8 ms·

Non-voters / people on the “there’s no difference” train also deserve a moment of reflection about whether their reality is true.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
I abstained from voting. I'm still happy with my decision. People actually care about politics again [1]. Maybe next time don't railroad my candidate (Sanders) during the primaries. I will never vote for a neoliberal or corporate Democratic candidate, even if you hold my country hostage. [1] Alabama has a Democratic state senator for the first time in decades.
- matt4077 9y ago
  I killed a man in Reno, just to watch their family start caring about the justice system!
- Pxl_Buzzard 9y ago
  Do you feel that you care about politics if you aren't making your voice heard by voting?
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    I donate to campaigns I'm passionate about (I max out my contributions per FEC regs). My dollars are more effective than my votes.
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  Alabama's new Democratic Senator won because the choice was literally "this guy or a pedophile?" That seat'll almost certainly go overwhelmingly red again in 2020. Sessions won the seat in 2014 with 97.3% of the vote. There's probably a Democratic wave happening nationally, but the Alabama special election is really poor evidence to use for it.
  - kaendfinger 9y ago
    Actually it's going 2018.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      Session's former Alabama senate seat is up in 2020.
    - ceejayoz 9y ago
      Doug Jones's seat is not up for re-election until the 2020 elections.
  - CocaKoala 9y ago
    Alabama's race was "Democrat or pedophile" and going into the race, _everybody thought Moore was going to win because a Democrat was considered more unelectable than a pedophile in Alamabama_. It's easy to say "Well the republican candidate was uniquely terrible, and that's why the Democrat won". But if Moore had won, nobody would have been surprised. Plenty of people would have been disappointed, sure, but nobody would have said "Well, I for sure thought Alabama would go for the D over the R in this case". Yes, there's definitely some unusual factors that went into this race, and the Republican party made a lot of unforced errors that let the race be competitive. But the fact that it was even possible for it to be competitive seems like evidence of a wave to me, especially when you pair it with the recent Democratic wave in Virginia.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Sessions won the seat in 2014 with 97.3% of the vote Which sounds impressive, except that he was running unopposed (not just no Democratic opponent but no other candidates filed for the election at all) in both the primary and general election.
    - ceejayoz 9y ago
      The fact that a Republican can run unopposed in a state-wide election of national importance is probably the best evidence it'll turn back to red at the earliest opportunity.
- moosey 9y ago
  I remember reading an article about Trump v. Clinton, and how no matter who won, it would reinvigorate the opposition for a generation. I'm not quite sure if that was true if Clinton had one, we'll never know, but one thing is for certain: The opposition to the current government and policies seems reinvigorated, and the generational aspect of it could be true as well. Perhaps this country really did need an enema.
  - slg 9y ago
    I think the reinvigorating the opposition thing already happened when Obama was elected. That is how we got the Tea Party and how we got Trump. The Democratic party that Clinton ran under wasn't that different than the party of her husband. The Republican Party of Trump is drastically different than the party of GW Bush.
- eanzenberg 9y ago
  Lul, railroad. Maybe next time "your" candidate will actually get enough votes? Maybe he'll pull out when it's completely infeasible for him to win?
- Sangermaine 9y ago
