Why Vote? Freakonomics' take on voting | Hacker News Reader

Why Vote? Freakonomics' take on voting

nytimes.com

40 pointsdangoldin89 comments

Voting is an aggregate activity. When you think of it as an individualist activity, as an economist would, you fail to see it for what it is -- an aggregate.

Imagine if you are in a line of people passing bricks from a collapsed building to another location. If you looked at this activity from an individual's perspective you'd said, "Passing this brick to that other person isn't clearing the rubble."

And you'd be right. It's not. But then you are not the activity in entirety; you are only part of the activity. And because this activity is social, it depends on human behavior.

This attitude, then, falls under the category of the fallacy of composition: what's rational for one actor is not rational if everyone does the same. Voting is not an individual activity, it's a group activity and looking at it as if it's a individual activity belies that.

When you analyze group activities as if they're individual activities you get erroneous conclusions. I can see why Taleb gets annoyed with economists now.

In your scenario, if I don't pass along my brick, then the chain is broken (or, others at least have to do more work). However, in an election, if I don't vote, then no one has to pick up my slack. We'll still elect a president tomorrow.

What is the negative externality that I'm imposing on others by not voting? If anything, I see it as a (very small) positive externality, because I'm letting everyone else decide who they want as president.

Here is a better analogy: You're in a crowd of people, all passing bricks, one at a time, in a general direction. If you fail to pass a brick, someone near you will get it anyway. However, as fewer people decide to pass bricks, the outcome of clearing all of the rubble will become less likely.

The brick example was used to shed light upon the difference between individual and group activities. It's does not match the activity of voting, I know. However...

Your use of the phrase "imposing on others" is telling. It implies you are separate from the others who vote, but in a democracy, during voting, you are not. You are all part of one system, and you all work towards the democratic task.

When you choose not to vote, you exclude yourself from that system. One single absence will indeed not damage the system significantly enough to destroy it. But, as I said, this system replies on human behavior, and more specifically socialization.

When you post articles on the New York Times website, when you post here and when you chat to friends about the futility of voting and when you tell them you have not voted you affect them; you influence them.

Human behavior is incredible herd-like. Your choice not to vote affects others, others affect others, and that affects, in this case detrimentally, the democratic system.

And this, again, goes back to the fallacy of composition. It was rational for you not to vote. Yet, because you live in society, that decision affects others, and when it affects enough people that newly formed decision becomes highly irrational.

You're right. I do see myself as separate from others who vote. If I vote, am I working together with a voter who just wants to restrict gay rights? What about a racist who won't vote for Obama because he's black? These are extreme examples, but I just don't see the election as a task that we're all collaborating on.

Second, are we discussing my decision to vote, or my public announcement of that decision? Am I damaging the democratic system by publicly questioning whether to vote?

If they were to argue:

Your vote doesn't count. Therefore, everyone's vote doesn't count.

...it would qualify as a fallacy of composition. This conclusion is not included in their argument.

Here's one way I see it, expressed as a syllogism:

1. Democracy works best when every individual votes.

2. I am an individual.

3. Democracy works best when I vote.

Here's another way I see it, expressed by some German guy:

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

A better syllogism:

major premise: A democratic republic works best when the democratic system elects non-tyrants; that is, leaders who will not violate the inherent rights of even the 49% of the people who did not vote for them.

minor premise: Both old party presidential candidates propose schemes which use government force to commit active injustice against non-consenting peaceful citizens.

conclusion: Unless you are going to vote for a third party candidate, or go to the polls and not vote to indicate your preference for 'none of the above,' by voting you are in effect sanctioning all of the harms the candidate you elect will unleash on the world.

You are also, by voting for a major party candidate, sanctioning the system that gives you only the sort of narrow choices that we have this year: on the one side, a warmonger who is a reluctant but willing socialist, and on the other, a socialist who is a reluctant but willing warmonger.

Not everything should be looked at from an economist's point of view.

If an old lady in front of you drops her purse, there is no economical reason for you to help her out. It is a waste of your time and she can pick it up herself. If she can't pick it up herself, someone else walking the street will help her out. No need to trouble yourself.

