Are you apathetic to:
- whether your fellow countrymen go to war?
- who gets to marry?
- abortion rights?
If you are, then that's your right, but please don't act surprised when people who care about these things get irritated.
If you are, then that's your right, but please don't act surprised when people who care about these things get irritated.
And why do you think it's warranted to be deciding how other people live their lives? What is "to get married" and why is it that a decision between two people needs to be chosen by you through "voting"?
Regarding war, why do you think anyone has the right to force young men to engage in a war they didn't start? Don't those young men own their own lives?
And so on and so forth. I'm not apathetic to any of those things but they're not solved (as can be seen in reality: they haven't been solved) by "voting".
Also, the one about war is a strawman, because it conflates war and the draft, which are related but not identical.
Ed: Typo.
Maybe you're down on voting because you think it's supposed to solve all the problems. So since it doesn't, it must be broken. The truth is that voting is just a very small part of trying to make the world look more like you think it should.
It's like developing a software application. No one would expect that buying a computer would take care of everything. But you can't start until you have a computer. And while the computer isn't everything, some are still going to be better for what you want than others.
as a voter I such a microscopically small degree of contol of any of those questions (functionally 0), that they don't seem productive to even care about
if I care about them, then I have to get upset when things don't go my way, I have to either get into arguments with people I know or actively try to avoid arguments
where is the net positive?
Of course, most people think that the US government abducting foreign nationals and torturing them at black sites is a considerably bigger problem than their mother-in-law being grumpy at them for a couple days, and want to do something about it.
how has that made the world a better place? other than now I feel vaguely superior to my in-laws "who just don't get it"
Government officials, at the end of the day, are chosen because the circles get filled in on ballots, and the circles get filled in from a choice made on the aggregate of our experiences, including discussions with friends and family.
The difference is that if we talk about it, even if it makes people uncomfortable, then the nation discusses these issues and takes them in to account when voting. If we don't, then the nation doesn't.
The rate at which pissed off people bother their family members about what they're pissed off about directly influences the course of national politics, even if the particular result of any particular discussion is some pissed off in-laws and a small percentage chance a bubble gets filled out differently in a few months.
I can only affect my small corner of the universe
how would the world be different if 1 person in every family told their in laws that they appreciated them as human beings
maybe that would change the world more, maybe there would be less pent up fustration and anger for Fox News (or whatever political bogeyman you ascribe to) tap into and frame with a political lense
Only in fantasy land.
The problem?
Nobody ever actually has a rational discussion or becomes informed about anything. Just shouting matches and insults get thrown around, nothing ever gets accomplished. Everyone now hates each other. You aren't going to change someone's deeply held beliefs even if those beliefs are based on complete and total lies.
The backfire effect.
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/
The Misconception: When your beliefs are challenged with facts, you alter your opinions and incorporate the new information into your thinking.
The Truth: When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.
No, no, no, no, no. Things don't work like that. Even ignoring the backfire effect another commenter mentioned, you have this huge campaigns, PR and media machine optimized for politicians to make people have discussions politicians want. Media are actually mind-controlling nations and the funny thing is, people will tell you that they know it, and yet they act as if they weren't aware.
if nothing else I can spend that time being a better parent and spouse
voting ranks extremely low on the active uses of my time to make the world a better place
But hey, let's suppose one of those few, rare, much less than once-in-a-lifetime cases comes up where the vote is so close that your one vote WOULD make a difference. In that case we can say two things:
(1) that outcome is closer than the margin of error on our vote-counting technology, so the outcome will actually get decided in the courts
(2) If the country is THAT divided between the two candidates, they're probably so similarly positioned on the {net good/net bad} scale that your vote didn't really matter then either - you got to pick which of two functionally-identical candidates we got. (or if they're not, they're close ENOUGH that you have no way of being sure you made the right choice between them - you'd do as well to flip a coin.
Rationally speaking, the effect of voting for a candidate is identical to the effect of rooting for a sports team. It does nothing to modify the outcome of the match, but it does make YOU have a bit more ego invested in whoever you picked.