  >Maybe next time don't railroad my candidate (Sanders) during the primaries. I will never vote for a neoliberal or corporate Democratic candidate, even if you hold my country hostage. This isn't a game where you earn points for purity. You can pat yourself on the back for not voting for "a neoliberal or corporate Democratic candidate" all you want, but the election had consequences, one of which is Trump becoming President. Presumably as a supporter of Sanders you oppose most if not all of the policies Trump is pursuing, yet your refusal to vote against Trump helped enable everything he is doing whether you intended or like that. Real-world consequences happen regardless of how you think or feel about them. You're putting your own vanity over actual beliefs. If you truly stand for what you claim, you'll fight for it any way you can, even if that's not personally appealing or ideal.
  - tmat 9y ago
    Hillary would have been far worse.. Trump is under every microscope waiting for an impeachable offense.. Hillary would have had full immunity to take bribes as she pleases.
    - Goronmon 9y ago
      Hillary would have been far worse.. Trump is under every microscope waiting for an impeachable offense.. Hillary would have had full immunity to take bribes as she pleases. Trump is under a microscope only in the sense that people can point out how corrupt he is acting, but without any power to actually stop that corruption. And the idea that Hillary wasn't under (and wouldn't continue to be under) a microscope it absolutely ridiculous.
    - ceejayoz 9y ago
      > Trump is under every microscope waiting for an impeachable offense. Come on. Congressional Republicans held seven separate Benghazi investigations in an attempt to pre-impeach Clinton.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Electing Trump makes Americans look like fools, but Congress is where the action happens (ACA repeals, despicable tax bills, etc). Repealing the clean power plan? Natural gas and renewables are crushing coal and nuclear, and nothing is going to stop that. Rolling back net neutrality? Citizens get involved in local municipal broadband deployments (as it should be!) where governance is controlled by the local electorate. I'm putting principles (edit: autocorrect fixed) first. I don't fault you if you don't, but what I "stand for" (people taking an active interest in the political landscape) is still going to come to pass, even faster than previously with Trump having been elected (while notably, he has very little control over actual policy). Congress will see more tilting towards progressives under a Trump administration than it ever would have under Clinton. Step 1: Set fire to house Step 2: "Do we have your attention now?" Step 3: Progress
craftyguy 9y ago
No. Give me a candidate worth voting for, and I will vote. The current "pick the lesser of two shitheads" is ridiculous. Both parties in the US are to blame. The two party system in the US today means that voting for anyone that is not a Democrat or Republican is a complete waste of time.
- SEJeff 9y ago
  You could have voted for Evan McMullin, a CIA officer for over 10 years and all around stand up dude. There were plenty of other candidates. If you threw your hands up and did not vote, you're part of the problem. Period.
  - 282883392 9y ago
    Voting for a 3rd party candidate is next to worthless. The mathematics of first past the post voting guarantee a two party system.
    - SEJeff 9y ago
      You're obviously trolling, but if enough people did this, we would in fact be a three (or more) party system, hence breaking the stranglehold the two current parties currently have over us.
- nxsynonym 9y ago
  Give yourself a candidate worth voting for. Abstaining from voting is cowardly and non-committal. Your silent protest is worthless.
- eanzenberg 9y ago
  Interestingly, the 3rd party candidates last time around were absolutely worse than Trump and Clinton.
- Sangermaine 9y ago
  However you feel about the system, it's the system that exists. Refusing to make a choice in the system also has consequences, whether you like or want them. This action by the FCC is one of them.
snuxoll 9y ago
I was tempted to not vote seeing as I live in Idaho, I don't even have anyone running for local/state seats I want to vote for (our state district had republicans running unopposed for house/senate) and though I hate the phrase my vote literally meant nothing in the federal elections last year. I still did it, because I firmly believe it's my duty (and I personally would go so far as to say we should have Australia-style penalties for NOT voting) - though I did get to protest vote both Hillary and Trump since the latter was going to win my state anyway.