However, most people here would help her out because its just the right thing to do.

I was a sweeper at a theme park and I would see people drop things or leave things on benches(cameras, wallets, keys etc) and then run to pick them up. I would say 50% of the time they would thank me and give me a tip. Usually about an hours pay.

Actually, this was the article's point exactly. You would help her out to satisfy a social expectation. What would others think if you didn't?

You might ask how that changes if you and the old lady are alone. You would probably say that you'd still help her out, though I'd say that's just a response trained within a particular environment in which there is a help-old-ladies social expectation.

Not just social expectation (many would do it if there were no observers), but also increasing self satisfaction. Most people, myself included, derive utility from the belief that they are a good person.

I don't think so. I think there are good survival reasons to behave socially for each others' benefit. That is, I believe some of the "helping is the right thing to do" may come from natural selection: social cooperation increases our chances for survival and reproduction.

Please don't forget to include hedonic and psychic utility in your economic models. In other words, even economists realize that people often act for non-monetary reasons.

People who don't study economics are under the assumption that economists haven't addressed criticisms that have been around for hundreds of years.

An economist's point of view is not indifference to human suffering. If you value the old lady's happiness, then you would be willing to trade other things (e.g. several seconds of your life) for it.

Not everything should be looked at from a dumb economist's point of view.

Unless you view the candidates as equal, or have perfect information about the number and direction of all other votes in your electorate, you vote to increase the probability of an outcome you prefer. Votes are only unnecessary after the fact.

The freakonomics guys are proud of their non-technical background but I find this lack of understanding of a game theory in such an important topic absolutely unforgivably stupid.

> "The freakonomics guys are proud of their non-technical background but I find this lack of understanding of a game theory in such an important topic absolutely unforgivably stupid."

The ad hominem attack is unnecessary here. While Dubner is not an economist, Steven Levitt (the other Freakonomics author) is not only an economics PhD, but also a winner of the John Bates Clark medal. In short, he's one of the best economists out there.

It isn't an ad hominem. It may be an insult attached to an argument, but it isn't an argument by attacking a person. In the freakonomics book and the blog they do like to play the bumbling economist who doesn't understand all that maths role.

And it's not like we all act rationally anyways.

I didn't vote in 2000, because it was too much trouble. I spent the next four years regretting it, and 2004 rolled around and I had another chance. Somehow I wasn't able to register in time, and missed it, and spent another 4 years feeling bad.

This time I registered plenty early, and voted early, too. Now no matter what happens, I can feel good about doing my part for the next four years. I'd say that was time well spent.

Vote early, vote often, right?

It was great, the McCain campaign had set up a little voting station for Obama supporters. It only took a minute. They had me fill in a bubble sheet with the right pen, and I was out the door. Also, they said I should tell my friends if they miss their chance to vote, they can always come by November 5th.

>I didn't vote in 2000, because it was too much trouble. I spent the next four years regretting it

In 2000 a vote for a foreign policy of peace was a vote for Bush. That was his line. Gore was the one who had been threatening Indonesia and getting us dragged into messes in the Balkans. He as much as promised more military action abroad. This all goes to illustrate the ultimate meaninglessness of the campaigning.

If you vote based on what the candidates SAY rather than what they and their associates have DONE with their lives, then you are asking to be lied to.

Bush's adult life was: Daddy got him into a good university, which he did nothing with, went AWOL, daddy made it all good. Spent and lost lots of other people's money, went through rehab, became a religious fundamentalist, then ran Texas.

Gore's adult life was: Enlisted to please his father, volunteered to go to war out of a sense of obligation, ran for elected office to do what he felt was his obligation to follow in his father's footsteps. Served as a public official his entire adult life.

If you think that those two life stories are "the same" or that their campaigns can inform you more than that, I don't know what to suggest to you.

Good points to remember in case we all weren't cynical enough already.

Bush 2000 = "We don't do nation-building".

Bush 2003 = "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended."

