How is this ethical: YC funds Vote.org as part of YC S16. Vote.org is a voter registration platform broadly similar to VotePlz, but with fewer emojis.
Sam Altman spends his summer advising vote.org in his role as a YC Partner.
Soon after demo day, Sam Altman decides to launch what amounts to a clone knock off of vote.org. Paul Graham tweets about VotePlz at launch calling it the most important thing to happen today, after never mentioning the YC funded vote.org on his twitter all summer as far as I can tell.
Shouldn't YC be as friendly to not-for-profit startup founders as they claim to be to for-profit founders?
I'm all for there being lots of voter-registration organizations. YC should fund lots of startups in this space.
It seems though that the role that YC Partners play as trusted strategic advisors is incompatible with those partners going on to start directly competitive organizations, whatever their tax status might be.
I am contributing to both vote.org and voteplz.org, and probably two other get-out-the-vote non-profits. There are different approaches to this problem and I'm not sure which will work best, but unlike many for-profit startups it's non zero-sum--we have a long, long way to go to 100% voter turnout, and all the organizations working on this share the same fundamental goal.
This feels like the most important US presidential election I've ever witnessed, and I want to do whatever I can to make sure we're all involved.
Appreciate that you responded & didn't dodge the question. I think what makes it feel weird is that PG went out of his way to hype the launch of voteplz without (as far as I know) ever doing anything similar for vote.org
> This feels like the most important US presidential election I've ever witnessed, and I want to do whatever I can to make sure we're all involved.
Same for me. It's also the nuttiest US presidential election I've ever witnessed.
According to HuffPost Pollster, Trump has an unfavorable rating of 58%, Clinton has an unfavorable rating of 56%.
With numbers like that, neither should be in the race, imo.
But, the only other two candidates either risk Clinton being elected and don't know what/where Aleppo is (Gary Johnson) or are wanted on trespassing and mischief charges and risk Trump getting elected (Jill Stein).
Regarding the unfavorable rating - it's here to stay. IMO, US politics is so polarized at this point - the other side is always going to be viewed as deceptive and lying (as opposed to having a different viewpoint or an incompatible solution).
The only significant point here is that it's over 50%.
How are either of those negatives? The entrenched parties would have had a list of approved questions to avoid such a mistake, they are all humans and can't be expected to call up every detail of any issue at will. And trespassing/mischief would probably make Stein the most law abiding candidate in generations.
He knew about Syria, he didn't immediately associate the word Aleppo with the Syrian situation. He just finished discussing Nader in 2000, the next question could have been about anything and parsing all your knowledge is not an easy task.
I care more about the crimes committed than whether the justice system decides to prosecute.
Polarization is more representative of social media bubbles and the teams' resulting marketing strategies rather than an indicator of actual importance.
A lot of conservatives _hated_ Obama in 2008. They made the same claims about him being Hitler and how he was going to destroy the country, etc. It an old routine.
Do we really want those that are so half-hearted about the process that they need great efforts to cajole them to actually participating in our elections? How much time and effort do you think someone that has to be given so many "easy buttons" to become part of the process will dedicate to understanding the issues, the candidates, and the possible future outcomes? I don't think many.
I think voting should be open to anyone that wants to put some reasonable effort into being part of the process. For example, maybe you should have to go to your county clerk's office in person to register. Voting should be in person. Yes, for those that are home-bound or have legitimate extenuating circumstances, they should be allowed to vote or register by mail... but if you're otherwise able and not willing to go to some reasonable effort to participate, you likely aren't going to be the model of an "informed voter" either.
The only reason I think politicians and activists go down this road to making it easier to vote is because they want an electorate that doesn't think too much nor care too much. They want a docile electorate more likely to rubber stamp ideas than submit them to scrutiny. This is about undermining the functioning of democratic systems, not expanding them.... or it's just ill considered.
There are a wide variety of reasons as to why registering to vote should be as easy as possible, and most of them have nothing to do with convincing people who don't want to vote to vote (I mean, ideally, we should live in a society that automatically registers everyone by default. But we're not quite there yet).
People who work 9-5 jobs that are paid hourly (or people currently in school, and go to school during those hours) literally lose money by taking time off to go to a government building and do these things in person, since government buildings operate 9-5 as well (some even open late/close early, because government).
