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I once heard a story. It may be a cliche, it may be an old, tired, worn-out tale, but it marked my thinking. A village was planning a feast. All of the residen
by tjr 16y ago
I once heard a story. It may be a cliche, it may be an old, tired, worn-out tale, but it marked my thinking.
A village was planning a feast. All of the residents were asked to bring a bottle of wine, each of which would be mixed together in a large vat for everyone to partake of. One of the residents reasoned that a single bottle wouldn't make a difference, and so brought a bottle of water instead. When it came time to distribute from the vat of wine at the feast, it turned out the vat was entirely full of water, as all of the residents had come to the same conclusion.
For nearly every practical purpose in our United States general elections, a single vote does indeed not make a difference. But a thousand votes might make a difference, and if those thousand people were all persuaded that their single vote wouldn't make a difference, and then didn't vote, then the difference would not be made.
- Semiapies 16y agoFind an election for a significant, contested office that gets no votes, and we can worry about this parable.
- tjr 16y agoIt doesn't have to be an election with no votes. Just an election whose outcome could be changed by the votes of people who believe their votes don't matter. An election with 5500 votes for A and 5000 for B could be turned with 1000 more votes for B.
- Semiapies 16y agowaves goodbye to the goalposts as they fly off Why would those 1000 votes all be for B? They could be for A. They could be evenly split between them. Most likely, they'd be proportionally split similarly to the original vote. You're looking at partisans' rhetoric used to motivate their supporters and mistaking it for logic.
- tjr 16y agoIf they are all for A, or split evenly between them, or proportionally split similar to the original vote, then these additional votes would change nothing. If they all (or enough of them) are for B, then they could change the outcome. Knowing nothing else, there's really no way to say for sure what would happen, but if they don't vote, then they certainly will not change the outcome.
- Semiapies 16y agoAnd you can always hold out faith that they'll vote the way you want them to. Which is what you can see in the comments of this thread: hope that if more people voted, things would shift more left-wing, more right-wing, more centrist, etc. Pure wishful thinking, nothing more. (And the opposite side of the coin is shown by people bridling at suggestions that fewer people should vote and identifying such arguments as covert attempts to undermine their preferred political team...)
- tjr 16y agoI guess I don't understand what you're claiming. In the above example discussion, I was claiming that if an extra 1000 people who wouldn't have voted went ahead and did vote, then, depending on how they voted, either their extra votes would make a difference, or they would not make a difference. There is a possibility either way (even if the possibility of making a difference is smaller). On those grounds, I do not see voting as a pointless, worthless activity; your vote added to the votes of others might be the deciding factor in who gets elected. The bigger picture is, does it matter who gets elected? As you bring out in another thread, most of the major candidates "opposing" each other are actually very similar in what they stand for. Voting one in or the other probably won't make a huge difference. I guess if you want to claim that no matter if we vote or not, the government isn't going to be much different, that's probably fair. To make more of an impact than voting, citizens may need to get involved as candidates and really try to change things, but in order for that to work, people would need to vote for them, which means, people would need to vote, rather than not vote. So I guess, to be clear, I claim that your vote, along with the votes of others, can effect the outcome of the election. The outcome of the election may or may not effect the outcome of the government, but that's another matter entirely. I for one am open to hearing suggestions on what we can do to improve the government beyond voting, or running for office (success at which requires people to vote).
- protomyth 16y agoPeople forget that local elections are often decided by one or two votes. These elections have a great effect on your life (e.g. property taxes and local spending) or that of your children (e.g. book banning at the local school).