This is a message to people reading this that live in the U.S. I apologize to my readers from other countries, although if you would like to let Americans know what you think about them choosing to vote or not to vote, please do so in the comments.
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For everyone that wants to “make a point” by either
1. Not voting
2. Voting for a third party (because of #3)
3. Looking at it like you’re voting for the lesser of two evils
Let me be clear: Your point will not be heard.
No one will know what your point is.
If you choose not to vote, your point will not be distinguishable from someone who doesn’t give a shit.
It will not change the fact that either Obama, or McCain WILL become president.
I understand some of the reasons that a person would choose not to vote, but there remains one big problem with that. If someone is trying to make a point by literally choosing none of the above by not voting, there is no way to distinguish those people from the ones that don’t care.
When it comes to the numbers and voter turnout, there isn’t even a fine line between apathy and choosing not to choose. There is no line. If you were to not vote, causing one more number to add to the total of people not voting, no one would know why that total is the number it is. Because there is not an option to vote for no one, your “point” gets washed away into the sea of apathetic sheep that are too selfish to care about the future.
I don’t necessarily think a vote for a third party is a wasted vote, but when it comes to an election as important as this one, I don’t think this is the time to show support for more parties so that they are included on the ballot in future elections. I’m all for that, but I don’t think this is the time.
If you are thinking about doing one of the three things above, election day is the WORST time to get your point across.
Please, let’s get the better one of the two people that even have a chance of winning into the White House… THEN you can write letters to congress looking for change, looking for more support of third parties, etc.
Some people believe that if everyone just stopped voting, then the public would take notice. Then presumably, the questions could begin about whether our election process is flawed, or the government itself.
The problem with that is that if smart people stopped voting, the only ones voting would be the stupid ones. What I mean is, if you are smart enough to recognize that there are things wrong with the world, yet you choose not to participate in a manner of boycotting, you are going to let the stupid people dictate your world.
Take a look at these videos.
I don’t mean to display a bias for my political views, and I don’t mean to just make McCain supporters look bad, but these people are clearly ignorant, racist, uninformed, and I think have no business voting.
As you can see, there are some – holy shit are you fucking serious, “category 5″ moronic – type people out there.
I DO NOT want idiots like that deciding who becomes the next leader of the free world. It’s fine if someone chooses to like McCain over Obama, but if their decision is based on lies and rumors, it would kill me if their power in numbers overpowered voters who are actually educated, but choose to make an idiotic point by doing one of the three things above.
(BTW, I tried to find videos of crazy Obama supporters, but I couldn’t. Maybe you can. There are countless videos of crazy McCain supporters.)
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Despite the problems with just about everything that has to do with our election process, I really think that voting for the best of the worst is much better than not voting at all.
Even if you do not like either of the candidates, you can’t escape the fact that one of them WILL be president. Let’s go ahead and try and help who you think is the best of the two to get in the White House, and THEN we can work on changing some things that don’t make sense. Don’t you think trying to change things would be harder if the worse of two evils got in?
If the worst guy gets in the White House AGAIN, then wouldn’t your point be even harder to get across?
I feel that there is a problem with people that have strong opinions about these things, and are at least somewhat liberal, and wanting to make change. Too often, efforts that try and make a point are in vain, and don’t end up getting done what they were hoping to get done, and the conservatives that are waiting in the background for them to f up get their people elected by sheer numbers on voting day.
It’s too bad that people that would like to have their voice heard, and to encourage change, often do so by futile means, such as not voting, because they don’t want to bruise their “ideals”.
It’s like saying:
I do not agree with the way this process and this government works, so I’m just going to have to pass on the whole “right to help choose who runs the country I live in”, and hope for the best.”
You can participate in politics in an effort to change it for the better, you can protest things you don’t agree with, you can write letters to congressman… you can do those things any day you want to. But the ONE day that you can participate in helping to set the tone for the next 4-8 years, you might choose to not choose?
WHAT A POINTLESS POINT!!
Standing up for a principle is fine UNLESS it gains you absolutely nothing, or even worse, plays into the hands of your opponents, as I believe will be the case if you don’t vote.