- Crisco 9y ago
  I too am from Idaho and voted for a third party candidate because I didn't feel comfortable voting for either Trump or Clinton. I know my vote will likely never change Idaho, but I still vote for who I think is right. The problem with most voters is that they choose an identity and then vote according to how they think that identity votes. It's why you end up with people who vote Republican even if it is not in their best interests. I try to vote for people that I think have strong moral character and will be willing to do what's right (in my opinion) rather than what's likely to get them elected.
  - snuxoll 9y ago
    > The problem with most voters is that they choose an identity and then vote according to how they think that identity votes. That's because it's sports to many people, they want their team to win - but instead of a superbowl title it's our nation at stake.... Being a liberal in Idaho kinda feels like being a Raiders fan at this point, now that I think about it.
- bigcityhobbies 9y ago
  I also am from Idaho and always vote- thank you. We need everyone to have this attitude and we may just shift the narrative off of "hopeless."
mancerayder 9y ago
We live in an electoral system. For almost all of the states of the U.S. it's actually factually correct that there's no difference for whom you vote in the Presidential elections. In many locations, it also doesn't matter who you vote for in Congressional ones thanks to gerrymandering drawing boundary lines around you before you even get to the polls. We can discuss ideologically what the differences are between the parties, but as those of us in CA, NY, NJ, etc. well know - it's purely academic. [edit:] Folks, it's a winner-take-all capital-E Electoral system in the vast majority of states, and in the vast majority of states, the demographic votes consistently in the same way. Thus very few states swing the entire Presidential election process, meaning that they matter. In California, for example, 3 million Democrats could have stayed in bed all day and not voted at all, and still it would have not touched the end result there.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  You could have said the same about Arizona And there's "no difference" for the average candidate, not for outliers.
- inanutshellus 9y ago
  Not sure how you can still have this "it doesn't matter" view after the 2016 election. If there was any proof at all that the masses had the power to give away their power, it was given November 10, 2016.
  - mancerayder 9y ago
    Great. So, I live in NY State. Tell me what the people that stayed home 'did wrong' being that it was an overwhelmingly Democratic Electoral win here? It does matter, but it only matters in small sliver of states, as those states literally can swing elections. Whether Republicans and Democrats have the same, slightly different, medium different, or wildly divergent views is secondary to the fact that for most Americans, the choice has already been made.
    - kharms 9y ago
brandonmenc 9y ago
I did not vote, and I see that as a "vote of no-confidence." At some point, a president will be elected with only like, 10% of the population having actually voted for them, and that'll be a crisis that forces us to overhaul some things.
- Fargren 9y ago
  It really won't. See Brazil. The president was elected with less support than that[0], and they are overhauling nothing. Don't think that things would be different in USA, don't fall to American exceptionalism. I recommend that you take a few minutes and honestly ask yourself what is different in the USA that would cause such a poor election to have a different consequence. A 10% will be taken as a sign of apathy, not of opposition, and as an opportunity to do whatever because people clearly don't care. [0]https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Brazils-Michel-Temer-Hits-a-New-Low-with-a-2-Approval-Rating-20170621-0031.html https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Brazils-Michel-Temer-...
  - brandonmenc 9y ago
    I'm not "falling to American exceptionalism" - I just don't think that because something happened once, in another country, in a particular way, means that it'll happen exactly the same way, in every other country, forever. I'll take my chances.

