It’s a piece of accepted wisdom that every vote counts, and that voting is important, and perhaps the citizen’s most important contribution to their governance. I claim that if voting is the way you express your political will, then you aren’t expressing much political will.
Voting is only as significant as the options being voted on. Whether it’s a student org electing the only person who would volunteer for the position, a national political party voting on the presidential nominee, or a referendum on constitutional approval, the most important decisions were made long before that point. More important than the vote is what options are being voted on.
This is not to encourage despair. This is to encourage strategy, leverage and thought. Don’t invest great significance into checking a box. Something should signal that change doesn’t come so easy, because change doesn’t come so easy.
right on …
Voting only matters in the rare case of a tie, if you are the tie-breaker, and even then you are constrained by the tied choices you have been offered. It is the first level of civic participation, and I encourage people to vote as one way of making their intentions known, but there are many more effective ways to promote desirable changes.
I tend to be of two minds on this. A single vote doesn’t necessarily make all that much difference, except in the case of a tie. It is, however, one way to make your voice heard. There are other ways, and I think exercising several of them rather than just one is the best way to go. I also think more people should vote. I tend to see lack of voter turn-out (for anything, not just national politics) as apathy. Talking to people who haven’t voted, that seems to be fairly accurate.
Plus, I’m of the opinion that if you didn’t vote, you don’t have the right to bitch about what did get elected.
Then there was the student council election at my undergrad, where well over three quarters of the students voted for someone’s dog. (The dog’s name was Eli. I don’t remember the owner’s name. Eli was a gorgeous husky, one of the ones with one blue eye and one brown eye. Very friendly dog, too.) The powers that be insisted that the title go to the human with the highest number of votes. This was also the student council that several years ago had voted to disband themselves only to be told they couldn’t do that.
I’m not sure what that says about the power of voting.
I think it comes down to vote, but don’t let that be your only action.
Plus, I’m of the opinion that if you didn’t vote, you don’t have the right to bitch about what did get elected.
what if you hate both candidates?
Then vote for Cthulhu and bitch about everyone!
I’m actually of two minds on that. If you vote for a third party (libertarian, green, Elder, whatever), there’s the thought that you’re “throwing away” your vote and you have to vote for the one you hate the least. But there still is something for a protest vote, that you can’t stand either of the major candidates.
What we desperately need are more viable parties. This binary system is horrid.
I think the biggest part of the problem is winner-take-all representation. It’s a terrible system for representing people’s interests.
I more or less concur, although I’m not sure how to express stronger political will in an effective fashion. I was more activist in the past — I demonstrated, wrote letters to the editor, wrote letters to my legislators, penned a few op-ed pieces — but I really question whether any of those things truly matter, these days. And I don’t have much of an appetite for seeking elective office, either.
I need to become a major corporation, or something.
Organizing is important. Getting people together, persuading, etc.
I think that is true for most Americans, and only changes once in an (Oh-dear-lord-jesus-the-fags-want-to-marry-your-prepubescent-son!) blue moon. People seem to want the most bang for their buck, and politics isn’t really geared to satisfy that average consumer. Organizing and lobbying and all the preliminary stuff takes much time, energy, and money. And, frankly, most people have better things (i.e. making money to feed their family). It seems there’s only a curious minority willing to devote their resources into efforts that fail more than half the time.
The best metaphor for voters I can imagine, at this moment, is a large vat of water. Activists on both sides of any issue want to tip the vat so the water dumps on the other side, but all the sloshing making the water move back and forth in strange ways. Some drops evaporate, others condense into the vat, and no single droplet is really gonna get anyone wet. But the net total of all those drops does matter… and every drop contributes to how close we come to a tie or how unassailable our margin of victory is. Every vote counts, just like in the Christian rubric, every prayer counts. But sometimes one’s god just answers a prayer with a smug, “No.”
How much does voting matter?
It matters differently depending on who is doing the voting.
Wow, what a bs answer that was…