Currently, the people most-likely to vote are either old (retired, with the free-time available to go do these things at their convenience), or middle-to-upper class salary workers (who won't be penalized for taking time off to go do these things).
While the people least-likely to vote are young people and people who work lower to lower-middle class hourly jobs, who cannot afford to take time off to register/vote. Most states don't even guarantee you paid time off to vote on election days.
If people don't want/care to vote, no amount of simplifying is going to make them do it. But people who want to vote shouldn't have anything standing in their way.
But people who want to vote shouldn't have anything standing in their way.
I agree in principle, but in practice for the white millennials this site seems aimed at, there's not much in their way. And then there's a whole section of the page trying to convince people to vote in the first place, to vote for the down-ballot, etc.
In that context, sbuttgereit's question seems valid.
> for the white millennials this site seems aimed at, there's not much in their way
I don't know what about our product makes you think that we're specifically targeting white people, but, even if we were, millennials (even ones from populations that are disproportionately of a privileged background) are overwhelmingly either currently in school, or under-employed . "Under-employed," meaning that they tend to work part-time, hourly jobs, rather than being able to secure salaried positions (even for ones with higher degrees).
As I've said before, they literally do not have time--and will, in fact, be put at a financial burden, if they chose to--to take off time to vote. Which is why we have services like "Time off to Vote" (https://www.voteplz.org/guide/get-time-off/) to help people know their rights, as well as easy-to-understand information about getting absentee ballots and voting early.
We also have an entire resource for helping people with criminal pasts know their rights (https://www.voteplz.org/register/#/felony-help/), which pretty much no one makes straight-forward. If you look at other registration sites, they tend to say something along the lines of, "don't use us if you've ever committed a crime," because they don't feel like putting in the effort to help that demographic. Even the National Voter Registration form uses language that can be misinterpreted as meaning that people who have been to jail automatically lose their rights forever.
Like I said, making it easier for people to vote (and giving them resources to get informed) is not making people who don't want to vote, vote. It's helping people who want to make a difference get the resources to make a difference.
> Like I said, making it easier for people to vote (and giving them resources to get informed) is not making people who don't want to vote, vote. It's helping people who want to make a difference get the resources to make a difference.
Your comment is a direct response to this observation:
> And then there's a whole section of the page trying to convince people to vote in the first place, to vote for the down-ballot, etc.
Either I missed something somewhere, or you did.
And sure, you're not sama, but here's what he said on this subject, directly upthread from you, speaking for you ("all the organizations working on this"):
> we have a long, long way to go to 100% voter turnout, and all the organizations working on this share the same fundamental goal.
If your goal is 100% voter turnout, that very much is making people who don't want to vote, vote. It is not helping people who already want to vote to vote. The same goes for the marketing copy on your website aiming to convince people who don't want to that they really should vote.
don't know what about our product makes you think that we're specifically targeting white people, but, even if we were
If you were, it would be terrible and racist, considering the much more serious impediments people of racial minorities tend to have to vote. But I wasn't saying that, just that it was very focused on them, presumably because most or all of the people you have writing the copy are white millennials, and probably all men. Try to scrounge up some other people to look at the site.
As for the impediments, again, if you're not lily-white, all those things go double, with more barriers, besides. Meanwhile, I've been a white student and under-employed in a recession while voting religiously, and it was never that hard.
Selecting for voters who are willing to navigate a bureaucracy and jump through arbitrary hoops to vote does not give you "informed" voters, just voters with a lot of time on their hands.
Also, who decides what circumstance is legitimate and what isn't? Why should some circumstances be accommodated but not others?
Every single time people have tried to restrict who "should" vote and who "shouldn't" the rules have been abused for the purposes of bigotry. Poll taxes, literacy tests, id requirements, etc.
> Selecting for voters who are willing to navigate a bureaucracy and jump through arbitrary hoops to vote does not give you "informed" voters, just voters with a lot of time on their hands.
I agree with you in principle, but the vast majority of people I've met who don't vote are not just "too busy". They are usually just apathetic. They don't care about politics, they don't want to read and learn. I say we're better off without them voting.
Correct. I don't vote and I'm reasonably well informed. I sit on our city's economic development and planning board, and work with state legislators in our community so I'm aware of how the system works - or doesn't -irrespective of who is in office.