toomuchtodo 9y ago

I abstained from voting. I'm still happy with my decision. People actually care about politics again [1]. Maybe next time don't railroad my candidate (Sanders) during the primaries. I will never vote for a neoliberal or corporate Democratic candidate, even if you hold my country hostage. [1] Alabama has a Democratic state senator for the first time in decades.

matt4077 9y ago
I killed a man in Reno, just to watch their family start caring about the justice system!
Pxl_Buzzard 9y ago
Do you feel that you care about politics if you aren't making your voice heard by voting?
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  I donate to campaigns I'm passionate about (I max out my contributions per FEC regs). My dollars are more effective than my votes.
ceejayoz 9y ago
Alabama's new Democratic Senator won because the choice was literally "this guy or a pedophile?" That seat'll almost certainly go overwhelmingly red again in 2020. Sessions won the seat in 2014 with 97.3% of the vote. There's probably a Democratic wave happening nationally, but the Alabama special election is really poor evidence to use for it.
- kaendfinger 9y ago
  Actually it's going 2018.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    Session's former Alabama senate seat is up in 2020.
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    Doug Jones's seat is not up for re-election until the 2020 elections.
- CocaKoala 9y ago
  Alabama's race was "Democrat or pedophile" and going into the race, _everybody thought Moore was going to win because a Democrat was considered more unelectable than a pedophile in Alamabama_. It's easy to say "Well the republican candidate was uniquely terrible, and that's why the Democrat won". But if Moore had won, nobody would have been surprised. Plenty of people would have been disappointed, sure, but nobody would have said "Well, I for sure thought Alabama would go for the D over the R in this case". Yes, there's definitely some unusual factors that went into this race, and the Republican party made a lot of unforced errors that let the race be competitive. But the fact that it was even possible for it to be competitive seems like evidence of a wave to me, especially when you pair it with the recent Democratic wave in Virginia.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Sessions won the seat in 2014 with 97.3% of the vote Which sounds impressive, except that he was running unopposed (not just no Democratic opponent but no other candidates filed for the election at all) in both the primary and general election.
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    The fact that a Republican can run unopposed in a state-wide election of national importance is probably the best evidence it'll turn back to red at the earliest opportunity.
moosey 9y ago
I remember reading an article about Trump v. Clinton, and how no matter who won, it would reinvigorate the opposition for a generation. I'm not quite sure if that was true if Clinton had one, we'll never know, but one thing is for certain: The opposition to the current government and policies seems reinvigorated, and the generational aspect of it could be true as well. Perhaps this country really did need an enema.
- slg 9y ago
  I think the reinvigorating the opposition thing already happened when Obama was elected. That is how we got the Tea Party and how we got Trump. The Democratic party that Clinton ran under wasn't that different than the party of her husband. The Republican Party of Trump is drastically different than the party of GW Bush.
eanzenberg 9y ago
Lul, railroad. Maybe next time "your" candidate will actually get enough votes? Maybe he'll pull out when it's completely infeasible for him to win?
Sangermaine 9y ago
>Maybe next time don't railroad my candidate (Sanders) during the primaries. I will never vote for a neoliberal or corporate Democratic candidate, even if you hold my country hostage. This isn't a game where you earn points for purity. You can pat yourself on the back for not voting for "a neoliberal or corporate Democratic candidate" all you want, but the election had consequences, one of which is Trump becoming President. Presumably as a supporter of Sanders you oppose most if not all of the policies Trump is pursuing, yet your refusal to vote against Trump helped enable everything he is doing whether you intended or like that. Real-world consequences happen regardless of how you think or feel about them. You're putting your own vanity over actual beliefs. If you truly stand for what you claim, you'll fight for it any way you can, even if that's not personally appealing or ideal.
- tmat 9y ago
  Hillary would have been far worse.. Trump is under every microscope waiting for an impeachable offense.. Hillary would have had full immunity to take bribes as she pleases.
  - Goronmon 9y ago
    Hillary would have been far worse.. Trump is under every microscope waiting for an impeachable offense.. Hillary would have had full immunity to take bribes as she pleases. Trump is under a microscope only in the sense that people can point out how corrupt he is acting, but without any power to actually stop that corruption. And the idea that Hillary wasn't under (and wouldn't continue to be under) a microscope it absolutely ridiculous.
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    > Trump is under every microscope waiting for an impeachable offense. Come on. Congressional Republicans held seven separate Benghazi investigations in an attempt to pre-impeach Clinton.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Electing Trump makes Americans look like fools, but Congress is where the action happens (ACA repeals, despicable tax bills, etc). Repealing the clean power plan? Natural gas and renewables are crushing coal and nuclear, and nothing is going to stop that. Rolling back net neutrality? Citizens get involved in local municipal broadband deployments (as it should be!) where governance is controlled by the local electorate. I'm putting principles (edit: autocorrect fixed) first. I don't fault you if you don't, but what I "stand for" (people taking an active interest in the political landscape) is still going to come to pass, even faster than previously with Trump having been elected (while notably, he has very little control over actual policy). Congress will see more tilting towards progressives under a Trump administration than it ever would have under Clinton. Step 1: Set fire to house Step 2: "Do we have your attention now?" Step 3: Progress

craftyguy 9y ago

No. Give me a candidate worth voting for, and I will vote. The current "pick the lesser of two shitheads" is ridiculous. Both parties in the US are to blame. The two party system in the US today means that voting for anyone that is not a Democrat or Republican is a complete waste of time.