Wilson was elected to keep us out of war. He maneuvered us into war, cooperating with the British against the wishes of the people. Ditto for FDR, who also deliberately pursued a policy of provocation against the Japanese.

Nixon was elected to end the war. Instead he bombed Cambodia. Reagan pulled a 180 on middle east policy and withdrew from Lebanon.

With the possible exception of LBJ I think every president in recent history has contradicted their indicated foreign policy. (LBJ was just bonkers from the get-go.)

Here's one of my favorite reasons to vote: Your vote does have an impact on the vote count.

I like to check out the vote tallies when the election is over -- and when it says "324,879" instead of "324,878" or whatever, I think, "Hey, that's me!" This also works whether you live in a swing state like Ohio or a forgone conclusion like California.

And in all seriousness, vote count does matter, even if the outcome is a "sure thing." The size of a victory plays a very big role in giving a mandate for the winner to get things done.

So hackers...seriously, get out there and vote, even if it only makes a 1/305,563,000 difference.

Does this ignore network effects? I am pretty silent about my politics, but at least 25 people were aware that I voted early (friends, coworkers, family members). Did this affect their decision to vote and therefore the value of my vote?

If a candidate does a great job getting out the vote compared to their opponent, the result of the election will not reflect popular opinion. Instead it will be biased toward that candidate. Those that voted for the candidate will see more value from their vote.

That still may not outweigh the hour spent in line.

Maybe it does but you can also argue it has an inverse effect. If I know someone else voted I may just say "Well they voted so I don't have to."

I'm glad there's actually a mass media outlet that would post something like this. They are focusing heavily on the numbers though, rather than the system - and it's the system that's the problem.

I don't vote because my single vote carries no weight, as the article demonstrates. However, if proportional representation were used, I would vote because my vote would count for something even if very little. With First Past The Post, my vote is more like buying a lottery ticket.. if I vote for the loser then it counts for zero - which is why we end up with two party systems.

A vote for the loser does not count for nothing. It makes you an active political entity worth courting.

Do you know why social security is inviolate, and no one from either party will ever do anything to stop payments? Because old people vote. If you (and people like you) don't vote, you don't count, and no one will ever listen to you.

Voting increases the strength of your demographic, and then shifts the political allegiance of that demographic very slightly towards your views.

While you are 100% right, this is irrelevant to the argument. As a voter you only have 1 single vote. You are using the word "you" in the plural sense. voter != demographic, voter < demographic

The point is that your vote adds a (very small) incremental value; the sole value is not that it might decide the election.

What value does your single vote add?

In regards to this argument, a single vote has no value because the outcome of a single mandate election of this scale is never determined by 1 single vote. The outcome would remain the same with or without your vote. That is the point.

You bring up issues and demographics. Same rule applies. The attention given to your demographic is never affected by 1 single vote unless it is the single vote that causes the politician to focus attention or turn his/her back. This is obviously a gray area that can't be measured.

You say it "can't be measured", but of course it can be. Say there are 10 million people in your demographic; then your vote makes your demographic 0.0001% bigger and shifts it correspondingly slightly towards your political position. That's not nothing, that's a small effect. In aggregate, it has a large effect, which corresponds exactly to the sum of the small effects.

To me, the primary value of my individual vote is its role in keeping the democratic process running. If I wouldn't vote, I would contribute to undermining the system I support. Contrastingly, the less other people vote, the more important my own vote becomes; if I were a democracy's last voter, I would make all the difference. What's not to like?

Voting increases the strength of your demographic, and then shifts the political allegiance of that demographic very slightly towards your views.

Do you seriously believe that young people would, as a demographic group, generally vote together to disband social security?

I don't think there's an old person vs young person divide at all. There's plenty of divide between conservatives, liberals, communists, libertarians, etc, of all age groups.

The campaign managers definitely see the old demographic as worth courting. They even have a "lobby:" the AARP. No sane politician torques off the seniors. That's one of the reasons why it's so hard to take their driver's licenses away, even when they are feeble.

If the young people had something like this, the drinking age may still be 18 instead of 21.