The issue is not chance, it is apportionment: to what degree can you claim responsibility for the final outcome of an election? And what you're saying is that in elections where your portion is very small, you don't think it's worth participating.
To me this seems like a rather self-centered approach to civic engagement, essentially saying "I won't participate in any process that does not sufficiently validate my importance."
And is there a value at which you would think it is worth participating? That would imply that the smaller and less consequential the election, the more likely it is that you would participate. That seems like a weird way to set priorities.
And it's worth noting that no matter how small each portion may be, it will still be larger than the portion of those who did not vote at all.
The argument from small apportionment also assumes that everyone else still votes (that's why the portion is so small, after all). So it can't work as a general argument against the utility of voting. In fact if everyone tried to follow that strategy, any defector would wield enormous power, as one of few people bothering to vote.
But setting morality aside and just assessing the expected value, I should want to vote more when the expected value is large, which is to say when I have BOTH (a) a decent chance of affecting the outcome, AND (b) some good reason to think my vote is much better informed than that of the average voter.
If - case (a) - my vote is one of millions, I have no reason to expect it to CHANGE the result.
If - case (b) - my vote isn't above average in terms of how well-informed I am and how carefully I've thought it through, I have no reason to think adding mine to the mix will IMPROVE the result, even if it DID change the outcome.
For most people and most elections most of the time, neither (a) nor (b) applies; they should not vote.
Your last paragraph suggests the use of Kant's categorical imperative, which not a great guide to action. To illustrate why: suppose our question at hand is "should I walk on the grass?" If I do, I will enjoy the feeling of grass between my toes, but if EVERYBODY walked on the grass, the grass would die and we would lose not just its usefulness and that nice feeling but also its beauty. So applying Kant says I shouldn't walk on the grass, right? But wait! There are more likely options in the world than EVERYBODY or NOBODY should walk on the grass; there's also the option that SOME people walk on the grass. If we test the rule "people SUFFICIENTLY LIKE ME should walk on the grass", that works fine when you universalize it! Then we get the prettiness for all AND the nice feelings for some and the grass survives.
So to return to voting: not everybody should vote. SOME people should vote. Which ones? People who really ENJOY doing so, and people who have reason to think it will be a close race AND are especially well-informed or otherwise have reason to think their vote helps much more than average.
I'm in neither of those categories, so I shouldn't vote.
- Slavery was legal.
- Votes were cast publicly (hence the concerns about what is broadcast). The secret ballot was introduced into federal elections at the end of the 19th century, in part to address this concern.
- Only a subset of Americans could actually vote. In addition to the disenfranchisement inherent in slavery, women were denied the vote, and many states had poll requirements like property ownership, taxes, literacy, etc.
In addition, neither argued that people should not vote at all, but rather that a vote, by itself, is not sufficient to enforce morality, justify any given government action, or achieve justice. I agree with them on all of that.
But the argument against complacency in voting is not the same thing as arguing in favor of never voting.
In the end, you clearly don't want to vote, and that is fine with me--I don't think that anyone should be forced to vote!
But that's not the argument you made to kick off this subthread. You didn't say "I don't think I should vote" or "I don't want to vote" or "I think voting would make me feel less rational."
What you said is that "the vote changes nothing" and makes "the voter" less rational. That's a general argument about voting for any given person. I don't think you've proved that point, and I think you've stopped trying to.
edit: copy edits
The way it makes the voter less rational is that once you have voted for somebody you become emotionally invested in that candidate. If they lose, you now get to feel bad about their losing. if they win, you can either feel bad about their inevitable advocacy of bad policies and abandonment of election promises...or you can reconfigure your opinions so as to convince yourself that what they actually do is what ought to be done.
Being personally invested in candidates makes people dumber. The fact that somebody voted for Obama makes it harder for them to see what a empty suit Obama has been as President; ditto for people who voted for Bush when he was in office. And neither the Bush voters nor the Obama voters can see how SIMILAR the two are. If you want to be able to assess politicians impartially, it's easier to do that if you didn't vote for them.
When I cast a vote, I know for a fact that it won't change the outcome of the election but it will change ME. I should therefore only cast a vote if I want the change in myself that I expect that vote to cause.