And Bush Jr. has won. As a Christian I support the morality he says he stands for, but can I really trust the moral integrity of a man that attempted (and, most scarily, actually succeeded!) to pull the wool over his country’s eyes and link the 9/11 tragedy to his completely separate agenda for Iraq?
And, I’m afraid for my civil liberties, if this whole Patriot Act thing keeps up.
But the question remains: would it have mattered if I had voted or not? This is the problem I see with voting: Judged from a solely utilitarian viewpoint (how useful are my actions), voting just isn’t worth it. If you judge the “total usefulness” of an action to be the measure of the good that it accomplishes divided by the measure of effort it takes to accomplish, voting just doesn’t rank very high.
usefulness = good_accomplished / effort
As far as effort goes, you have the effort it takes to see through the political doubletalk and people-pleasing to hear what each proposition or candidate is really saying (plus the minimal effort of getting to the polls). As far as what it accomplishes… … …
I figure my power in choosing the next President of the United States is 1 / (however-many-people-vote). In this case, 1/(120 million). That is a very small number. Small enough that it brings the “total usefulness” of the voting action as close to zero as I practically want to measure. To me, I interpret this to mean that it’s not really worth my effort to vote.
I have explained this before to people, and they say “well, if everyone did this then the country would be in trouble”. I can only answer “well, if (practically) everyone did this, then my vote would have a lot of power and I would vote!”.
I am not advocating political apathy. I think that what the Internet Veterans for Truth did was a great thing. I think that political {pundits,propogandists,evangelists} can convince many people to vote. And groups of people voting actually make a difference, just not individuals. If you can inspire many people to vote the way you want them to, that act of inspiring can rank pretty high on the “total usefulness” scale.
The one flaw in my thinking is that voting isn’t just a pragmatic action–it’s also a symbolic action. When I vote, I’m not only accomplishing something practically (adding my extra pull, however small, to the tug-of-war for the next president). I’m also becoming a partner and participant in the democratic process. I have some vague feeling of linkedness, of ownership, or participation. And crossing the line from observer to participant is a powerful thing, psychologically. This is the only reason I could see to vote.
But I didn’t, so that’s that.