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Title:Non-voting
Date:June 27th, 2000
Self Righteous:3
Opinionated:9
Simply true:4
YMMV:10

I don't vote.

I used to vote. I tried, I really did. I used to vote Libertarian, but two things happened:
  1. I realized I could be wrong about things.
  2. I realized that I despised all politics.
But more importantly, I realized that democracy doesn't work in the USA (the only place I am somehow allowed to vote), because of two major faults:
  1. Democracy requires an informed populace. That doesn't happen here.
  2. Even if a populace is informed, will they necessarily make the best choices? That's a massive assumption.
  3. The two party system is a failure. It removes actual choice. Instead we have the two biggest parties making political maneuvers to try to figure out how to get the majority vote. See Duverger's Law for more info, as well as this video for just one example alternative.
I'm not interested in either of the two political parties since neither of them represent my belief system. In fact, for a wonderful explanation of how I feel about voting, and how I feel about people telling me that I need to vote, I recommend watching South Park's Season 8 Episode 8 "Douche and Turd".

"Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."
- James Bovard?

Maybe I'll vote again someday. After all, I am somewhat of a relativist, so my opinion may change..

"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both commonly succeed, and are right."
"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance."
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."
- Henry L. Mencken

Dilbert

Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens: A study that demonstrates that the voting public has little effect on public policy, instead it is generally controlled by economic elites and special interest groups (and a really good video to explain it)

http://www.vox.com/2014/10/16/6984985/ebola-politics-shark-attacks: An article about a study that explains how shark attacks and other silly things have a massive effect on voting.

"Voting is not an expression of power, but an admission of powerlessness, since it cannot do otherwise than reaffirm the government's supposed legitimacy."
- Fred Woodworth

Responses:

"Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent."
"I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time."
- Henry L. Mencken
"The whole premise of democracy is that it is safe to leave important questions to the court of public opinion, but is it safe to leave them to the court of public ignorance?"
- Isaac Asimov

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