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Comment by glenvdb | Hacker News Reader

I've always thought that if you find yourself loyal to any given political party, that's an indication that there's might be a problem and you should reflect on why you feel that sense of loyalty.

Political parties should have to earn your vote every election rather than relying on a "force of habit".

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I think that's more a function of the US's [1] voting system rather than anything else. I'm very lucky to live in a country (Canada) where you have a choice of 4-5 relatively similar parties, and they have to work hard to get you to vote (though we could do with some Multi Member Districts). https://www.fairvote.ca/rural-urban-proportional/ --- [1] India has the same system too (and is way more unstable at that).

> Political parties should have to earn your vote every election rather than relying on a "force of habit".

That would be nice, but I've practiced "sucks less" voting since I was old enough to cast a ballot. I vote for the party that sucks less. I don't care for the Democrats, but I don't loathe them quite as much as I do the Republicans.

I'd rather not vote at all; I'm not convinced it does anything but rubber-stamp the continued existence of a government that neither represents the people nor serves the general welfare particularly well, but I continue to vote despite my doubts because I could be wrong about its futility.

I think you're right in saying that voting isn't really all that effective --- it isn't (except in 2000), but I don't we should be looking at this from an individual scale, because we're really just tiny little cells in this process.

I tend to look at things from an individual scale because I don't have the tools to do otherwise. Methodological individualism is my hammer, and so everything looks like a nail.

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