Neither of the major parties has a majority, or anything like a "mandate" about what the American people want. The majority wants "none of the above". If anyone figures out how to get that majority motivated to vote for them, they'll sweep the election.
So, sure, it's your legal right not to vote. But it's my legal right to point out that by doing so, you are not nobly opting out of the system -- you're supporting the winner.
Then again, supporting the lesser evil might be reasonable in some situations, but that doesnt get you out of the responsibility of the actions of the lesser evil.
Voting is a lot like the Trolley problem.
As a Democratic Socialist learning towards Socialist, neither Hillary nor Trump represented really any of my views. Pretty much none at all to be honest. Both were terrible people, and terrible candidates.
Or... even if both sides were pro-war, pro-big-business, anti-worker, whatever, you could have still voted against the undignified office-demeaning racist.
I voted for Obama in 2012, and even though his public image was fantastic, I feel as if the blood from everything that was kept out of public view is on my hands. I won't make that mistake again.
I mean, it's probably not even worth me making the same cliched points about responsibility to vote, that you can read anywhere else. I'll just note this: the disappointment in Obama, the lack of perfect (or often, even "good") candidates, the general disappointment in the actions by government... none of that is new, unique to this cycle, unique to the U.S., or unique to you.
You should put blame in the right places, such as campaign finance laws and mainstream media which undoubtedly played a bigger role than non voters...since people who abstained literally did nothing. Maybe the system is broken and people see nearly the same candidate over and over and have no real way to vote outside that?
It's not apathy when your vote literally isn't worth as much as someone else's, as evidenced by the fact that the number of votes didn't even determine the election.
Admittedly, as a statement of fact, it's plausible/likely that the electoral college reduces turnout because presidential elections get people excited (especially when they know their state is in play), but that's not usually a rational response. You still get to vote for congress, state government, ballot initiatives, etc.
Election day is not a national holiday
If Kodos had been elected, this likely would not be happening at the EPA (nor that shitshow over at the FCC). But other similarly destructive corruption would certainly be, depending on what her specific sponsors had purchased. The industries' agendas are written years in advance, the skinjobs' role is merely to sell them, and the act of voting is a major step to getting your mindshare.
Go try talking to a Trump supporter about the direct objectively bad results of his policies, on topics they ostensibly care about - eg tariffs that encourage even more manufacturing to move to China. You will find that they basically just fall back on cognitive dissonance from having chosen him and therefore having bought in to his reality distortion field.
If they had voted in the primaries, they would have different choices, but 71% of those eligible to vote in primaries didn't bother (Turnout was only 29% of those eligible in the 2016 primaries). [0] So, cutting the field back to those “two pieces of shit” didn't drive people away.
The poor set of general election choices is a product of apathy, not it's cause.
[0] https://m.box.com/shared_item/https%3A%2F%2Ffairvote.box.com...
Rather than retreating to lower layers of the recursive structure, it's more productive to discuss models that cover the whole system - my working one is that there is a general gradient whereby the candidates that have (or adopt) views more palatable to entrenched interests receive more support, both funding and institutional. And that support is the primary factor of how far they make it - both election-wise, and how much they "get done" in office.
> The poor set of general election choices is a product of apathy, not it's cause.
The people voting for the popular-corruption candidates look pretty damn non-apathetic to me. I've never understood this idea that if only more people were voting, the process would get more intelligent. I can only think it is wishful thinking by people who are aware of their own struggle between antipathy and capitulation. You hope that if the disinterested suddenly decided to vote, they would all vote in what you consider the intelligent way. And with those numbers, you could have voted for your real choice instead of the one you've resigned yourself to. But, like the idea of gas molecules spontaneously all moving in one direction, it just does not work that way.
What I was replying to is the idea that the winner speaks for the people, which you always hear after every election, which you hear a lot from Trump and his supporters, and which is reflected in the comment "we got what we voted for." If everyone voted, then that would be at least arguably true. But since half of the eligible voters didn't bother to vote, we don't know what they wanted, and no elected official can claim to speak for them.
My final comment was about some theoretical person who could get the dis-interested voters to vote for them. Whoever has that magic could get twice as many votes as the Democrat or Republican. I suspect that the non-voters are mostly centrists, who feel that the major parties have gotten too radical. So maybe a solid centrist candidate could have a third-party chance.
Personally I like to make it as clear as possible that I did not endorse the outcome of the election. And seeing how the press reports on third parties gives little option there.
But as I said my biggest concern is that having voted seems to warp people's minds. If they voted for the winner, they rationalize what's being done as in line with corresponding to what they wished for. And if they voted for the loser they get to tell themselves they fought the good fight, but that the other majority is responsible for the results.
I actually think the second largest factor to winning elections is getting wary voters to show up and vote against the incumbent party (with the first being the tendency to go with what one knows).
IMHO, "centrist" is the wrong way to look at it, but of course I'm imparting my own views here. Primarily people just want to be left alone, but they can be whipped into a fervor against an "other". So both parties' basic marketing spiel is freedom for their grass roots constituents' general pain points. But obviously what's ruining your freedom is that other group over there. So really we've got to stop them, and maybe even give them some of their own medicine.
Then when an election is won and it's time for action, of course the profitable ideas have legs - say, undermining the freedoms of the "other" in a way justifiable to the winners. Meanwhile rolling back the older policies would cut into someone's profit, is thus politically unpalatable, and therefore nothing gets done.
For one, it ignores any practical barriers to voting. Maybe someone was working an hourly job with no flexibility to make it to the polls that particular day.
Also, the status-quo of our political system is also in play. What about someone living outside of one of the 6 swing states and their vote wouldn't have likely made a difference. Consider New York State: a Democratic voter may skip with the knowledge that the state will absolutely go blue, and a Republican voter may feel their vote is in vain because the state will go blue anyway.
Shouldn't it be the people who cast their votes who are held accountable for the individuals they put in office? For this I leave you with George Carlin's explanation on the matter [0]