> For example, maybe you should have to go to your county clerk's office in person to register. Voting should be in person. Yes, for those that are home-bound or have legitimate extenuating circumstances, they should be allowed to vote or register by mail... but if you're otherwise able and not willing to go to some reasonable effort to participate, you likely aren't going to be the model of an "informed voter" either.
I really encourage you to reread this carefully, and with an open mind. It absolutely reeks of privilege.
A person can be politically informed, able-bodied, and unable to take a day off work to stand in line for hours at the polls. Even if their state allows them to take paid leave, and many don't, it's a privileged position to be able to exercise that right without fear of repercussions.
Republicans have used similar arguments to support their attempts at voter suppression in e.g. North Carolina, in which they restricted early voting, tightened voter ID laws, and otherwise made it harder for underprivileged people to vote. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/inside-th...
If I were being cynical, I might suggest that at best it sounds like you're uninformed about privilege and class in America, and maybe that should disqualify you from being able to vote.
Maybe that idea that I might try to judge your fitness to vote based on something as superficial as a post on HN is offensive to you. But then perhaps you'll consider whether it's offensive that you would judge the fitness of others' to vote on something as similarly superficial their ability to take time off working multiple jobs, childcare, caring for a parent, night school, or whatever to demonstrate their commitment to the democratic process.
You might have a point if voting were equally inconvenient for everyone. But actually, it's convenient for some and inconvenient for others.
Think about taking public transportation in a rural area where transit sucks versus driving. The people who take public transit have to take more time to vote (let's say an extra half hour each way) than those who can drive, who in turn have to be more dedicated than the people who live right next to the polling station and just walk over.
Furthermore, this level of convenience can be manipulated to get the results you want.
From a data quality point of view, we'd probably be better off with some kind of unbiased random sampling, but that goes against tradition.
In addition to what everyone else has said, there's no reason to assume that willingness/ability to go through a cumbersome in-person registration process is a good predictor of voter informativeness.
Personally, I'm a bit of a political junky. I regularly read political news, have volunteered on campaigns, and would consider myself to be a very well-informed voter. Yet I also find registration and actually voting very annoying, since I can be informed digitally (while traveling, etc.) but the actual mechanics of voting are archaic.
There is no direct or causal connection; at least I've no studies to cite or similar. It's common sense. Take any activity and I bet you will find that those that explicitly seek to engage in that activity will perform it better than those that come across it by happenstance. In voting that means understanding what you are voting for/against.
Do you you really think that a passive participant in an activity performs at a similar level to an engaged one?
It is not common sense to think that the amount of patience someone has for waiting in line on a particular day is a good heuristic for how informed they are.
Money towards promoting universal, automatic voter registration would also be goodness. Moots the voter registration kabuki. Brings the USA up to international norms.
Disagree with you on electronic voting. I know a little bit about this one.
There is no way to both protect the secret ballot and ensure a public vote count. Can't be done. And most systems (proposed, hypothetical, existing) don't do either.
I also disagree with electronic voting, but am a huge supporter of:
- automatic registration
- election days as (paid!) holidays
- national no-restrictions on requesting absentee (some states require you to vote in-person unless you have a reason explaining why you literally can't)
> #1 Peer pressure
Things like vote.org will help if they close the loop by showing to your peers (bragging rights) that you've voted.
Yeah, I defs remember remember reading about a group that sent out a list of everyone in your neighborhood who voted in past elections with an add-on like, "Make sure you're on this list next year", and they got a whole lot of people registered. I also heard Facebook's "I voted" status-maker increased turnout last time around
I feel like photo voter id reqs wouldn't be that controversial if there were a "free" (paid with taxes, obz) state-issued id that everyone had access to. You can get passports and state ids made, but they defs cost money.
I guess it qualifies as universal voter registration. The voter roll is a separate thing is what I meant. There are forms for registering, but it can be updated automatically by other government data sources. The important thing is updating your primary residence.
Most democracies don't have a byzantine process for obtaining an ID, and proving that you're who you claim you are. So if you can make the ID issuing process in US work as well as it does in, say, Germany, sure, there's no problem with requiring an ID to vote.
Presidential politics hardly matters as much as CONGRESSIONAL elections, which happen every two years. Can we get a similar effort in place to get people out to vote for mid-terms?
