> If everyone thought, as you assert, that an individual vote does not matter, then they would not vote I just said, immediately before your reply, "I didn't s

> If everyone thought, as you assert, that an individual vote does not matter, then they would not vote I just said, immediately before your reply, "I didn't say there was no reason to vote", and this is your response? Nice reading comprehension. > it is doing one's civic duty That's exactly what I was referring to in my original post: "Voting tends to be more of a symbolic or ethical act than an rational act". > Your attitude is poison > extremely small-minded Please read and respect the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > if more people thought like you we would have lost democracy long ago The United States has always been a plutocracy, and the plutocrats who wrote the Constitution were explicitly suspicious of direct democracy, intentionally adding a number of measures to obstruct it. The most recent election was largely a contest between competing factions of billionaires, and guess what, a billionaire won. It's actually so-called "strategic" voting, choosing the lesser of two evils, that perpetuates the evils of our plutocracy.