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"I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don't vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to

• Kabacaru 13y ago
  Go to the polling booth but spoil your ballot?
• joering2 13y ago
  > I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don't vote. On Election Day, I stay home. You are not solving the problem you just ignoring it. And I am not sure what's worse...
  • einhverfr 13y ago
    Well, at this point voting for the lesser evil is voting for the loser on a race to the bottom. I cast protest votes.
  • einhverfr 13y ago
    Well, at this point voting for the lesser evil is voting for the loser on a race to the bottom. I cast protest votes.
  • mej10 13y ago
    This is why you should actively abstain instead of staying home if you truly don't like any of the candidates.
    • einhverfr 13y ago
      It's better to cast a protest vote. It is slightly easier to interpret protest votes (and realize "we might have won if") than it is to interpret non-votes.
  • baddox 13y ago
    He doesn't say he is solving the problem. He merely says that he removes personal responsibility for the problem.
    • nooononni 13y ago
      But it doesn't though. It's not like _not voting_ is doing anything to change the system. You're not legally required to vote, so even by just staying home, you're still part of the system. You're still a part of the game, even on the sidelines.
• astine 13y ago
  George Carlin is (was) a right fool. The whole problem is that people don't have enough control over the government. Not voting only allows those who would have control over you to have more power. Even a protest vote or a third party vote is worth more than no vote.
  • ihsw 13y ago
    > Even a protest vote or a third party vote is worth more than no vote. Actually, it's not. The US election process operates under the Electoral College[1], so a state majority vote changes all votes to that majority vote (eg: Democrats win majority in Illinois, so all votes in that state end up voting for Democrats in the presidential election). The disparity between the electoral vote and the popular vote is usually not wide enough to cause controversy, however it's still offensive to realize that your vote changes without your consent. Gerrymandering[2] is a whole different topic, however it is just as galling. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
    • plackemacher 13y ago
      Actually, it is. If a third party gets more than 5% of the popular vote, they have rights to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund[1] which can further help in future years to get said third party elected. [1] http://www.fec.gov/press/bkgnd/fund.shtml http://www.fec.gov/press/bkgnd/fund.shtml
    • crazcarl 13y ago
      The difference between a third party getting 1% of the vote versus 10% could have some impact on politics even if it doesn't affect the outcome of the election.
      • jetti 13y ago
        But just voting to vote is useless. People seem to have the mentality that you pick the lesser of two evils, which is BS. I'm not going to vote for somebody if I don't feel like they are completely up for the job. I'm not going to vote for a 3rd party just so they can get funding because guess what, this years candidate may be great but the funding would be for the next round and who knows who they will have then.
• fauigerzigerk 13y ago
  Great, so he has solved his own problem of feeling responsible for what politicians do if he elects them. Now the only problem left is what politicians do.
• lallysingh 13y ago
  I think people are taking his words too literally. Carlin was both brilliant and a comedian. Sometimes his point isn't directly in the words he uses.
• cle 13y ago
  Sorry, I strongly disagree. The people are not responsible for the actions of their representatives. That's the same logic that terrorists use to rationalize their attacking innocent civilians. It's also the same sort of "with us or against us" kind of thinking that he criticized Bush for. At least voters are trying. They're trying to make the best of what they have. These people with day jobs, barely scraping by to support a family, take the time out of their day to try to make the country better instead of giving up and going home to avoid blame, like Carlin. And then he criticizes them. That irritates me.
• bpatrianakos 13y ago
  Carlin was a great comedian and I'm a big fan but I'm not about to agree with this simply because the late great George Carlin said it. This is totally backwards and you have to do some mental gymnastics to believe it. In the end, this is what it is, a joke. If you don't vote you have done nothing to even try to elect someone who you, in good faith, believe will do what you deem the right thing. Yeah, politicians are fucjing scum a lot of the time and lie to the point where its easier to trust the devil himself rather than a politican. That said, totally dismissing the system as one big huge scam is the lazy, cheap, and easy way out of your duty as a citizen. It's a total copout that lets you feel superior but in reality makes you completely inneffectual. The electorate may or may not have much power but it still has some. Voting is just one method of exercising your will over your government. It's important but we also need to be active in lobbying our government in other ways too. Those in power want you not to vote. To take on this "I don't vote because its a sham" mentality is to play right into their little game. When enough people fall for it that's when it becomes a reality. I'd say its close to being a reality but it isn't too late to turn the tide. It's going to take some time which requires patience, something Americans don't have much of. If you vote you always have the right to complain. If your guy loses you get to complain about how the other guy would've done things differently. If your guys wins and doesn't fulfill all his promises you still get to complain about how you were sold a bill of goods. If you don't vote, you're still entitled to complain but I personally won't take you as seriously because you haven't tried to affect change. This is supposed to be government for by and of the people but if you believe that Carlin joke (its a JOKE by the way) then it will no longer be that.
  • baddox 13y ago
    > Those in power want you not to vote. If that's the case, the amount of resources candidates spend trying to get people to vote is peculiar. > If you don't vote, you're still entitled to complain but I personally won't take you as seriously because you haven't tried to affect change. The only way I could even begin to see any validity to your point is if an election were a tie or decided by a single vote.