I don't know anything about it, but speaking generally, it seems like competition doesn't work the same for non-profit groups? If someone else is working in the same space but doing things a little different, that doesn't mean they're a competitor. But who knows what's going on behind the scenes.
I just went through the registration process for an absentee ballot on VotePlz and the email containing the link to download the ballot came from vote.org.
Voteplz.org even instills less confidence—sounds like a single-serving website, glad they're communicating these ideas, but its conflict with the YC-funded project makes me believe both are more likely to fail because of split mindshare.
Which is incredibly ironic, when you consider that one of the most fundamental problems with the US's voting system is the spoiler effect (where similar parties bring each other down by splitting voters).
How is this splitting voters if you have more than one place to register? That's like saying having multiple DMVs in a state would make it harder for people to get a driver's license
I interpreted that to mean: "sama would not spend his free time on a competitor to a for-profit YC startup, why is he spending his free time on a competitor to a non-profit YC startup?".
I haven't seen a persuasive analysis of whether and how one should vote; most analyses I've seen ignore the electoral college and all the issues it brings. In brief:
My vote is statistically extremely unlikely to affect the outcome of the election. This is counter-balanced by the extremely large impact affecting the outcome would have. I'm inclined to believe that the two roughly cancel, so that a (say) one-in-several-million chance of affecting the outcome is worth the effort of voting. But I live in California, where my vote is roughly 100x less likely than the average vote to affect the outcome (FiveThirtyEight has done this analysis, though the precise number fluctuates and has considerable uncertainty).
So then what are the effects of my vote? It nudges the statistics a little. It increases turnout, which probably increases confidence in our democracy. It increases turnout among 18-29 year-olds, probably increasing their political clout and furthering causes they support. Do I agree with them on the whole, or in particular on issues where their political clout is likely to tip the scales? I don't know. Say I vote for Clinton, it also increases her popular vote total. If she wins, it slightly improves her electoral mandate. If she loses, it slightly deprives Trump's mandate. It also increases the chance that Trump wins the election but loses the popular vote--a potentially very unpleasant scenario.
How do I measure and balance these? How is a consequentialist to vote?
I'm a progressive and I totally disagree with your line of reasoning.
The next POTUS will nominate a Supreme Court judge. That is far, far more important than any local issue because Supreme Court decisions have MAJOR impact for the entire country and they supersede any lower-court decisions and invalidate all conflicting laws.
When the Supreme Court says that separating black and white students in public schools is unconstitutional (Brown vs. Board of Education, 1954), it affects you directly.
When the Supreme Court says women have a constitutional right to abortion (Roe v. Wade, 1973), it affects you directly if you're a woman and/or have had your partner need/want to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
When the Supreme Court says corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts of money in elections (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 2010), it affects you directly.
Sure, local politicians may affect more day-to-day life matters, but in the grand scheme of things, those don't matter too much. I mean, if you think the amount of budget allocated to the local school system is too little, move to another city/state with a better-funded school system. Not super easy to do, but moving to another country however is considerably more difficult.
This is among the least important reasons to vote on the POTUS. Most SCOTUS cases are actually far more narrow in scope and impact than the ones you described. Aside from that, in this particular election there is no good reason to favor either major party candidate with respect to SCOTUS, if one's agenda is a progressive one. So the motivation to GOTV for them based on SCOTUS is isn't necessarily there.
Trump provided a list of conservative legal figures he might nominate - whether or not Clinton's choices would be ideal, progressives should find them better than Trump's.
To give a concrete example, the current deadlock has stopped Obama's deferred action immigration program, affecting the status of millions of immigrants. It seems likely a Clinton appointee would flip that result, while a Trump appointee would not.
On the other hand Hillary seems to be keen on augmenting the government's spying activities, criminal enforcement, and foreign aggression. There is no good reason to think that Clinton's nominees will in aggregate be better.
The next POTUS will nominate a Supreme Court judge.
You know Clinton's got this one in the bag, right? It's a done deal. The parties are now just fighting out how bad/good the ass whooping will be.
But to your point... There are local judicial races every year which directly impact your well-being. The players on the the right KNOW that every vote matters, that every race matters, that every inch must be contested, because the system is a giant pyramid.
