I’ve heard from nearly everyone and everything—television, friends, radio, banners, etc.—that my vote counts; that I can make a difference. I’ve been trying to argue that idea by stating the incredibly low probability of my individual vote actually affecting anything, but only with limited success (I’m not good with formulas). So, I’ll let Steven Landsberg do a little talking for me.
“Your individual vote will never matter unless the election in your state is within one vote of a dead-even tie. (And even then, it will matter only if your state tips the balance in the electoral college.) What are the odds of that? Well, let’s suppose you live in Florida and that Florida’s 6 million voters are statistically evenly divided—meaning that each of them has (as far as you know) exactly a 50/50 chance of voting for either Bush or Kerry—the statistical equivalent of a coin toss. Then the probability you’ll break a tie is equal to the probability that exactly 3 million out of 6 million tosses will turn up heads. That’s about 1 in 3,100—roughly the same as the probability you’ll be murdered by your mother.”
He goes on to say, “If Kerry (or Bush) has just a slight edge, so that each of your fellow voters has a 51 percent likelihood of voting for him, then your chance of casting the tiebreaker is about one in 10 to the 1,046th power—approximately the same chance you have of winning the Powerball jackpot 128 times in a row.”
-Steven E. Landsberg ( http://www.slate.com/id/2107240/ )
As he mentions in this article, people will argue “But, if everyone thought like that…”. He argues “So what? Everyone doesn’t think like that.”, which is a decent point, but I have a better one. On the election day when no one votes, we, the American people, will have made it blatantly obvious we are done with this democratic system.
And you know what? I am not supporting the democratic system. At least not this one. This one is incredibly screwed up. Our founding fathers didn’t work hard to achieve this system—I am by no means dishonoring them. I am, in a way, being more patriotic by not voting; by not supporting this system.
Thomas DiLorenzo makes some brilliant points as well. He writes “…America was not founded as a democracy. It was a constitutional republic. The whole purpose of the Constitution, James Madison wrote in Federalist #10, was to control “the violence of faction,” by which he meant democracy. That’s why, until the Lincolnian “Civil War Amendments” were added to it, every part of the Constitution was a prohibition of some kind of governmental power or activity.” James Madison, in case you didn’t know, was one of the founding fathers, and was the principal author of the constitution.
Thomas DiLorenzo — ( http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo59.html )
Everything (as I mentioned earlier—television, radio, banners, friends, etc.) also tells me to “voice my opinion” through voting. Listen, if I am to truly voice my opinion, I need a greater medium than punching a hole through a piece of paper to do so. My opinion is much too loud and complex to be expressed that way. And why should I vote? I don’t care for either candidate, nor the two-party system we currently have.
To end this, I will quote Wendy McElroy: “It is commonly said, “If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain about the outcome.” The opposite is true. By playing the game, voters agree to the rules. Only those who don’t play and withhold their consent have a right to complain about the outcome, especially since the winner will have his hand in the non-voter’s pocket.
Voting is not an act of political freedom. It is an act of political conformity. Those who refuse to vote are not expressing silence. They are screaming in the politician’s ear: “You do not represent me. This is not a process in which my voice matters. I do not believe you.”
Non-voting has a rich and long history through which the dissenting electorate has expressed everything from religious convictions to political cynicism. That history has been conspicuously ignored. If people truly believe voting is important, they should use their mouths to do more than insult non-voters and utter election slogans. They should discuss and debate the issue with those who disagree”
So, that’s why I don’t vote. Now stop telling me to.
