A friend of mine asked me “does it really matter if I vote?”
The problem is: I don’t think it does. Not very much. The votes that matter are congress-people’s; the rest of ours are mostly noise to be waved away or manipulated.
But then I thought and said, “It’s really the only way we have of telling a politician how much we hate them.”
Well, not entirely. You can write letters, send emails, make phone calls (and so forth) to tell them how much you hate them.
Marcus, I’ve had some dark thoughts lately. And a worry about the retroscope in its focus on anyone who isn’t hardcore pro-government and right-wing.
How would you go about communicating and organizing with people, to any purpose, in a way that is minimally likely to show up on the radar of law enforcement or corporate overlords? There’s obvious stuff like social media is out and most email is bad, but what IF you need to talk to someone at a distance, or to arrange an in-person meeting, or to minimize the metadata available, even from cameras and whatnot?
Real free speech. Real free association. Things currently illusory if you’re not a huge fan of the existing regime. Can you expound on this? Hell, I’d buy a book about it.
If there’s a way to do that without it being a red flag…
Yeah, it matters… the problem is, people think what they do does not matter but it does. It does matter if you release an invasive species in your nearest creek. It does matter if you pollute. But it does not just matter if you do bad things, it also matters if you do good things. So many people think it doesn’t matter so they don’t try.
I voted too. I also call my representatives and tell them what I think. I also email them, and I sign petitions, and when I see them I don’t just shake their hand, I also give them a piece of my mind. So many people don’t though and I think it’s really sad… they think they don’t matter, but they do.
In some ways, voting is a massively multiplayer prisoner’s dilemma. While your single vote really doesn’t matter, the final result depends on the cooperation or non-cooperation of all of the other players the way it does in the prisoner’s dilemma. (And in the end, you’re still a prisoner!)
seriously? that is exactly the way the orange ferret wearing treason weasel was elected. by people not voting. if someone can’t even do one thing for their kids, for the future, , for yourself, for your country, fuck ’em
In considering whether someone’s vote matters many, if not most people make the mistake of assuming that everyone else’s votes are given. But they are not, as a rule. As ahcuah points out, voting is a multi-player game, again, as a rule. If anybody’s vote matters, yours does.
There is also the question of change. When I voted today, I was virtually certain that one candidate would win for a certain office. I voted for someone else to give a signal about what I would like to see in the future. One way in which we got to where we in the US are today is through people optimizing their choices for the present, without much thought to the future.
If voting doesn’t matter then Republicans are putting a truly inordinate amount of effort into suppressing it, diluting it, and generally trying to subvert it. The sheer efforts put into it suggest that it’s seen as a threat, and thus that it matters.
When I overcame my own apathy and voted to counter just one right-wing vote somewhere the results did little to encourage me: a right-wing party finally won seats in the governent, and surprisingly many at that. Part of me can’t help but wonder about the correlation. Continuing to vote against these *ahems* hasn’t made it any better, so perhaps if I stopped…?
Of course that doesn’t make any sense, so I guess I’ll just keep countering that one vote until everything goes to hell, courtesy of populist *ahems* everywhere. Delaying the inevitable. At least over here I have the luxury of several choices rather than having to pick either Satan or Lucifer. I also get Beelzebub, a few lesser* demons and a boatload of minority parties that seem doomed to never get anywhere.
Still the whole thing might be more palatable if I could just cast a vote against someone. Voting for “not them” has some attraction over voting for someone else. Part of that is the nose-holding you always hear about in the context of voting for US democrats. The other is that all the lesser evils do split the vote in favour of the greater one, and what I want most of all is, in fact, “not them”.** In lieu of better choices…
In retrospect this post turned out to be both depressing and off-topic.
Sorry and good luck with your thing. Well, better luck than last time. (Sorry)
*By size rather than amoral conviction.
**I know better than to expect actual results from the party I voted for. Except the a…hems. They deliver, unfortunately.
It depends on who is running for the office. If one political candidate/party is better or worse than the other ones, then it matters which one gets elected. Alternatively, if all political candidates are equally bad, then it does not matter.
kestrel @#3
Are you a rich person who has donated money to this party? Then, by all means, call your representative, and they will listen to you. Are you the average citizen with not enough money? Then they won’t care about what you are telling them. Sure, your representative might listen if you are asking for something minor/not important enough and your demands do not clash with the wishes of the rich people who have donated to the party. However, if your demands go against what the rich people want, calling your representative is near pointless.
nowamfound @#5
Plenty of citizens who didn’t vote felt like Hillary Clinton was just as bad as the Angry Cheeto.
Around the election time there are always people who go around telling everybody how voting is very important. Fine, whatever, if they feel like one candidate is better than others, then it might be important for them. Unfortunately, some of these people also do exactly what you just did and go a step forward—they claim that voting is each citizen’s duty and those who do not vote are bad people. Now that’s sickening.
Democracy and voting is just one big ugly theater. It’s meant to maintain the illusion that citizens actually have a say about what happens in their country. That’s not how it works. How many American citizens actually want their country to spend a huge amount of money on building new nuclear weapons? Less than 50%. Then why the fuck is America building new nuclear weapons? Oh, yeah, because those people who are running the country do not give a fuck about what majority of the citizens want. How many citizens want there to be tax loopholes for the richest 1%? How many citizens want banks to be deregulated to the point where they can do almost anything and get away with causing worldwide economic crises? I could go on with this list, but you should get the point by now—citizens’ desires are irrelevant for the ruling class. Oligarchs are donating money to every single political candidate. Thus, regardless of who wins the election, politicians will always do whatever the rich want them to do.
