Argumentative point: Don't Not Vote!

[Hyraxylos]

Yes, I know this looks all TL;DR on first glance but please bare with me because it’s important to me and I put a ton of thought into making my arguments here. You’ll be glad you did.

Something’s been really frustrating me lately whenever talk comes on about politics. I’m seeing too many people both at DeVry and in various locations on the internet babbling about how they “don’t want to vote for the lesser of two evils”, when truth is these people all haven’t the slightest clue of what they’re talking about. What finally irritated me enough to get off my anterior and write up this essay was the realization that all the people I’ve been hearing this rhetoric from are all YOUNG. “Young” as in, this is the first time they’re being allowed to vote. If an entire demographic of the American race actually WANTS politicians to spit on them (explanation at the end) then fine. But I draw the line at it being MY demographic. That said here’s the major excuses I’m seeing for people not voting, and this applies to EVERYONE, not just young people.

1. “My vote won’t count.” This one is puzzling because I once saw a survey somewhere that showed people saying this all over the United States. For that to be even PARTLY true, there would have to be exactly zero swing-states in this nation. Even if you don’t live in a swing state, it’s still better to vote anyhow for reasons I’ll lay out farther down.
2. “Everyone else will vote for the same candidate that I’d vote for.” Then it’s not really a big deal I guess. But it’s still SLIGHTLY better to vote for him anyway, just in case “everyone else” accidentally sleeps in on Election Day.
3. “Everyone else will vote against me.” Then your vote will be decided for you, but you’ll still be left on record of having voted against the majority. If any smaller more LOCAL governments, such as your county or state, takes note of it and you happen to be in the same demographic as some other people who voted the same way, that will make an impression on a politician even if your vote doesn’t count for this election.
4. “I don’t like the current System.” If you don’t like the System, then I’d suggest you either move to another country where you’ll be more privileged than here in the United States ( XD!!) or try to make a stand to get something changed yourself, like what I’m doing by writing this essay. I think non-voters are an even bigger contribution to the problems than people who vote for the “wrong” candidate. Let me make a couple things clear. (a) You can’t cast any vote AGAINST a candidate. Only FOR one. (b) You can’t make a statement by not voting. You think you’re actually going to get something accomplished by refusing to vote? What a joke!
5. “Both candidates are puppets of their respective parties.” That may be true for right now, but if you thought the Republicans were “controlling” the President or the Democrats were “controlling” the one before him, you’re gravely mistaken. Once elected, s/he can do just about anything he wants. Even if a Republican suddenly decides he wants to be Liberal, the Republican Party would be helpless to remove him. The Democrats in Congress would oppose it (impeaching the President isn’t easy at all), and the Republicans would have to admit to the public that they made a mistake. See, the people in these parties are prone to the same subconscious terror of admitting out loud to having made mistakes as most other anti-skeptics in this country. The politicians aren’t going to make a stand because they’re cowards.
6. “Both candidates are evil and power-hungry.” They tried this one against Senator Clinton, but if you think about it you kinda NEED to be “ambitious” and “power-hungry” or else why would you run for President? As for evil… look the candidates up. Find out about them as individual people. The only tick I’ve seen against Obama thusfar is the whole business with that pastor guy, but Obama then denounced him because the public spoke up. Even if the candidates ARE evil, they still have to prevent the rest of us from getting too unhappy at them and exercising our 2nd-Amendment rights.
7. “Why should anyone care about me?” If you don’t vote, then they SHOULDN’T care about you obviously, and that’s why it’s better to vote.

4 and 7 will need a bit more explanation because they really are connected. They’re both faulty arguments because they’re made without any real superconscious thought about the mechanics of the System. If the election really were determined by popular vote, then yeah you WOULD really be making a difference by not voting. But the way things are, if you don’t vote, then your neighbors will vote FOR you. Let me give you a bit of an imaginary scenario here with some really fantastic (by which I mean fantasy-ish) conditions. Imagine first there are exactly 300 million people here just for the sake of having a number that’s easy to write out. And imagine that NOBODY votes in 2008 except one guy. Yes, I’m asking you to imagine the presidential candidates not voting for themselves and their friends not voting for them too. I’m going to show that (if this were ever a real situation) just one person would decide the election, and I’m going to show why by explaining each step of the mechanics.

So nobody votes. All 50 states are not only white, not only are all the DISTRICTS white, but there’s literally nobody. Voting. At. All. Suddenly I decide that I want to vote for Obama. (And yes, imagine also that the polls are open even though nobody’s participating.) I cast my vote. Here’s the step-by-step result.
1. My district contained 629690 people when I looked it up today. 629689 people don’t vote, and the tally is 1 to 0 in favor of the Democratic candidate. It’s a close call, but it’s still a win. From my one solitary blue vote, the System turns the ENTIRE DISTRICT blue, and 629689 anonymous (because they didn’t show up!) votes are decided without the consent of the non-voters. (THIS is why not voting isn’t a statement btw!)
2. Since my district is now blue, it passes its own vote upwards to the state. Nobody in the other districts voted though, so the others are all still white. But mine is blue; out of 15 votes, the tally is now 1 to 0 in favor of the Democratic candidate. You can probably guess what happens next; since the other districts didn’t speak up, the entire state of Georgia turns completely blue, expanding my 1 Electoral Vote to a whopping 15.
3. Georgia passes 15 Electoral Votes upward to the national level in favor of Barack Obama. The other states, by contrast, are all white because the other 299,999,999 Americans were too lazy or apathetic to get out of bed in my little scenario. Barack Obama wins the election, 15/538 to 0/538, all because of my one vote. Even if he were decided instead by popular vote, he’d still win by 1/300,000,000 to 0, all because the vast overwhelming majority of the nation decided not to bother even TRYING to overpower me. For this one day in history, I am the single most powerful mortal organism in the whole entire world.
4. Heck, let’s make things a bit more interesting and tip the odds just a little against me! Let’s say… oh… Kentucky and Mississippi all suddenly decide they want McCain instead and try to fight back against my omnipotence. (yes I AM having fun, why do you ask? ) In fact, let’s imagine that EVERY person from BOTH states decides to vote McCain. Minus this one guy in Kentucky who’s my friend and would probably be offended at being categorized with a political party, that’s 7,160,258 votes for John McCain. The nationwide popular vote is now 1 blue vote to 7,160,258 red votes. But it doesn’t matter. Those millions of votes are all neutralized by the Electoral College, because the tally on that level adds up to 15 to 14 favoring Obama. Too bad for the Conservatives, huh. If only ONE lazy undecided voter out of those 292,839,741 people in one of the other 47 states (or among the non-voters in Georgia) had stood forth and voted, I would have lost! XD