Please cast your vote on election day, or you’re letting complete idiots have that much more influence on the result. Do you really want to do that just to make an impotent statement which the targeted politicians don’t give a shit about anyway?
It’s hard to take your complaints about the government seriously if you couldn’t even be bothered to take a half hour to vote.
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The following quotes are from Thomas Jefferson:
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”
That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.”
Without education Democracy becomes tyranny”.
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”
By not voting, you are remaining silent.
Don’t be stupid.
If you are reading this on November 3rd or 4th, don’t make excuses. I’m sure it wouldn’t be very difficult to make arrangements with your employer to take a little time off to go vote. Just go do it.
You’re alive!!!
It’s really late, and I need to get up early tomorrow (should have been in bed hours ago, actually), so I’ve only scanned this so far, but from what I saw–right on.
I’m living in the UK, and the government here made a big push before our last general election to get out the vote. They made adverts educating people about just how many areas of their lives are affected by politics and politicians to try to discourage voter apathy.
I totally agree with you, and with your point that even if you don’t particularly like either of the candidates there is almost certainly one that you’d like least in the White House. That is my current view on UK politics. While they all seem fairly incompetent at the moment, I think that Labour still offers a better deal than the Conservatives, so Labour will get my vote if only to keep the Tories out of office!
The world is waiting patiently yet anxiously to see who America chooses. Don’t let us down! Choose wisely, because your decision affects so many more people than just those of you who live in the USA!
Nice one Bloggy!
I hope that the people who read this post don’t get lost in the videos and miss your main point about the importance of voting.
Those people in the videos may be bat-shit crazy, but at least they aren’t apathetic about voting for their bat-shit crazy beliefs.
Up here in Canada, our recent federal election drew the lowest turnout of all time – 59.1%
And this comes at a time when we are actively fighting in the war against terrorism (our troops have been in Afghanistan for a long, long, long time), the world’s economy is a mess and we are told that the environment is screwed unless we fall into line behind Al Gore.
Some pretty major issues.
You would think that we might express some concern over how our gov’t handles them…by voting.
At least by voting.
Hopefully Americans take their election a little more seriously than us Canucks.
On Tuesday night, the world will be watching to see which way America votes…I will be watching John Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The best election coverage by far.
I’m a Canadian, and our recent federal election was an interesting one. We have two ‘big’ parties (Conservative / Liberal) and two smaller parties (NDP / Green) and several fringe parties.
The scariest thing for me in the past few years has been the surge in the Conservative party. In the early 1990’s the conservative party nearly went extinct when it was splintered between traditional fiscal conservatives and various social conservatives. Then Bush came into the white house, our conservatives merged here, and now they have arguably ousted many of the old fiscal conservatives and are run by a former head of the social conservatives, these are the people in the video’s you showed. Racist, homophobic, strongly religious, scary pro-life…
As a Canadian it’s hard for me to guess where these people have come from or where they are getting their strength. Much of Canada clings to European roots because we’re afraid or pointedly do not want to be confused with Americans, specifically for the video’s above. But it gets harder as we see the influence of not only the American culture on our own society but also an acute realization of how much we do depend on America economically. These are the only reasons I can think of for our own conservative swing.
Amercian’s appear to me as victims of their own success. The richest nation on earth has managed to lull it’s population into this bizzare sense of self-security that they are rarely forced to consider their neighbours. And when I say neighbours I don’t mean the Canadians or the Mexican’s I mean the people next door, down the street or on the other side of their cities. I really don’t know how one country can be so full of anger and hate and still function. I’ve been almost everywhere in the world, and I can say I would prefer to be anywhere besides the US. It scares me (and I did grow up in a civil-war zone – Belfast).
I don’t know what to hope for. Part of me hopes Obama wins and puts some basic human decency back into the US. The other part of me hopes McCain wins, passes on and leaves Palin to run the country. The combination of the republicans driving the US economy into debt & deficit and Palin as the scariest choice for VP ever makes me think I may actually live to see a new world power rise and see the US collapse. In the current state the US is in, I’m not sure that would be a bad thing. And, I am saying this realizing that if the US goes down Canadians are on that sinking ship, but sometimes we have to think about what would be good for the world, and I’m not sure the US foreign policy right now can be called good for the world by any stretch.