I assume that you know that there were elections in the USSR. Citizens could vote only for one party, but they still held elections. Elections are being held also in authoritarian regimes like the modern day Russia. The purpose of these fake elections was to create the illusion that the government has citizen support. Also non rigged elections serve the same purpose—they maintain the thinly veiled illusion that citizens have a say about what happens in their country. It serves the purpose of making the ruling class appear more legitimate. Even though the decisions they make go against what the majority of citizens want.
In my opinion, it’s disgusting that I’m forced to cast my ballot and participate in this democracy theater. Yet the problem is that if I didn’t vote at all, it would be even worse than voting. It depends on who is running for the office, but often some candidates are ever worse than others.
Never mind that I cannot even choose to vote for a party whose program I could support. Here’s a short list of some things I’d like: 1) free healthcare and education in state owned hospitals and universities; 2) phasing out of fossil fuels, 3) stronger regulations about environmental pollution, 4) taxing the rich, 5) equal rights for LGBTQ people, 6) reduced military spending. The problem is that there are no political parties campaigning about these issues. Instead we have a horde of free market worshipers, conservatives talking about family values (a.k.a. misogyny and LGBTQ discrimination) and, on top of that, everybody is in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry.
It’s hard to see the point with people like Pelosi in charge. No plans to impeach Trump, already talking of “bipartisanship” and “checks & balances.”
Started thinking a bit ago, why do we still have districts or decide any government representation beyond city/county by geography?
How about something like a party-list system where Reps get distributed directly to state/nationwide parties depending on how many people have registered to that party. Each citizen gets sent a yearly form to update their party registrations, with their one vote being split among as many parties as they like, and asking if they would like to be a Rep for any of those parties. After that, Reps are apportioned to the parties based on that year’s registered votes and chosen (via decent voting system like Satisfaction Approval Voting or Proportional Approval Voting) by those who registered with the party that year from among those who indicated they would like to be a Rep for that party. Don’t like the Democratic party but hate the Reprehensibles with the fury of a billion stars, then start a new party and get at least 0.05% of the population to join to be placed on the yearly form’s list of active parties. The yearly registration form also includes that year’s platform for each party that must be adhered to by the Rep, otherwise the Rep can be recalled by the party and/or the party stripped of active status for deception.
Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but I think you hold elected people accountable and keep reminding them you’re watching them. No, I’m not wealthy or important by any stretch of the imagination, but I do it anyway.
Just imagine if the entire population of my state called up the state representative and told them they want fair rights for LGBTQ people. And that they damn well better get them. Yes, I know it won’t happen because we do have our fair share of bigots, but imagine the impact that would have. What these people want is to *remain* in power, and they are scared all the time they are going to lose it. Even though money is important to them, so are votes… which is exactly the point made by Knabb @#7: they would not put so much money and effort into stopping people from voting, if voting did not matter.
People acting together can be an incredibly powerful force for change.
polishsalami@#10:
It’s hard to see the point with people like Pelosi in charge. No plans to impeach Trump, already talking of “bipartisanship” and “checks & balances.”
Yep, “business as usual.”
Ieva Skrebele:
Democracy and voting is just one big ugly theater. It’s meant to maintain the illusion that citizens actually have a say about what happens in their country. That’s not how it works. How many American citizens actually want their country to spend a huge amount of money on building new nuclear weapons? Less than 50%. Then why the fuck is America building new nuclear weapons? Oh, yeah, because those people who are running the country do not give a fuck about what majority of the citizens want.
Yup. And I don’t buy the “complain to your representatives” argument, either – they have all the polling data and they already know what The People want. The flipside of Knabb’s point @#7 is that you can’t say “they don’t know what people want” when they’re deliberately going out of their way to ignore what the people want.
kestrel@#12:
Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but I think you hold elected people accountable and keep reminding them you’re watching them.
If you remind them you’re watching them, they just try to hide things better.
Can’t we just guillotine a few of them pour encourager les autres? Like, the fact that two indicted Republicans just won elections – that’s a pretty good indicator of how well the political class is listening to the law let alone the public. Literally, there are people who are in line to be “lock them up” and they’re running for office while their party holds rallies and screams “lock her up” about a non-entity who used private emails (instead of a personal iPhone)
kestrel @#12
But do they care? My experience is that politicians simply outright ignore or just brush off any attempts to hold them accountable.
Maybe you are just lucky and things are better where you live. If that happened where I live, politicians would do absolutely nothing. They routinely ignore mass demonstrations (those happen publicly and in front of everybody’s eyes). Why should they even care about some private phone calls and letters?
Marcus @#15
Yes, it’s no surprise that many important laws get passed without much attention from mass media.
Ieva Skrebele @9, The only place I see a hope of change is with the work started by Cenk Uygur of the TYT Network. They’ve got two initiatives currently in play:
Justice Democrats which is supporting progressive candidates to office like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Currently they’ve seated 7 candidates. They don’t take large corporate or private donations and support everything you’ve mentioned. Their long-term strategy is to take over the Democratic party from the inside; somewhat like the Tea-Party did to the Republicans.
Wolf-PAC is a non-partisan political action group set on passing a constitutional amendment to fix campaign financing. They’re doing this through a state-by-state effort and already have it passed in 5 states.
abbeycadabra@2: There a reason that most ‘insecure’ communication (non-coded) used by the CIA is only phone calls and snail mail.
True story: I was interviewed by the CIA several times in the last few years before deciding that even if they offered me a job, I was going to turn it down (which is the only reason I can even say this).