Perhaps part of the issue here is that young people are only young (for your example, 18-20) for a little while, whereas old people are old for decades.

I just picked that as an example to illustrate the point; feel free to substitute "old people and young people" for any two groups of people, and "social security" for any other issue.

And of course you have to be undecided. Because it does not pay to preach to the choir. (Expect to increase turnout.)

Which is why, of course, most parties spend most of their time preaching to the choir: turnout decides most elections.

Although this is true for the presidential election.

When people go to the polls tommorow they will be voting for many offices besides president like senate, congress, and local elections where your vote does have equal weight. And those offices will probably affect you a lot more than President will.

And the notion of popular vote mandate is important. If someone wins a commanding popular vote margin, their ideas and proposals have a greater chance of getting put into place.

Those elections are single mandate as well.

Your vote only counts if the election is decided by 1 vote, which is never the case.

On an unrelated note, I'm so tired of Freakonomics.

People do not vote out of self-interest. People vote because of how it makes them feel about themselves. Its not unlike going to church.

While this may sound like an OK thing, in reality it is disastrous. We elect leaders who make us feel great about ourselves by promising to fix the world. They then churn out giant bureaucracies to actually implement the world saving policies. But by then, no one is paying attention to whether the feel good policy actually works. The bureaucracy ends up being very effective at looking out for its own self interest, and incredibly ineffective at actually solving problems.

Thus the result of a Red-state voter wanting to feel like a bad ass warrior is the creation of the giant military bureaucracy that creates threats in order to justify its own existence. The result a Blue-state voters desire to end poverty is a welfare state that in many ways has made inner city poverty much worse than it was in 1900 ( which is hard to do, considering the incredible improvements in technology).

Really, do explain how inner city poverty is "much worse" than it was in 1900? Infant mortality? No. Access to safe and nutritive food? No. Access to housing? No.

Do tell. "If turn-of-the-century infant death rates had continued, then an estimated 500,000 live-born infants during 1997 would have died before age 1 year; instead, 28,045 infants died" (1)

(1) Hoyert DL, Kochanek KD, Murphy SL. Deaths: final data for 1997. Hyattsville, Maryland: US Department of Health and Human Services, CDC, National Center for Health Statistics, 1999. (National vital statistics report; vol 47, no. 20).

Read a few modern accounts of urban poverty, like "The Corner" and "Gang Leader for a day". Then compare it to accounts from the early 1900's such as "The Slums of Baltimore, Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia", "Land of the Dollar", and "How the other half lives." It will blow you away.

Yes, the technology today is far better and knowledge of science far greater. We have penicillin and vaccinations. Fwer babies die at all income levels. But the gang violence, drug addiction, and perpetual unemployment problems are all much, much worse. Nothing like our modern inner city slums existed 100 years ago. Technology gave us low infant mortality. Politics lost us our cities - http://detroityes.com/home.htm

Now I understand the perspective you were writing from. Certainly our inner cities are crumbling. For very specific population groups, quality of life and life expectancy is shockingly bad, and that is indeed the fault of politics.

The US is the only major democracy that seems content to cheer the success of the lucky and laugh at the failure of the rest. Sadly the poorest of the poor have in large part bought this destructive mantra of "self sufficiency" and "freedom" that in real terms means: tough luck if you get hit by a bus!

The US is the only major democracy that seems content to cheer the success of the lucky and laugh at the failure of the rest.

That has nothing to do with it. The main problem with the U.S. is that it has had 150 years of racial warfare - whites hating on blacks, blacks hating on whites. All of it has been entirely destructive, and it really needs to stop.

Try watching a couple episodes of The Corner ( http://www.amazon.com/Corner-Year-Life-Inner-City-Neighborho... ). It's based on a the account of a journalist who spent a year following a family in Baltimore. It also matches my personal experiences in working for various inner city charities. Then tell me how somehow getting rid of this alleged mantra of "self sufficiency" and "freedom" and replacing it with X will make things better.

I haven't watched The Corner, but I have read the book, and stayed in some very ghetto places in Baltimore when I was in my hitchhiking / train-hopping phase.