So there you have it. Even though I’m vastly outnumbered, I’m still the victor because that’s just how awesome I am. *plays the Dark Dragon Empire theme from Breath of Fire 1* Actually it wasn’t that much effort; I just happened to be living in the right location. ^_^ But what REALLY makes this injustice possible (such as Dubya winning in 2000 despite losing the popular vote) are all the non-voters! They SAY that they don’t like the System, and they don’t like it because it’s popular to win the Presidency even if someone loses the popular vote, but it’s really all because of non-voting people that this flaw even exists! Non-voters are a tremendous portion of whom to blame for all the mistakes that Dubya made from 2000 to 2004 which started the ruin of our economy and scarred our image in the eyes of the rest of the world. If they don’t stand up this time, it may well happen again, and China may not remain patient with us forever. If EVERYBODY voted, this silly little anti-majority nonsense wouldn’t be possible. And yes, this does effect you directly and immediately because I haven’t gone into the aftermath of my scenario yet. >:3
2012 comes in and imagine that I, the infamous ONE guy to decide the whole election, am still living in Georgia. Maybe I found a good programming career here to distract me from California; let’s just go with it. Both political parties remember pretty darn well how much of a close call it was in 2008, and they know exactly who made it happen. More importantly though (to the politicians anyway) are the demographics that I fall under:

1. I’m young. 21 now and 25 then which is still kinda-sorta young.
2. I’m white and nerdy.
3. I’m non-Christian.
4. I live in the South. That combined with #3 probably might allow one to predict that I’ve got something against religion.
5. I’m male, but I dislike male supremacists.

These factors all come into play when the candidates decide whom to pander to next time. A lot of what they advertise and the promises they make will be aimed at my demographics. Some attention will also be somewhat more concentrated on Georgians who are similar to me. A lot more will be focussed on my district. But I personally will be standing at the dead center of all the political attention; the 2012 candidates would be literally throwing themselves at my feet to get my vote because of what non-voters allowed me to get away with in 2008.
And the aforementioned non-voters? Nobody cares about them. Nobody sees any reason to bother trying to pander to someone who refuses to vote regardless of the conditions and the candidates. I myself need a LOT of stubbornness thrown at me from the other side before I finally decide the other person really is closed-minded, but when I make up my mind to that effect I see no more reason to try and argue with them. I’d honestly rather mock them. And that’s what the System does. The candidates kick non-voters around because they know they won’t get any further repercussion, and it won’t matter because their votes just get decided for them. But if you vote anyway, even in a non-swing state, it sends the System a much stronger suggestion of “PANDER TO ME” than your vote would as an anonymous non-vote cast one way by default, because of your status under a set of labels.

So vote. Even if it won’t count this time, candidates the next time may look back and notice that suddenly a demographic of mostly non-voters decided to start speaking up out of nowhere and change their policies a bit. If you don’t believe me, then try spreading my arguments around to some of your friends and telling them to spread it around.
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[Ravic]

Wow. I was really impressed when I read this. I live in Australia, where voting is compulsory, however, I can imagine what you've described.
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[Jasriella]

You should seriously take this and present it to a larger group. Perhaps a local newspaper or something to get your point across to the masses. Not very many people around our age take the time to actually pay attention to what our political system does, how it is run, and who runs it. Also most older people (I'm saying anywhere from 35 and up) don't give us credit for a lot of things and this would definitely show them different.

I did vote. I did a bit of research on all of the candidates and I made my conclusion based on a few major factors. 1-What the person represents. 2-What the person "planned" to do with our problems. 3-Would this person actually do anything about these problems. and 4-Does the person have a stand up background?. So my conclusion was Liberatarian candidate Bobb Barr. I knew he wasn't going to win, even remotely come close enough to be even mentioned on the news. But the beauty of our system allowed me to vote for him based on my own beliefs. I did think that I shoud vote for Obama because I didn't want Cheney to win, but then that would have ruined the whole point of having an election. Plus, having voted for the one that "I" wanted, in a way I earned my right to complain about how the system is being run now because I didn't choose it.

By the way, I turned 18 just a few weeks before the election so I was/am as young as you could be to vote .
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[Hyraxylos]

Actually I did. Before the election I spread the arguments around and then later in an English class (AFTER the election unfortunately) I retouched it to make it less Internet-ish and submitted it as an assignment. I can't say for certain whether it made a difference in anyone's mind, but I got an A on the essay.
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