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Comment by ericjmorey | Hacker News Reader

Trump didn't even get a majority of votes cast.

Over 77 million people voted against Trump.

About 73 million were not old enough to vote.

And 88 million people signaled they were fine with either candidate, by not voting. 165 million people out of 264 millions eligible voters supported this.

They did not signal that they were fine with either candidate by not voting.

> don't think one can blame them, not voting can be a legit option for many reasons,

With the exception of people who have religious beliefs prohibiting voting, it’s saying that you don’t feel strongly enough about the differences between the two candidates to pick one. There are some people who can plead various hardships, but most people don’t have that excuse: it really did come down to thinking their life would be fine either way.

Or thinking they were sunk either way.

No, in the US electoral formula, not every vote for President will make a difference. Seven out of 50 states are close, so in 43 states it’s only a protest vote.

It still matters for the popular vote and all of the downstream candidates. People who stay home inevitably complain about local changes which also were on the ballot.

I strongly support national electoral vote reform but it’s important to remember that every election really does matter.

Then maybe its time to ask yourself: do you live in a democracy when you cannot make your vote count?

Their intend may have been another, but the outcome is that they supported whoever was winning.

Ridiculous. Do you blame all Venezuelans for their current government? You shouldn't.

Yes. Chavez was democratically elected. Maduro is not an alien he was born in Venezuela.

Why did Venezuela become what it is today? Every citizen is responsible for what their country turned into.

Ofcourse I do not expect anyone in the Venezuelan diaspora do any kind of introspection or soul-searching.

Venezuela was a beautiful South American Switzerland and it is all the fault of the evil Cubans.

In a democracy every citizen is responsible for the actions of their state.

Not the people who voted for the losing candidates!

In a healthy democracy there are more ways than just voting to influence the countrys political affairs. Democracy has a price, voting every four years is not enough.

as someone who has never voted, i am absolutely okay with this characterization. i often hold my tongue when it comes to complaining about political stuff because i dont really feel like i have the right to. i mean, of course i HAVE the right, but the hypocrisy isn’t. to be clear: this is not the same thing as being animated about general gov. malfeasance, which is something that everyone is in the right to complain about, as the operation of the government isn’t a politics-specific issue in a lot of cases.

We don’t elect Presidents based on getting a majority of votes of all US citizens, even if they can’t vote.

Do you know why?

> We don’t elect Presidents based on getting a majority of votes of all US citizens, even if they can’t vote.

We don't even elect Presidents based on getting a majority (or even plurality) of all voters who actually vote, though the method actually used usually (but not always) also happens to elect the person who does that.

Nope. Sorry. From outside the US, there is just the US. We dont understand your "us vs them" tribalism nor the political divide. Every US citizen at this point is responsible for what's going on. Regardless of who you voted for. All of this is due to decades of complacency by the citizenry, it's not some sudden surprising coup.

I'm not saying the rest of the world is in the clear though. I think many countries are headed in a similar direction. Hopefully this is the wakeup call we all need to step up and arrest this slide into authoritarianism that's happening everywhere.

The recent elections in the U.S. went mostly anti-Trump. Is that the type of action you are calling for? Or did you want something more than running for office and voting?

And still Trump reigns without a care. But I am sure the next flipped seat in some mayor-election will bring him to his knees. Just one more lawsuit and we have him, just one more impeachment, pretty please.

Sorry, I don't know what elections you are talking about. The only one that I'm aware of was last year's election, which was very much the opposite of anti-trump.

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