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Argument #1: Presidential candidates are noise. Unless you live in Ohio or Florida, your vote is foregone. If you want to be a good citizen, your time is probab

by celoyd 15y ago

Argument #1: Presidential candidates are noise. Unless you live in Ohio or Florida, your vote is foregone. If you want to be a good citizen, your time is probably best spent on convincing your friends to vote in local races. Or doing not-explicitly-political work that contributes to justice, peace and prosperity. A small career choice can do a lot more than the most forceful checkmark on a ballot. Argument #2: You probably need something like ten kilobytes of information to make a reasonable decision about which presidential candidate to vote for. This is way less than the amount of information that news-oriented people spend their time and attention to absorb on a single day. (If you want to overkill, on November 1st you could read the election issue of The Economist cover to cover, whatever political posts are on the front page of HN, and the Wikipedia pages for the major issues. Then sit and think carefully for an hour. This would take about five hours, and I’ll bet $1 you’d vote for the same candidate you would have if you’d read five hours of political news per day for the last year.)

Karunamon 15y ago
>Unless you live in Ohio or Florida, your vote is foregone. One could make a good argument that this kind of faulty thinking is the reason third party candidates can never get any footing, and also the reason that we get such downright evil people elected. Your vote is not "foregone" unless you choose not to vote. Period.
- celoyd 15y ago
  Oh? What’s the fault in the thinking? I think it’s not a problem in the utility equation for an individual voter, it’s a problem in the system. By definition, a vote in a non-swing state is insignificant. Empirically, a good showing for a third-party candidate has no significant effect on the political discourse, and your individual share of giving that candidate a strong showing is negligible. Voting in the US is badly broken. I strongly favor equal representation, a multiparty system, and other reforms. Part of getting to them is admitting things like my vote, for one, being foregone.
  - anigbrowl 15y ago
    By definition, a vote in a non-swing state is insignificant. This is only true in the context of a single election. Over multiple election cycles, small movements in voting patterns can announce the start of a trend. Saying your vote doesn't count is an abdication of responsibility - 'somebody ought to do something about it, but 'they' would never allow it, hurf durf.'
    - prodigal_erik 15y ago
      In our winner-take-all system, the natural constituency for a third party would have to be willing to withdraw their support from the less unfavorable major party candidates, and give elections over to the other side's nutjobs. That's a very high cost just to communicate a trend to politicians, which could have been done by straw poll without the resulting damage to civil rights, the economy, church-centric values, or whatever you're most concerned about. The cure for tactical voting is some other polling system like IRV or approval, where I don't lose all possible effect on outcome just because my favorite doesn't win.
    - celoyd 15y ago
      As I said, empirically, those announcements are not important. Look at Perot, Nader, Paul – those votes might have been half an epsilon further from wasted than a vote for Obama or McCain, but they were still vastly less effective than any of a dozen other political actions using equal time and effort. And your importance to any trend is inversely proportional to its importance. As prodigal_erik points out in a sibling comment, this is a systemic problem with our electoral system. It has nothing to do with hurf durf. Seriously, saying the median American’s vote doesn’t count is a statistically founded observation, not an ethical action. In terms of ethical actions, I’m advocating for the opposite of laziness-posing-as-cynicism. I want a kind of intellectual vigor about politics where we care enough to spend our resources where they’ll do the most good. We should care about school boards and our own jobs, not the essentially symbolic presidential vote. Voting is like buying a spatula with a pink handle. Refusing to work with a company that donates to an irresponsible county commissioner is like convincing a bright student to work in cancer research. It’s way less cool and way more important. The best way out of this is the (virtual) abolition of the Electoral College or the adoption of true electoral reform. These are more realistic goals than they might seem.
sedev 15y ago
"If you want to overkill, on November 1st you could read the election issue of The Economist cover to cover, whatever political posts are on the front page of HN, and the Wikipedia pages for the major issues. Then sit and think carefully for an hour. This would take about five hours, and I’ll bet $1 you’d vote for the same candidate you would have if you’d read five hours of political news per day for the last year." I think I'm going to use this method - it's an interesting exercise, and it's a great excuse to get people to stop talking to me about bread-and-circuses politics (e.g. what's discussed in this blog post: http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000436.html http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000436.html ). "Argument #1: Presidential candidates are noise. Unless you live in Ohio or Florida, your vote is foregone. If you want to be a good citizen, your time is probably best spent on convincing your friends to vote in local races. Or doing not-explicitly-political work that contributes to justice, peace and prosperity. A small career choice can do a lot more than the most forceful checkmark on a ballot." This is an uplifting and encouraging message - and a far better argument in favor of anarchism than torching a Starbucks. Thank you.