SEJeff 9y ago
You could have voted for Evan McMullin, a CIA officer for over 10 years and all around stand up dude. There were plenty of other candidates. If you threw your hands up and did not vote, you're part of the problem. Period.
- 282883392 9y ago
  Voting for a 3rd party candidate is next to worthless. The mathematics of first past the post voting guarantee a two party system.
  - SEJeff 9y ago
    You're obviously trolling, but if enough people did this, we would in fact be a three (or more) party system, hence breaking the stranglehold the two current parties currently have over us.
nxsynonym 9y ago
Give yourself a candidate worth voting for. Abstaining from voting is cowardly and non-committal. Your silent protest is worthless.
eanzenberg 9y ago
Interestingly, the 3rd party candidates last time around were absolutely worse than Trump and Clinton.
Sangermaine 9y ago
However you feel about the system, it's the system that exists. Refusing to make a choice in the system also has consequences, whether you like or want them. This action by the FCC is one of them.

snuxoll 9y ago

I was tempted to not vote seeing as I live in Idaho, I don't even have anyone running for local/state seats I want to vote for (our state district had republicans running unopposed for house/senate) and though I hate the phrase my vote literally meant nothing in the federal elections last year. I still did it, because I firmly believe it's my duty (and I personally would go so far as to say we should have Australia-style penalties for NOT voting) - though I did get to protest vote both Hillary and Trump since the latter was going to win my state anyway.

Crisco 9y ago
I too am from Idaho and voted for a third party candidate because I didn't feel comfortable voting for either Trump or Clinton. I know my vote will likely never change Idaho, but I still vote for who I think is right. The problem with most voters is that they choose an identity and then vote according to how they think that identity votes. It's why you end up with people who vote Republican even if it is not in their best interests. I try to vote for people that I think have strong moral character and will be willing to do what's right (in my opinion) rather than what's likely to get them elected.
- snuxoll 9y ago
  > The problem with most voters is that they choose an identity and then vote according to how they think that identity votes. That's because it's sports to many people, they want their team to win - but instead of a superbowl title it's our nation at stake.... Being a liberal in Idaho kinda feels like being a Raiders fan at this point, now that I think about it.
bigcityhobbies 9y ago
I also am from Idaho and always vote- thank you. We need everyone to have this attitude and we may just shift the narrative off of "hopeless."

mancerayder 9y ago

We live in an electoral system. For almost all of the states of the U.S. it's actually factually correct that there's no difference for whom you vote in the Presidential elections. In many locations, it also doesn't matter who you vote for in Congressional ones thanks to gerrymandering drawing boundary lines around you before you even get to the polls. We can discuss ideologically what the differences are between the parties, but as those of us in CA, NY, NJ, etc. well know - it's purely academic. [edit:] Folks, it's a winner-take-all capital-E Electoral system in the vast majority of states, and in the vast majority of states, the demographic votes consistently in the same way. Thus very few states swing the entire Presidential election process, meaning that they matter. In California, for example, 3 million Democrats could have stayed in bed all day and not voted at all, and still it would have not touched the end result there.

raverbashing 9y ago
You could have said the same about Arizona And there's "no difference" for the average candidate, not for outliers.
inanutshellus 9y ago
Not sure how you can still have this "it doesn't matter" view after the 2016 election. If there was any proof at all that the masses had the power to give away their power, it was given November 10, 2016.
- mancerayder 9y ago
  Great. So, I live in NY State. Tell me what the people that stayed home 'did wrong' being that it was an overwhelmingly Democratic Electoral win here? It does matter, but it only matters in small sliver of states, as those states literally can swing elections. Whether Republicans and Democrats have the same, slightly different, medium different, or wildly divergent views is secondary to the fact that for most Americans, the choice has already been made.
  - kharms 9y ago

brandonmenc 9y ago

I did not vote, and I see that as a "vote of no-confidence." At some point, a president will be elected with only like, 10% of the population having actually voted for them, and that'll be a crisis that forces us to overhaul some things.

Fargren 9y ago
It really won't. See Brazil. The president was elected with less support than that[0], and they are overhauling nothing. Don't think that things would be different in USA, don't fall to American exceptionalism. I recommend that you take a few minutes and honestly ask yourself what is different in the USA that would cause such a poor election to have a different consequence. A 10% will be taken as a sign of apathy, not of opposition, and as an opportunity to do whatever because people clearly don't care. [0]https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Brazils-Michel-Temer-Hits-a-New-Low-with-a-2-Approval-Rating-20170621-0031.html https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Brazils-Michel-Temer-...
- brandonmenc 9y ago
  I'm not "falling to American exceptionalism" - I just don't think that because something happened once, in another country, in a particular way, means that it'll happen exactly the same way, in every other country, forever. I'll take my chances.