Don't vote

The absurd intellectual ^ | 10-17-15 | Grant Hamilton

[RKBA Democrat]

reading this, you — you — can vote. Reading a strange bloggy rant about an election probably means you’re an engaged citizen, and you can make an informed and considered choice.

But exhorting the masses to go out and vote leads to poor choices made with bad information.

I’m tired of people wrapping themselves up in the self-satisfaction of a “Go vote” message, without actually putting themselves out there to explain why or how.

Garbage in, garbage out, as any old programmer will tell you. And telling people to “vote” without any direction or context as to why or how they should vote is giving them only garbage information. What do you think they’ll produce in the ballot box?

A poorly-informed voter, urged at every corner to “just vote, it doesn’t matter how” is likely to make their choice based on a gut feeling, or emotion, or habit, and not on a carefully thought-through conclusion.

That leads to some of the worst practices of current electioneering: pandering to voters’ base instincts by playing on their fears, micro-targeting their greed, and cultivating a general us-vs-them attitude.

All of these are proven to work — and they work better the less one pays attention. So, they work great in today’s busy society, where we are bombarded by snippets of information throughout the day, and never have time for much drawn-out investigation or debate.

The result? Many people will head to the ballot box exhausted by the election, yet still without having thought about their choice all that much. They’ll make a snap decision and vote for a candidate or a party that makes them feel good, or against a candidate or party that worries them, or just mark an X beside the party of candidate that they voted for last time.

The myth of the informed voter is as deeply ingrained as is Homo economicus. But it’s just not true.

Like in economics, people make political choices all the time that are irrational, delusional, emotional and just plain ill-informed. Telling them to “Just vote” and pretending that when they get behind the cardboard screen, they’ll make perfect choices is just as irrational, delusional, emotional and ill-informed.

So no, if you don’t feel like it, feel free to not vote.

Oh, that old chestnut: “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain”? Screw your sanctimony. Complaining is an excellent way of getting decision-makers to listen to you. Complaint — whether through writing letters, petitions, protests or just plain bitching on Twitter — is possibly a better method of producing change than voting.

In fact, complaining is one of the prime ways for political parties to pick which planks they’ll put in their platform, so by complaining, you get to help decide the choices those schmucks who vote have to pick from.

Don’t vote. Do complain.

And if you are telling people to get out and vote, then at least have the courage of your convictions to tell them how and why to pick a candidate.

I could write a whole ‘nuther post on that — there are clear choices between parties and candidates in this election, but those choices are a matter of degree, rather than anything else. We’re choosing between Coke and Pepsi, not between Coke and a lightbulb.

And if you’re in the dark, being guilted into a choice between Coke or Pepsi won’t help you one bit.

[RKBA Democrat]

The approaches suggested in those articles don’t really exclude voting.

I find it interesting that some folks think the wolves are somehow held at bay by voting. In actuality I think it attracts wolves. Nihilists and narcissists always seem to want an applauding audience.

Anyways thanks for thinking, and God bless you as well.