I'm quoting a lot here, but I think there's an issue in it that relates to Markey's original post:
1. Are you voting at all?
I haven't decided yet. If you vote, you are giving the election results legitimacy, and thus lose the right to complain later. However, I've also felt for at least 2 years that this will likely be an extremely important election.
There's an element of truth there; in a sense you've put ownership into the election.
Your right to free speech is definite, unless you've got absolutist myopic bigots out to get you because, say, you fly a flag that offends them due to their ignorance. A shame we can't complain about how ignorance is offensive. You should, however, have NO right to complain EVER if you don't vote at all, because you've tacitly given support to the election results by saying, "I don't care, whatever they choose". If you vote, and your guy loses, you have all the rights in the world to complain and say 'I told you so'. If you vote, and your guy wins, but fucks up, you can complain about how he betrayed your trust.
That's the other side of your truth, matt: if you don;t vote, you've opted out. You're basically saying, "If I show I don;t give a hoot now, then I can come back later and say, 'Wait a minute, now I give a hoot'." The question at that point is that if you weren't willing to take some ownership in the process, why should anyone listen to you later?
Ico: My response wasn't off-topic, it was an explanation of my view. I was (as a member of the target group) asked if I was going to vote or not. I answered (I'm not sure yet) with a brief explanation of my answer; if given two bad candidates, voting only allows the parties to continuously give you bad candidates since they know you'll vote for one of them anyway. Additionally, whenever you participate in the system, you agree to be bound by the results. The only way that anyone can say "This is not MY President" (something some people have said about Bush) is if they refused to take part in the system that brought him to power.
By participating, THAT is when you have, as you put it, "tacitly given support to the election results," not by saying "I don't care", but rather by saying "I vote no confidence in the choices presented."
You mistake my reasoning for not voting (if, in fact, I do decide not to vote.) It isn't me saying I don't care, rather it's me saying I care so much that I cannot follow the line like a good little sheep and support either candidate since they're both so very destructive to the nation I love. The next step from here is be actually trying to take part by getting someone else elected; something that is, currently, not within my power.
Just stop and think for a moment which would send the greater message to the Republicans and Democrats that they need to field GOOD candidates:
Thousands of people voting and complaining about it later.
OR
Not one person in these United States going to the booth in November and both candidates getting 0 votes.
The latter isn't going to happen, but out of those two, WHICH would have the greater impact? Which would be reported in the news the next day? Which would actually FORCE both parties to bring out different, possibly good, candidates?
I would wager to say the latter. Do you honestly think the former would have that same impact?
By taking part, you legitimize the results. While I guess you can complain about it later, you are equally responsible in the results. (You're right, you never surrender the right of free speech, whether or not you vote, however you sacrifice, in principle, the high ground of disputing the results if you take part in the system that produces them.) However, refusing to take part allows you to (in principle if not reality) reject the results. The next step from there is working to present a candidate (in the future) that is not one of the two main parties and that people can see is a good leader. Of course, that takes far more money than I currently possess...
One more person not voting is just going to tell Washington that fewer people are even interested, and that they're one non-voter closer to being able to toss off the final constraints of the Constitution. You don't vote, you're just a statistic, and a statistic is in little position to tell the nose-counters what he means.
Silence sends no message to the Demicans and Republocrats but that they can count you out.
The only way to get attention is what the Socialists did: they didn't tell people not to vote, they got people to vote... for them. It scared the PiPs (Parties in Power) enough that both major party platforms are deeply socialist to this day. Reconsider your scenario: if millions (thousands isn't even a drop of mist in the breeze) of people all voted for, say, the Constitution Party candidate (are they fielding one this year -- anyone know?), the nose-counters would take note that a significant bunch of people have serious objections to the Big Two. That would make some news, and there would be people to interview, so it would get on TV. Additionally, when those people got interviewed, they could speak from the stance of having taken part, having made their investment, and as people with ownership in the process could have a shot at being taken seriously.
But someone who doesn't vote wont get interviewed, no matter how many of you there are, because everyone will say, "He just sat on his ass", and change the channel.
It's ridiculous to think they are equally destructive. At that point, you choose the lesser of the two evils. There is no 'vote of no confidence'---NONE. Work to get that added to the ballot, I think a lot of Americans would appreciate it and it would send a clear signal to the two ruling parties; I'm for it. However, not voting is tacit support to the election results---you're willing to sit back and let others dictate who will lead the country. If that's the case, you should sit back and say nothing as the country prospers or flounders or falls apart.
No, no one cares how few voters there are---Dubya still claimed a mandate and he had no where close to enough people to obtain such 'political capital'.
I think you greatly failed to comprehend what I wrote. NOT voting doesn't fail to legitimize the election results; you still give approval to it through inaction UNTIL 'vote of no confidence' is added to the ballot.
However much IC is going to object, this really comes down to one simple thing, matt: you own yourself. An election is a process of deciding where to invest that ownership; in essence, it's a contract, which is the way people integrate their self-ownership into greater things. Regarding contracts, it's just common sense that if you don't participate, you're not a partner, so... go away and shut up. The whole notion that not voting, walking out, staying silent or whatever makes an impact is based on the notion that you already have ownership in the game, and that they can't, really, pay without you. But since WW II it's become more and more evident that they
don't need us, that we really
don't have ownership in the process -- unless we're out there voting. And until there's an amendment to the Constitution that says you can't win without a majority of people eligible to register to vote, it will stay that way. The winner of this game isn't determined by spectators, it's determined by the people who toss some of their self-ownership into the ring and take a spot on the team (yes, I'm mixing metaphors; so sue me).
That's why, as IC so pointedly mentioned, Dubya could claim a mandate -- and for that matter, so could Billy C, who had nowhere near an actual majority of the popular vote in one of those elections (remember Ross Perot, the guy who really got Clinton into the White House?): they don't need us, if we don't vote.
In a way you're right that not voting doesn't approve the election results -- you haven't invested any of your self-ownership in it, so you haven't "bought into" it. But it doesn't disapprove them, either, because you've tacitly conceded that you're not interested; you haven't spent the only coin that counts in that realm. So while IC isn't entirely right here, he's a lot more right than you are.
So, to Senator Obama: there are a lot of us who consider him unfit for the job, yet consider McCain so vastly more unfit (I don't even like using that word of McC, since it has the root "fit" in it) that the circumstances under which we would vote for him are beyond reality. So, do we run ourselves up against the first OP question, and just sit it out?
The only rational answer on a the range of levels I've discussed is "No way!" This is a game with a scoreboard, and nothing that doesn't get on the board is relevant in the least. No one looks anywhere but at the scoreboard, and so anything off it isn't even noticed. As you both managed to suggest, the only way to change the game is to change the scoreboard, and that means either getting another team into scoring position, or rewriting the board -- in practical terms, those boil down to getting another team into scoring position, becauswe without that, the two who've assigned themselves management of the board aren't going to entertain anything more than making it look prettier (something McCain has excelled in) or enduing it with greater dignity (something Barack attempts forcefully).
However much I laughed at it, that's why the inclusion of Nader at the end of those questions is fitting: If you don't like the dark-skinned Senator, there really are only two options on the board: you vote for McCain, or you vote for a candidate who in your view stands for more integrity than either of the two possess.
Or](/images/smilies/bang.gif "Brick wall ](*,)")
Or