by celoyd 15y ago

Karunamon 15y ago

>Unless you live in Ohio or Florida, your vote is foregone. One could make a good argument that this kind of faulty thinking is the reason third party candidates can never get any footing, and also the reason that we get such downright evil people elected. Your vote is not "foregone" unless you choose not to vote. Period.

celoyd 15y ago
Oh? What’s the fault in the thinking? I think it’s not a problem in the utility equation for an individual voter, it’s a problem in the system. By definition, a vote in a non-swing state is insignificant. Empirically, a good showing for a third-party candidate has no significant effect on the political discourse, and your individual share of giving that candidate a strong showing is negligible. Voting in the US is badly broken. I strongly favor equal representation, a multiparty system, and other reforms. Part of getting to them is admitting things like my vote, for one, being foregone.
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  By definition, a vote in a non-swing state is insignificant. This is only true in the context of a single election. Over multiple election cycles, small movements in voting patterns can announce the start of a trend. Saying your vote doesn't count is an abdication of responsibility - 'somebody ought to do something about it, but 'they' would never allow it, hurf durf.'
  - prodigal_erik 15y ago
    In our winner-take-all system, the natural constituency for a third party would have to be willing to withdraw their support from the less unfavorable major party candidates, and give elections over to the other side's nutjobs. That's a very high cost just to communicate a trend to politicians, which could have been done by straw poll without the resulting damage to civil rights, the economy, church-centric values, or whatever you're most concerned about. The cure for tactical voting is some other polling system like IRV or approval, where I don't lose all possible effect on outcome just because my favorite doesn't win.
  - celoyd 15y ago
    As I said, empirically, those announcements are not important. Look at Perot, Nader, Paul – those votes might have been half an epsilon further from wasted than a vote for Obama or McCain, but they were still vastly less effective than any of a dozen other political actions using equal time and effort. And your importance to any trend is inversely proportional to its importance. As prodigal_erik points out in a sibling comment, this is a systemic problem with our electoral system. It has nothing to do with hurf durf. Seriously, saying the median American’s vote doesn’t count is a statistically founded observation, not an ethical action. In terms of ethical actions, I’m advocating for the opposite of laziness-posing-as-cynicism. I want a kind of intellectual vigor about politics where we care enough to spend our resources where they’ll do the most good. We should care about school boards and our own jobs, not the essentially symbolic presidential vote. Voting is like buying a spatula with a pink handle. Refusing to work with a company that donates to an irresponsible county commissioner is like convincing a bright student to work in cancer research. It’s way less cool and way more important. The best way out of this is the (virtual) abolition of the Electoral College or the adoption of true electoral reform. These are more realistic goals than they might seem.

sedev 15y ago

"If you want to overkill, on November 1st you could read the election issue of The Economist cover to cover, whatever political posts are on the front page of HN, and the Wikipedia pages for the major issues. Then sit and think carefully for an hour. This would take about five hours, and I’ll bet $1 you’d vote for the same candidate you would have if you’d read five hours of political news per day for the last year." I think I'm going to use this method - it's an interesting exercise, and it's a great excuse to get people to stop talking to me about bread-and-circuses politics (e.g. what's discussed in this blog post: http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000436.html http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000436.html ). "Argument #1: Presidential candidates are noise. Unless you live in Ohio or Florida, your vote is foregone. If you want to be a good citizen, your time is probably best spent on convincing your friends to vote in local races. Or doing not-explicitly-political work that contributes to justice, peace and prosperity. A small career choice can do a lot more than the most forceful checkmark on a ballot." This is an uplifting and encouraging message - and a far better argument in favor of anarchism than torching a Starbucks. Thank you.