Voting - when is there a point?

[glenbarnett]

See this article, which discusses the value of voting (in that case, in presidential elections, but the argument can be adapted more widely

Comments

[divaflip]

I never believe that a vote that has been genuinely cast is 'wasted', the way some people claim, for a variety of reasons

[whswhs]

The rough gist is this: the original view is your vote has a vanishingly small chance of making a difference, so the economic benefit to you is too small for your vote to have a direct benefit to yourself. The opposing view is that you don't vote only for your direct benefit. If you vote strategically for the good of society (i.e. you try to help everyone, where "help" is whatever you think is the right thing to do for them), your vote actually does seem to be worthwhile.I would need to see the method used to calculate the imputed value of a vote on the latter basis

[dmmaus]

It says something that apparently the best systems of government and government selection that we can come up with are argued by a significant number of people to be completely pointless.

I resent the implication by idiots who think they understand statistics and miss the entire point of democracy that I'm stupid because I take the effort vote and care who I vote for.

If you want to argue that your own vote is worthless, it's because your opinion is worthless. If you want to argue that my vote is worthless, go fuck yourself.

[whswhs]

If it's any consolation to you, I do in fact vote. The point of my argument was not to show that voting was worthless, but to show that there was a problem with the argument for it in terms of utility-even when that utility is altruistically conceived. Other explanations are required.

[robertprior]

The cost is small: maybe an hour every few years.

The benefits (living in a democratic society, as opposed to a non-democratic one) are immense.

And I think one of the benefits, not matter how arcane the electoral system (eg. American Electoral College) is that the expectation that the average person has a say in the government is built into the system. This may get rather tattered at times, but it's there as an ideal.

[divaflip]

I agree.

btw are you robert prior in canberra, who will be at maccon in a few weeks? if not, you have the same name as another gamer friend that glen knows :)

[unixronin]

Unfortunately, one could argue that effectively all votes in US elections are wasted, because the two dominant parties keep on offering up such complete poltroons as candidates that almost every race becomes a choice of the lesser of N evils, and have rigged the system as much as they can get away with to try to ensure that third-party and independent candidates are operating at a massive disadvantage right from the word go. In the current US Presidential election cycle, it's expected the "successful" candidates will have to raise and spend almost half a billion dollars each. That's rampantly absurd.