Why do you think Clinton's got this in the bag? She's leading by 3-4 percentage points in both national and most swing-state polls[1], which is less than the movement we've seen in the past month. And 15-20% of voters are undecided or third-party right now, significantly increasing the volatility of the polls. FiveThiryEight's analysis[2], which I think is quite thorough, gives Clinton a ~70% chance of winning. Far from "in the bag".
Elections are now won by GOTV efforts. Boots on the ground, volunteers, doorbelling, phone banking, etc.
Whereas Clinton has the 2nd most sophisticated operation in history, Trump doesn't have anything that remotely resembles a campaign, much less an effective GOTV effort.
There's more to the election than just the president. Even if you believe your presidential vote will have zero effect on the result, you should still cast a vote for your local and state government.
I think it's a tragedy of the commons–like scenario. (If not in reverse.)
I don't think you'll end up with any satisfying answers to the question "How is a consequentialist to vote?" at the individual level, because the entire system is setup such that it doesn't place too much value in any single person's vote. That's by design.
Like others have said, if everyone decided that they're single vote didn't matter enough to case, then no one would vote. You'd end up in a tragedy of the commons where individual, potential extreme, opinions would become much more powerful than they already are. (Can't remember where I was reading this, but there is already research on how small-but-vocal minorities can have an outsized effect.)
In a counter-intuitive way, the benefit to voting is actually that you are decreasing the impact of any one individual's vote. And by doing so, you're helping to ensure that popular opinion is what actually elects leaders.
(Of course this is all based on the democratic system, and the belief that the majority opinion should be what governs, which you have to buy into in the first place to value voting.)
It's probably more helpful to ask something like, "What happens when larger and larger of people vote in specific ways?", potentially even at the issue-specific level if you want to maximize your individual effect. But even then, you'll probably have more impact convincing a group of friends to vote alongside you than by contorting your own single vote.
I think the way that we're taught to view elections is fundamentally flawed. People see the Presidential election as the most important election that you can participate in, because its the vote for the highest office in the country.
But a president who loses the popular vote can be still be elected because the actual decision is made by the slightly lower-ranking politicians that we vote for in state/local elections. Which is also funny, because these are viewed as some of the least important elections, because the individual offices aren't nationally powerful on their own.
But your vote statistically counts the most when voting locally. And your local decisions have a systemic impact/ripple effect on who ultimately gets picked for president.
Registering to vote is important. Your voting is important. But people always wait until its too late to be as impactful as they could have been when they only think to vote when presidential elections roll around.
I have given the issue a great deal of thought along the same lines as you ("how is a consequentialist to vote?") and concluded that it is extremely unlikely that voting is a good use of my time (not that my time is of any particularly great use) even taking into account the secondary benefits like fixing the imbalance in voting demographics (I'm young) or that my voting either way increases the nebulous confidence in our democracy since it increases voter turnout.
That doesn't mean I think everyone shouldn't vote-- for one thing, the fewer people vote, the more this arithmetic changes, and for another people get a lot of personal utility out of voting, from being satisfied with themselves and the social capital from showing others they voted. But I definitely wouldn't take the time to vote, and I'm not inclined to encourage others to either.
That's not really the argument he/she's making though. If the vote is won by only some small percentage, then everyone that voted in that election's vote mattered since by making the choice to not vote could have caused the other party to win. What that percentage is depends on a variety of factors, but is somewhat irrelevant to the point.
Their point is that if it were the case that California was a close race and that the electoral college is close such that Trump winning California allows Trump to win the election then it is important to vote for POTUS in California. However, those things aren't statistically independent, and it is incredibly unlikely to happen.
I don't think it's effective. Anybody with any understanding of statistics can easily see that your vote doesn't affect the outcome. I think it might be more effective to frame voting as some sort of moral obligation -- "people died so you could vote" "you live in a democracy" sort of rhetoric.
Think of the aggregate effect. If you think that your vote "doesn't count", imagine what happened if everybody except for one stubborn guy in your state voted. If aggregates of votes count, so do individual votes - it's just very hard to measure on the level of those votes. But even if your state is strongly blue or red, it is only that, ultimately, because some people go and vote that way. If they didn't, it wouldn't be.
Yes, my vote would matter in the imagined world you posit. But I don't live in that world. It isn't actually that hard to measure the impact my vote has directly on the outcome of the US presidential election--it's somewhere on the order of magnitude of a one-in-a-billion chance at changing the outcome.