Wow, DR. Almost 60% sounds like a lot to me. I’m not sure what the turnout averages in the U.S., but I imagine it to be much less.
I’ll have to look that up.
Beagle, your idea of McCain winning, then croaking and shoving Palin in the hot seat scares the crap out of me.
I agree that big shake ups need to happen sometimes. We have to wonder, though, if the U.S. is no longer the “superpower”, who would take it’s place?
I worry that China would. Nothing against the Chinese people of course, but their government seems to be stopping at nothing with reckless abandon to be number one, and appear to be ignoring some pretty big global concerns along the way.
I agree that not voting is not the smartest thing to do in this election because either Obama or McCain WILL be the next president.
DR, although 60 % is a small number for Canadians, its approximately the % that voted in 2000 (60%) and 2004 (67%).
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/voting/004986.html
It will be interesting to see whether there will be record numbers this election.
Palin as president would be very very scary!
Oh and Bloggy… those videos are scary too!!! Who are these people!!!???!!!!
Thanks for finding that, Lucy.
For some reason I was thinking it was like 40%. Not sure why I thought that.
Bloggy,
I agree with much of what you have to say regarding this issue. While I may have changed my mind about whether or not to vote, I (respectfully) disagree with your assertion that this election is “too important” to vote for a third party candidate. You could use that argument every time there’s an election, really. I don’t know if there’s ever been a presidential election that wasn’t important. While I share your sense of urgency about not wanting people like those in the videos to choose our leader and global representative, we will never have a change in the two-party system unless people mandate it by voting for a third-party candidate.
You say “Standing up for a principle is fine UNLESS it gains you absolutely nothing, or even worse, plays into the hands of your opponents….” I would argue that this is sometimes the price of principle. The very notion of sticking to one’s principles suggests that sometimes one must sacrifice for what one believes to be right.
Great post. Keep up the good work!
Wow, it’s amazing how race and stereotypes are still rampant in some parts of this country. I love how people say “I’m not a racist, but…” or “I don’t want to sound racist, but…” and then proceed to give reasons why they wouldn’t vote for a black man. Oh, and you gotta love how people are afraid that if Obama wins, Blacks will take over or that Black people hate White people. Obviously some wounds from the past have yet to heal.
Great post! Passed it on to some of my friends
Well, its finally over, the FAT LADY (pun intended) has sung. I (an old white guy) can, for the first time in almost eight years, really believe in America again. And most importantly, I believe that there can be a future for my children and their children.
On a down note one reason for my post is something Rick Casey wrote about in this mornings Houston Chronicle (Wed. Nov. 5). “Cynthia Dunbar, an elected member of the State Board of Education from Richmond, predicts that Barack Obama will bring tyranny to America by declaring martial law after his terrorist friends attack our homeland” She wrote this at “christianworldviewnetwork.com”. (Shouldn’t that be a DOT ORG???)
Friends, these nut cases are not only walking the streets, but they also hold elective offices. We need to make a very concerted effort to remove these people from office and put them away in mental institutions where they belong. And the only way to do that is FOR EVERYONE TO VOTE.
So the election’s over and my life is mostly co-opted by NaNoWriMo right now, but I wanted to say the vacuous stare on the woman in the second video down (in the still shot before you hit play) gave me a flashback to that scene in the movie “Independence Day” when the dip-shit stripper goes up on the roof of the building to greet the aliens and says “I hope they bring back Elvis!”
Obama had a muslim father, but was raised by his christian mother and her family. Being muslim does not make you a terriorist. It does not matter what these people think, because Obama has already won the election.
“BTW, I tried to find videos of crazy Obama supporters, but I couldn’t. Maybe you can. There are countless videos of crazy McCain supporters”
Gosh, I wish I had seen this several months ago. I could have passed on quite a few Youtube links.