The book The Corner is an excellent read, and is quite accurate. People who have little to no experience with real lower-class city areas and ghettos should read it. It's also very well written, and is not a dry read at all.

Reminded me of "Ten ways to make a political difference" by political theorist Nick Szabo. The article is pretty biased by his libertarian roots, but voting is still at number ten, the least effective.

http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2007/08/ten-ways-to-make-di...

This is pretty much my reason for voting:

"2. Perhaps we vote in the same spirit in which we buy lottery tickets. After all, your chances of winning a lottery and of affecting an election are pretty similar. From a financial perspective, playing the lottery is a bad investment. But it's fun and relatively cheap: for the price of a ticket, you buy the right to fantasize how you'd spend the winnings - much as you get to fantasize that your vote will have some impact on policy."

I fantasize that my vote for Bob Barr will throw the election into a tie, creating a giant entertaining mess even bigger than the aftermath of the 2000 election. Also, I will get some warm fuzzies over the next 4 years knowing that I didn't vote for the winner when they inevitably screw up. Lastly, I am a contrarian by nature. I will enjoy being the only one of my friends that did not vote for Barack Obama, much as I enjoy being the only one who does not pray in a church.

Bob Barr supported the Patriot Act. A libertarian supporting the patriot act is like a chicken supporting KFC.

oh, but he "regrets" voting for it. Idiot. http://www.reason.com/news/show/28960.html

I always appreciate a contrarian mind.

By the way: Are there any Republicans on the internet left? If you follow the media (especially here in Europe) the Democrats should have taken landslide victories for the last eight years.

There are. There was a lot of Republican activity on the internet during the primaries. However, young Republicans and proprietors of prominent Republican websites were never big McCain fans. And of course, Obama is a pop star. So, Republicans have been silent on the internet of late.

Over the last eight years, many people have soured on the Republican Party because of Bush. Most young Republicans I know despise him. There won't be a lot of energy behind Republican Party candidates again until its leaders support the small-government principles that excite young activists.

Most young Republicans I know despise him.

Was it after a few catastrophic war/spending decisions, or did they always think he was a bad choice? For the life of me I can't see how the party propped him up over McCain back in 2000. In my eyes, even back then, he was such an obvious cipher.

Definitely post-war and post-Medicare part D.

I feel that the Republican party needs to go back to it's Buckley roots. Seems the modern Republican party is just sliding into an abyss.

Is there any indication that a new party will take the GOP's place in the two-party system?

I don't know enough to answer that but intuitively it seems that as long as the two parties alternate presidents and tend to get a similar number of the popular vote there isn't much incentive to change.

I'm not sure if a change would be drastic, it would probably just be a gradual move to capture new voters without alienating old ones.

I'm curious as to why many young republicans don't jive with McCain. I feel like he's been replaced by bizarro McCain (most of the time), but nonetheless he seems like a pretty classic conservative (at least before this year).

we might be on the verge of another party renaming that has occurred at various times in american history. the old conservative party slowly dies and the liberal party bifurcates into two new parties, one more conservative and one more extremely liberal.

Bob Barr??!!?? (barf.....)

I'll probably hold my nose and give him a protest vote, considering he's not quite as bad as the Socialist Party, the Fascist Party, and the "The Constitution Authorizes a Theocracy" Party.

Besides, my vote doesn't matter.

uh, yeah, he's a member of the CCC (or was, before they were outed). KKK reborn (but non-violent). I try to stay out of political discussions here, but he's a very bad man. Casting a protest vote for him is like casting one for that old jerk from W. VA (can't recall his name, former Imperial Wizard for the Klan that supports the "remote viewing" funding of the CIA--he's a Dem).

Pick someone else for your protest vote, please.

Screw it, maybe I'll just write in Ron Paul, even though write-in votes allegedly aren't counted. As I said, my vote doesn't matter anyway.

He's the least crazy candidate that doesn't have grand schemes to reshape the world from Washington DC.