In a philosophical way that might be true, but you are also here communicating that opinion and potentially convincing other individuals to come to the same conclusion.
If you did the opposite and tried to convince everyone else to vote then you could theoretically be correct, your vote or lack of vote would have little to no effect. The cumulative effect though of many voters feeling disenfranchised and not voting will have a massive effect, one which someone in your position could help avoid by helping to convince people who feel the same as you that they DO need to vote.
I can see how some people feel that their vote is meaningless and that there is no difference between their choices in the first place. Be glad that that is true for you - for many people in our country (and unfortunately, even more people in other countries) this is not the case.
Take Bush v Gore - many people did not see much of a difference between them but one resulted in 2 disastrous and expensive wars, many thousands dead (not counting the destabilization of the region whose impact we cannot easily measure) and 8 years of basically no progress against climate change. Could I have observed a difference in my own life if Gore had been elected? Maybe not, I didn't join the military (went to college) and there was no draft, I got a useful degree and a good job, and overall my day to day life is probably very much as it would be had Bush never been elected. Not everyone is so lucky, so please think of how your vote affects the most vulnerable people in the world when deciding whether or not to vote.
Suppose Gore did get elected, and he faced the same stuff.
Would he really have just accepted that Afghanistan provides refuge to those who had killed thousands on American soil? Do you think he could just write off the loss ("oh bummer, thousands died") and still get reelected?
You might remember that Saddam Hussein decided to slaughter Kurds in the north and Marsh Arabs in the south. The original George Bush was expected to do something about this genocide, and so one of the things he did was impose no-fly zones. Aside from war, how was that supposed to come to an end? Do you think Gore would have just kept that up for another 4 years (8 if he goes to war in Afghanistan) or do you think he might have just walked away from it and allowed the genocide?
I'm sure Gore would've wanted to have his presidency be about the environment. Remember that the second George Bush wanted to have his presidency be about education... and we all know how that worked out for him.
As I recall, when US demanded that Afghanistan (then ruled by Taliban) extradite Bin Laden, they didn't refuse outright. What they did was demand some evidence that he was responsible, which is a fairly routine and reasonable demand for any kind of extradition request (I mean, would you want US to extradite you to Afghanistan just because they asked, on their word alone that you're a criminal?). They also suggested extradition to a third country, where he could get an impartial trial - again, given the emotions at the time, not really unreasonable.
US response? "We know he's guilty", and we don't care to prove it to anyone else.
And yet, even after US started bombing them, Taliban was still offering extradition deals. All the way up until the ground invasion.
We know that Bin Laden was guilty in retrospect, of course. But he didn't admit it back then, and otherwise, there was nothing particularly unusual or vexing that Taliban was asking for. Whether they would have actually given him up or not if their demands were met is also unclear, but IMO, given the prospect of a large region-destabilizing war (which many people back then were warning way in advance what would happen), it was definitely worth a try. You can always invade if things don't work out.
...but just imagine how much less it would matter if everyone voted! Wait, that doesn't sound quite right.
Determining the value of a vote based solely on its probability to be the _deciding_ vote seems like it's overlooking some of the benefits of an engaged participatory democracy.
Right, that's why I spent most of my original comment examining the other aspects. Unfortunately only the question of whether to vote (and in particular, whether to vote on the basis of the probability of deciding the outcome) seems to have sparked significant discussion.
I didn't posit an imaginary world, though. I posited an imaginary scenario, but according to the rules that actually apply in real world. The purpose of the exercise is to demonstrate that your vote does matter, even though the individual effect is really, really small.
I guess at some point it's really an ethical decision. If you don't vote, but other people do, then yes, your choice doesn't really affect things much... but you rely on those other people to vote for that. If they don't, things suddenly break down. So, is it ethical to implicitly depend upon others doing something, without doing it yourself when it's your responsibility at a particular moment?
I don't see the difference between "an imaginary world" and "an imaginary scenario, but according to the rules that actually apply in real world". If I were in that scenario, I would behave as you suggest I ought to, but I am not and will not be in that scenario. I never disputed that my vote matters, just precisely how much, and for what reasons.