    • WayneDB 13y ago
• hawkharris 13y ago
  "You can't be neutral on a moving train." - Howard Zinn
• flexd 13y ago
  Don't you usually have the option to submit a 'I do not think any of these people should lead our country'-vote? We can do that in Norway.
  • amalcon 13y ago
    Sort of. In the U.S. there's no explicit option, but you can always write in Darth Vader or leave that section blank.
• tlrobinson 13y ago
  If you don't vote there's nothing distinguishing your non-vote from that of an apathetic non-voter. At least go and vote for a non-Republicrat, or even just write in your own name...
• micah63 13y ago
  If you don't like it, then you should become a politician and start fixing it yourself. It's easy to complain, it's hard to do something about it.
• grellas 13y ago
  The question is not so much whether you vote (most people will) but what you vote for. The U.S. system of government is deeply rooted in an English common law and constitutional framework. In its U.S. variant, it became a constitutional republic, with the broad idea being that power within the government is divided by design so as to help prevent its abuse. That means a federal system premised on the legal principle that governmental power resides by default elsewhere than with the centralized authority - meaning, the federal authority is strictly limited to the powers expressly granted to it by the constitution, as implemented through three branches of government (executive, legislative, judicial) that check and balance each other even with respect to the limited power resident within that federal authority. Any power not expressly granted to the federal authority belongs to the states and to the people. On top of it all, the very notion of government as a compact derived from the foundational principle that it is the individual, not the state, that has inalienable rights that cannot be impaired by any government, no matter how benign its stated motives or noble its stated goals. All in all, this began as a bottom-up system with a tremendous respect for the rights of the individual and a tremendous distrust for the power of the state. While that was the theory, the practice did not often match and major faults such as the slave system and the legally sanctioned taking of lands from the "pagan" residents who preceded the European migrants led to many convulsions by which, in time, the federal authority itself - which had often been the cause of the abuses - came to be seen as the cure for the problems and therefore came to be seen as an authority that should be given broad, largely unchecked, and very vague grants of power with which to accomplish its newly-defined goals. Couple this with the move from a formerly isolationist America (Monroe Doctrine, etc.) to one that saw its role in the world as that of an exporter of democracy and defender of a democratic system of government around the globe, and you perforce have a massive further expansion of centralized authority via the build up of a massive military, in contrast to the time of George Washington where even the very idea of having a standing army was hugely controversial and defense was handled mostly by loosely formed militias organized by the colonies and then the states. And so, two-plus centuries later, you have a system in which modern conservatives ask for virtually unlimited authority by which to achieve largely military aims and by which modern liberals ask for virtually unlimited authority by which to achieve social aims. With that massive build up of federal power, we all wake up one day and find that the central government has become rather full of itself, arrogant, and unaccountable, with those in charge - of either of the major parties - now quite comfortable with the idea that the rights of the individual are far subservient to those of the state, at least as seen by those in charge. And we all wonder how this happened. I see this as a system that is wildly out of control in its expansionist aims at the expense of the individual and, given the historical arc, don't hold out a lot of hope that the problem can be reversed unless people's thinking changes significantly. Yes, by all means vote, but do vote with discernment and with a sharp eye to those who would protect the rights of the individual and not based on the cliches of the day regarding the modern political parties. Maybe that will in time help to turn it around. In any case, that is how I see it.
• znowi 13y ago
  Not to vote is a free choice, but with this you exclude yourself from the democratic process. You become a bystander and then indeed have no right to complain.
• night815 13y ago
  "The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing"
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• lbebber 13y ago
  I disagree, that's blaming the wrong people. The voters don't necessarily create any mess. In one way or another some politician will get into office, and sometimes people just have to choose between the lesser of the evils available.
• mizcheif_k 13y ago
  I hate that attitude so much. Abstaining from voting is just lazy, it's not activism, in fact it's inactivism. You don't have to vote for the two major parties, if you can't find a candidate you like then at least show up and vote for yourself.
• natmaster 13y ago
  You have NO right to complain if you didn't vote. Not voting causes cronies like Obama to get in office. It was obvious from the start that Obama was going to multiple all of the evil Bush policies. By not voting you consented to that happening.
• wittysense 13y ago
  I believe Carlin's point generally holds in light of http://www.urbanarchipelago.com/ http://www.urbanarchipelago.com/: "It's the cities, Stupid." Look at Facebook, for instance. I'm seeing splinter social networks that generally rip off its UI so they can develop their special interest via their particular domain name. Let's look at a pessimistic utopia where Developer == Plumber: everything eventually becomes decentralized because of the dividing and conquering of the digital laborer. In an optimistic utopia where Developer == Artisan: everything eventually becomes decentralized because each small team or developer group manages some autonomous function of digital society. None of this national stuff really matters unless we're talking about a Nation-state divided. In which cases, we're talking the worst case scenario, and any pretense that rational debate will absolve these architectural problems of "the State" fails to acknowledge the already unfit architecture of the State, wherein direct action is necessary. 'The unfitness of the object may cause one to overlook the unfitness of the means.'
• Zak 13y ago
  I vote. Nobody I've voted for in a Federal election has ever won that election. I often vote for third-party candidates with the knowledge that they have as good as zero chance of winning, but sometimes I vote for major-party candidates who seem mostly reasonable. None of them have ever won either.