I am a Swiss living abroad and I always vote by mail-in ballot. I don't vote out of a feeling of social obligation, I vote because I believe it does make a difference, however small, and that if I convince myself and people I know to vote, that difference keeps adding up.

If I didn't have the mail-in option, however, chances are I wouldn't vote - even if I was back home in Switzerland. I don't vote for a social perception, I vote because I care about the issues being voted about (note: we don't vote on people very often, we mostly vote on issues; I don't usually vote on people).

Obviously I can't argue with the results of the study. Perhaps mail voting does decrease voting likelihood. At the same time, I'd argue that people who vote out of a sense of social obligation rather than because they have an opinion on the issues at hand would be better off abstaining. If you don't care about the outcome, don't vote. Chances are, if you don't care, you won't have bothered to research the issues anyway, so your vote would merely be statistical noise or, worse, uninformed "vote like my party" trash. We're really better off without your vote then.

This article would be disturbing if it wasn't so pitiful. The only thing proven by this article is that the economist's perspective is awfully limited, and completely inapplicable when it comes to deciding how to behave in the "real world". If everyone behaved like economists as described in this article, most social functions wouldn't be able to exist, and we would probably soon devolve into a collection of pitiful warring tribes.

Could there something else at work in the siwss experiment, too? If the cost is higher to vote (walking through the rain etc.), maybe the perceived chance is greater that your vote has a greater weight, because fewer people will show up to vote. If you make it through a tornado, you might even wind up being the only person at the voting booth.

Perhaps with the cheap mail-in ballots people feel too assured that everybody else will vote, anyway, so their own vote is less important.

Someone may have said this already, but not succinctly, so I'll have a go:

If I understand right, nobody votes, and then who gets elected? You vote to contribute to the sample size, fool! 2 votes for one candidate and 1 vote for another is a questionable victory, but 66,000 for one and 33,000 for the other is decisive.

It's also sort of interesting to vote. What machine will they use this time? What's on the ballot? Will it work? How many people will be there? Will there be big problems?

People like novelty.

I can get a free cup of coffee from starbucks and extra credit in my classes if I vote so that justifies why I am voting. The opportunity cost for me not voting is too high for me.

You get extra credit in your classes for voting? That doesn't really sound like an appropriate use of power by your professors.

It sounds far more like inappropriate use of academic power in order to rustle up more votes for you-know-who.

Here in Tampa Bay, a local strip club magnate who keeps running for city council offered no-cover entry (A $35 dollar value!) for displaying an "I voted" sticker.

But that's because you place value on telling the truth. Not everyone is like that.

Such a great article. And I love when the NYTimes calls me rational.

to me the only reasons to vote is if you are in a swing state. Anywhere else its a huge waste of time because your state is predetermined to go one way or the other.

Reasons not to vote:

Voting for federal candidates is an affirmation of the legitimacy of the power of the government, which you may reject. Your vote will make you complicit in the next federal campaign to blow up foreigners, or the current campaign to imprison millions of Americans for victimless crimes. I assure you Obama WILL blow up innocent foreigners; every president finds some excuse to do it at some point.

A vote for "none of the above" IS a vote. The politicians NEED sufficiently high turnout to legitimize their power.

Elections are about as genuine as pro-wrestling. They never have anything to do with how government actually proceeds after the race. Rhetoric has consistently contradicted actions in my lifetime. Pretending you participated in an informed decision making process is delusional.

You're stuck choosing between coke and pepsi when you really want a glass of milk. The republican and democratic parties have locked up the racket for themselves. They are different brands of the same corporatocracy and mostly create the illusion of choice with careful marketing. Every couple years they push the right buttons to get their brand's simpletons whipped into a sufficient frenzy to trek to the polls. Then they proceed with business as usual.

Voting, emotional investment in the political process, and keeping informed about the political process are distractions from far more socially productive activities. If every campaign volunteer had resolved not to vote or really care about the election, and instead spent their time doing something of value on their block, the aggregate outcome would far surpass the positive difference in outcomes between any pair of candidates.

Lastly, your vote really doesn't matter, statistically speaking.

