Let's take the not-uncommon sentiment/voting justification, "If you didn't vote, you can't complain" and examine how stupid it really is:
* If you voted for the winning candidate, you can't complain because YOU CHOSE HIM.
* If you voted for the losing candidate, you can't complain because YOU DIDN'T VOTE FOR HIM.
* If you didn't vote, you can't complain because YOU DIDN'T VOTE AT ALL.
Um…what?
isn't not voting also a vote?
I didn't vote for this post so I can't complain.
But I will anyway.
If you vote for the winner and he doesn't do what he promised you can complain. If he does what he promised you can't complain.
If you vote against the winner you can complain that it is everyone else's fault.
When in doubt always complain, it gets things out of your system. 😀
and the electoral college, and states various ways of using those college votes fits in how?
Nah, +Nolan L I'd rather just complain.
Remember it is very important who we put into office in the positions UNDER the president. They are the decision makers, and policy changers.
I vote because I read Robert Heinlein's If This Goes On…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_This_Goes_On%E2%80%94
and To Sail Beyond The Sunset where it's revealed that Nehemiah Scudder was elected in 2012 with 27% of the overall popular vote among the 63% of registered voters who bothered to vote (which was, in turn, less than half of those eligible to register), but due to a focused campaign, 83% of the Electoral Vote. There was no 2016 Election.
It's not that far-fetched a scenario.
http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2008G.html
In 2008, only 56.6% of those eligible to vote¹ cast a ballot.
Which means the popular vote for the Presidency was decided by 60,488,459 people in a nation of 230,872,030 adults. Twenty Six Percent
(calculated to be 213,313,508 people after removing felons, prisoners, parolees, those who are eligible (but overseas) and non-citizens)
Very close. And RAH showed in 1940 how easy it is to "steal" an election.
Voters don't get to pick who is in positions under the President.
No one voted for Monica Lewinski.
+Jonathon Barton the election process in the US is fundamentally flawed: it, by its very nature, had to devolve to a 2-party system. It needs total restructuring before it's anything vaguely resembling "fair." The only way I see a sane system being put into place is if it's changed through a constitutional amendment added by the states, which…I wouldn't expect any time soon. Didn't a related amendment get basically left for dead not that long ago? :
Once upon a time in America, men from differing political parties would "throw their hats into the ring" and vie for the position of President. The popular vote would be counted and the candidates would be ranked by the number of votes they received. The man with the highest vote would become President; the man with the second highest would be vice-president and so on down the line for a series of positions in the line of succession for the presidency.
This was tossed out for our current system which has devolved into a mud-wrestling bout for the highest office. Now if only it were settled that way!
I'd argue that those who don't vote are the ONLY ones who can complain. We didn't participate in the ridiculousness that is our screwed up political system. Voting is passive agreement that it isn't broken. But…that's only one woman's opinion.
Not voting is never going to fix the system, voting for the better choice may cause better choices to be offered.
We'll have to agree to disagree.
You don't get a vote in whether we agree to disagree.
That wasn't so much as a 'vote' as it was a determining statement.
Unless, of course, you're conceding I'm right.
I don't agree to disagree. I agree that I am right and you are wrong and so you must be convinced.
Ah. Well. You'll have much better luck with discovering a dirt-cheap, clean, renewable resource.
Doesn't mean I have stop on your orders. At least you admit you are wrong.
I didn't. And you're welcome to try. Though, be warned, I'm going to ignore anything else you post along this line of thought 🙂