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Comment by e40 | Hacker News Reader

Half the voters. 36% didn’t even vote.

Sure they did. They voted that they were fine with either option.

Or did not approve of either option. No way to tell. Same result.

If you don't bother to vote, then you're [almost literally] saying you're OK with whoever wins. If that wasn't your intention, you would vote for some third party that you were OK with.

It's not an opinion poll. People vote to try and get their desired outcome. If someone views their preferred minor candidate as a lost cause in electoral terms, they won't bother going to vote because it won't make any difference to the outcome. Or, worse, there isn't a single candidate on the list in their district who shares their views.

Whatever people's reasons and motivations are for not voting, the actual effect is implicit endorsement of whoever everyone else picks.

To wit: actions speak louder then words.

Boycotting votes is a legitimate political choice, especially when done in an organised manner.

It is absolutely a legitimate choice: It's a choice for "whoever wins."

No. At least go and make your vote invalid.

Are people really THAT lazy?

What we need is to start counting votes of no confidence. Until we can explicitly shoot down what the elites or representatives think is best for us, at best, voting is just a thin veneer of legitimacy over an ossifying oligarchy.

Italy's parliament had for a long time a system where you could vote "no confidence" without picking a constructive option. It did not serve them well and they abolished it eventually.

While I understand the disenchantment, just adding "none of the above" without committing to one of the offered options is not going to change a thing. You getting out on the streets and into politics is what changes things.

Those who cared voted for a third party not stayed home.

People need civics classes, or wherever people learn about their system of government, to learn that that's not a smart move.

That is such a reductionist view as to be totally worthless. You think there are zero other reasons someone might not vote, be able to vote, or not support either candidate?

> either candidate?

There are more than two candidates. At least in theory.

That's the same as voting to let it happen.

Can you explain this logic a bit more because it genuinely confuses me, but I hear it articulated so often that I feel I must be missing something. I find it helpful to walk through the logic:

For example, it is frequently framed that there are only two (real) candidates, not voting or voting for a third party is the same thing as voting for <person I don't like>. The <person I don't like> is always Trump if you're talking to someone more on the left, and is Hilary/Biden/Kamala if talking to someone on the right, but the logic is the same (a contradiction should already be starting to be apparent). Both people are using the same logic to make the same claim, but they obviously can't both be correct.

It seems to me that the choice isn't actually binary. At least, if you insist that it is, then you must also conclude that a person actually gets two votes, because consider the following scenario:

Imagine that both major candidates (Candidate A and Candidate B) each deadlock and get 10 votes per, and a third party Candidate C gets 1 vote. I also have a vote, with the following possible outcomes:

1. I vote for Candidate A. This brings the total to A: 11, B: 10, C: 1

2. I vote for Candidate B. This brings the total to A: 10, B: 11, C: 1

If it were a binary, there wouldn't be any more possible outcomes. Yet,

3. I vote for Candidate C. This brings the total to A: 10, B: 10, C: 2

4. I abstain from voting. This brings the total to A: 10, B: 10, C: 1

All four of those outcomes are mathematically different, which doesn't seem possible if it's actually just a binary choice. If the outcome is different when I vote for Candidate B vs voting for Candidate C or not voting at all, then it seems self-evident that they are not the same thing. If I vote for A or B then they win, but if I vote C or not at all then there's a deadlock and a runoff. Clearly those are not the same thing.

I have seen people consider the outcome is one of "candidate A wins" or "candidate B wins" (so binary). I do not fully agree, but practically it seems to be a good approximation - as in 30 years nobody reached something significant, and there was only one instance in 1872 when the 3rd candidate had more than 30% (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_third-party_and_indepe...)

Any of the supporters of "candidate A" or "candidate B" will have a vested interest to model it this way, because it can mean more votes for their candidate.

People vote all over the world. In most countries there isn't just a binary system. Winning parties change a lot.

This is such because the US has a First-Past-the-Post system, which encourages only two parties.

Things like Ranked Choice Voting change the dynamics. Some states have implemented this. I think AK & ME.

The calculus of voting is really simple, even when there are only 2 candidates:

> Vote for the least evil person.

That's it. If everyone did this, then candidates would skew less evil. And after some amount of time, we would not have evil candidates.

Was Harris a good candidate. Certainly not. Was she less evil than Trump? By a mile. Would we be better off with Harris? Seems like that is coming true after a mere 2+ months.

You'll notice that in every one of your possible outcomes there's zero chance of C ever winning. That's the reality. When it comes to presidential elections, voting for C means you throw away your chance to vote for someone who actually has a chance to win.

In theory, if massive numbers of people all voted for C then C could get more votes than A or B, but the odds of that happening are so low that it's never once happened in the entire history of the nation. The incredibly low odds of winning millions in the lottery (something that routinely happens in the US) are much better than electing a third party candidate (something that has never happened in the US).

Since only A or B ever have a chance to win, your choice is limited to only A or B if you want to have any meaningful impact on the outcome, and because of that fact your choice becomes binary: Either meaningfully participate in the election (by voting for A or B), or don't meaningfully participate in the election at all (either by not voting or by voting for C).

The system could be fixed to give C a chance at winning, but that would require the same people who benefit from our two party system to support fixing it and not many are eager to hurt their own (or their own party's) odds of getting elected.

The simple fact of the matter is that 68% of eligible US voters either voted for Trump or didn't care enough to stop him even though he was upfront about what he would do and already served a disastrous term. They're all equally responsible.

Will this teach them anything? This is a very serious question and I don't know the answer. For the people who didn't vote, will they learn that voting matters? For the people who did, will they learn anything? I remember countless videos of them before the election saying "oh, he won't do that, he's just saying that to get votes" ... well, he will do that. And more. Are they ok with it??

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