Your vote DOES matter, statistically speaking. Disregarding the oddness of the electoral college, in most elections where the number of votes is directly relational to the outcome of the contest, the individual statistical importance of each vote decreases as the overall volume of votes increases. In elections where fewer votes are registered, the significance of each vote on the outcome increases.

In an election involving hundreds of millions of people, you can claim correctly that overall influence of your vote is tiny. That does NOT mean it doesn't matter. However, to properly represent the desire of the voter pool in aggregate, all people must participate. The outcome of an election is not to decide what you individually want, its to decide what the populace in general wants.

As to your other political statements, some I agree with, some not. I used to be very politically active(anti-war rallies, protests, supporting local candidates, volunteering, sign waving, etc).

If you're from a country where you can't vote, then your opinions aren't helping your fellow man. You need to get off the computer and go stand up to your corrupt leaders. You might get shot, but when enough people stand up things change. Hey, its kind of like voting!

If you don't vote, I could care less about your political opinion.

"If you don't vote, I could [sic] care less about your political opinion."

Odd phrasing aside, what if (for example) my political opinion is that voting is immoral because it legitimizes a corrupt or intrinsically broken system?

Why is abstaining from a process so dismissed?

I've heard people say, if you don't vote you can't complain, yet if you opt in to a system then how can you bitch when it doesn't swing your way? If you vote, then you can't complain; you can't have it both ways.

(I'm not quite convinced of this myself, but I'm puzzled by people who won't even consider it.)

Just wanted to add some more to this, as I recently had a debate about this with someone who was very pro-voting.

Abstaining from religion is no longer dismissed, yet politics, as you say, remains a sticking point. In the 1500s, religious adherence was the norm in the West. In the 2000s, adherence to democracy as a political system is the norm (I have no doubt this will change in centuries to come).

Consider voting within a democratic system to be equivalent to choosing a religion. If you are not religious, ideally you would not choose a religion. Likewise, if you do not believe in the democratic system, ideally you would not vote.

Democracy is a system that many people take for granted, but is only one of many options. Voting in the democratic system implicitly means you support democracy. If you do not support democracy, therefore, it would be quite rightly against your principles to vote.

"Voting in the democratic system implicitly means you support democracy. "

Right, but it may also mean you support that particular form of voting. The USA, for example, does not go by majority rule in Presidential elections, and overall the system seems skewed to a 2-party, and 2-party only, system. So, one may want to support democracy but be repelled by the voting options.

(I'd really like to see a more robust means of electing officials, but I'm reluctant to not use the current shoddy system to try to effect what change I can. So I end up having to implicitly support what exists now. )

"If you do not support democracy, therefore, it would be quite rightly against your principles to vote."

It's interesting that many people who are gung-ho on voting are less so about voting on voting itself, that is, on being able to choose to abstain entirely.

Except of course that in the year 2008, the church cannot have you KILLED for "abstaining".

The US government has the power to forcefully imprison and/or kill you. If you want to "abstain" from that system, then ignoring its existence all around you is just being pigheaded. If you really want to abstain, I suggest that you LEAVE. Many people find living outside the United States quite pleasant, and you can rest assured that in most of the other democratic nations of the world, your tax dollars are not being spent to bomb "collateral damage".

I don't live in the US. In any case, which presidential candidate plans to stop federal corporal punishment?

I suggest that you LEAVE. Many people find living outside the United States quite pleasant, and you can rest assured that in most of the other democratic nations of the world, your tax dollars are not being spent to bomb "collateral damage".

That's not viable if you're an American citizen. As an American citizen your worldwide income is subject to US taxes, other than where overridden by treaty.

The first ~$80k of your income is exempt. As for the rest, the US Government's insistence that it controls you ANYWHERE on the planet is reprehensible.

Really? I couldn't.

Correction appreciated!

I've grown very, very tired over the last 8 years at hearing people who didn't vote complain about the state of the country. Each of them had an opportunity to register their opinion and they chose not to. Listening to them complain after the fact is a waste of my time.

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