but not voting shows not a thing. You could have just been too lazy to vote for all they know and they don't really care to find out.

And if there's no one to spoil your vote on...

"I actively support this" vs [No input/unknown]

[BurnedToast]

And yeah, about the closest anything has come to a single vote was within several hundred. I by myself will never be able to make a difference; 999 other people and me together could, but never just me.

And every single one of those votes will be the result of an individual decision, and the sum of those decisions affects the world. You don't have to be the tie breaking vote to matter. Don't get caught up in the fact that you can't shape politics singlehandedly.

However my individual choice does not change the choices other people make.

All the other people who vote or don't vote are going to do the same thing regardless of if I vote or not. 999 others + me or 999 others - me is the same outcome.

Your vote is completely meaningless. You *DO* need the tiebreaking vote to matter, 999 to 900 is just as much a victory as 1000 to 900.

For any given individual, voting is just a waste of time and resources.

[GiglameshDespair]

Not voting doesn't show anything.

If you spoil your vote, that shows "I don't support any of these", but not voting shows not a thing. You could have just been too lazy to vote for all they know and they don't really care to find out.

And if there's no one to spoil your vote on...

"I actively support this" vs [No input/unknown]

If there's no one to spoil your vote on, there isn't voting going on...

[SalmonGod]

And yeah, about the closest anything has come to a single vote was within several hundred. I by myself will never be able to make a difference; 999 other people and me together could, but never just me.

And every single one of those votes will be the result of an individual decision, and the sum of those decisions affects the world. You don't have to be the tie breaking vote to matter. Don't get caught up in the fact that you can't shape politics singlehandedly.

However my individual choice does not change the choices other people make.

All the other people who vote or don't vote are going to do the same thing regardless of if I vote or not. 999 others + me or 999 others - me is the same outcome.

Your vote is completely meaningless. You *DO* need the tiebreaking vote to matter, 999 to 900 is just as much a victory as 1000 to 900.

For any given individual, voting is just a waste of time and resources.

But it's the collective waste of time and resources that adds up to something which isn't a waste of time and resources.  Despite everything, I'm not actually arguing against voting.  I'm arguing against the logic by which the majority of people do their voting.

If there's no one to spoil your vote on, there isn't voting going on...

And this is the case much of the time.  One of my best friends, whose political views align pretty well with my own, was hardcore pushing for people to vote in the 2014 midterms.  Put tons of time and energy into rallying everyone he could to go out and do it.  I didn't bother, and later on he told me it didn't matter.  The majority of seats were uncontested republicans, or republicans running against republicans, or democrats who upon research did not differ in any meaningful way from their republican competitor.  Most motivated cheerleader for voting I've ever seen, and out of every seat up for election, he only ended up only actually casting votes on a couple of them.

It's hard not to feel like you're living under occupation, if you're not a conservative reactionary in this country.

[BurnedToast]

And yeah, about the closest anything has come to a single vote was within several hundred. I by myself will never be able to make a difference; 999 other people and me together could, but never just me.

And every single one of those votes will be the result of an individual decision, and the sum of those decisions affects the world. You don't have to be the tie breaking vote to matter. Don't get caught up in the fact that you can't shape politics singlehandedly.

However my individual choice does not change the choices other people make.

All the other people who vote or don't vote are going to do the same thing regardless of if I vote or not. 999 others + me or 999 others - me is the same outcome.

Your vote is completely meaningless. You *DO* need the tiebreaking vote to matter, 999 to 900 is just as much a victory as 1000 to 900.

For any given individual, voting is just a waste of time and resources.

But it's the collective waste of time and resources that adds up to something which isn't a waste of time and resources.  Despite everything, I'm not actually arguing against voting.  I'm arguing against the logic by which the majority of people do their voting.

Of course, I didn't say having a vote was a waste of time, I said any given individual voting is wasting their time. There's a difference.

I gain from the fact the vote exists, I gain nothing from voting personally. Why should I waste my time and money voting?

[Graknorke]

waste my money voting

wat

Anyway think of it this way:  you voting may not affect how other people vote, but it does indicate the general trend. If we take that to extremes and say that every voter is literally you, what you do still doesn't directly cause them to do anything, but if your reasoning leads to you voting then so will theirs.

[Descan]

Why waste 10+ minutes (it's often much more), the gas to drive there, the hassle of lining up, filling the thing out, etc, for nothing?

I vote because the polling place is like a 2 minute walk from my house, but I understand how completely and utterly pointless it is and if it was further away I probably wouldn't.