I agree that it's really an ethical decision, which is why I closed with "How is a consequentialist to vote?"--my philosophical stance being consequentialist in nature. Whether it is "ethical to implicitly depend upon others doing something, without doing it yourself when it's your responsibility at a particular moment?" Calling it "my responsibility" seems to beg the question. Furthermore I wouldn't say I "depend" on others doing something, but rather that I "act according to" others doing something, that I empirically expect them to do. Many schools of philosophy would object to my framing here, but I have found these objections unpersuasive.
> If I were in that scenario, I would behave as you suggest I ought to
Ah, but you don't know if you're in that scenario or not, until other people actually go and vote.
Now, you empirically expect them to do so... but if your response to them doing what they do (i.e. go and vote) is to not vote, and you consider that a rational choice, then why shouldn't others also follow it? And if your ability to make that rational choice is enabled by those others not making a rational choice, I feel like there's still an ethical conflict here, even if you're purely reactive (i.e. is it ethical to rationally "cash in" on irrational, self-harmful choices of others?).
I do know that I'm not in that scenario, in the same sense as I know most things, like that next time I flip a coin it won't land on edge.
> if ... you consider that a rational choice, then why shouldn't others also follow it?
But this doesn't affect my reasoning, because whether or not I consider it rational, or whether or not I do it, does not affect whether or not they do it[1]. Along the same lines, I see no problem "cashing in" on other's irrational choices in general, provided that I am not causing or contributing to them making those choices.
[1] It may affect their behavior in future elections however. It is because of effects along these lines that I ultimately think I should vote.
Shhhh! Yes, spending any time at all to vote in races bigger than local ones is irrational and you can skip it without affecting the world in any way whatsoever aside from saving yourself some time, but you're not supposed to tell people that, especially if they might vote for a candidate you prefer! That might affect the election.
I don't have to hold the door for the person behind me, I do it because I'm (sometimes) not a jerk.
I vote (in MA) not because I'm going to pick the president, but for two reasons:
1) People literally died for my right to vote and I'm grateful.
2) I have friends who live in autocracies who would be
disappointed in me if I didn't vote and have said this clearly.
The USA has given me opportunities many people around the world don't have. I consider it my duty to vote.
*I know not everyone in autocracies thinks voting is great, but some do.
Holding the door for the person behind me benefits the person behind me, which is why I do it. What I'm asking is precisely what benefit voting has for anyone--certainly not what benefit it has for myself. Neither of your points address this in any way I can see, although I get the impression you believe they do and would appreciate if you expanded on them.
Also note that I'm not concluding that it is false that I should vote. I spent more time in my comment puzzling over how exactly I should vote--which I think is clearly not as straightforward as "vote for the candidate I would prefer wins", since my probability of changing that is so much smaller than say changing the winner of the popular vote.
I believe a country that is actively engaged in the political process is good for all Americans, especially my children who will inherit my generation's screw-ups.
I believe a country where 30% of people vote is worse than one where 60% of people vote, and that bad politicians are held less accountable. In order for a higher turnout to happen, then lots of people like me need to vote, even if their vote doesn't do much.
Whether I hold the door for the person behind me doesn't really affect my life. It might make me feel good about myself for a bit (like voting) and it may help a stranger a bit. Voting is maybe less directly helpful, but it's helpful to millions of strangers.
Also, my vote has way more power down-ballot, as others have said.
The first half of your comment is basically where I was going when I said "[My vote] increases turnout, which probably increases confidence in our democracy." I probably should have rephrased that.
I actually agree that I should vote, and this is the primary reason why. But I'm more caught up on how I should vote.
"Some information on our supporter lists, such as names, email addresses, and addresses, may be exchanged with named partners and other organizations with principles and/or missions that overlap with those of VotePlz." — "We'll make sure people spam you with political bullshit to the end of time if you're dumb enough to give us your personal info."
Of course, on the signup form, they say "We'll never sell your data or spam you" and then point you to the privacy policy which says that.
Considering that old people are more likely to vote for Trump or Hillary, yes it is. CNN doesn't even include ages 18-34 on their polls anymore because those people are trying to vote for actual sane 3rd party candidates.
More concerning is that this site focuses on "issues". As if huge policies will be decided by the next presidency. Instead they should be focusing on the metagame, the shift in public perspective on things. For instance, do you want to support a candidate from a party shown to be corrupt? Is that really less damaging to the future of the US than having a loudmouth arrogant "whatever" on stage for a few years?
A vote for 3rd party at this point is basically a vote for a corrupt party to win.
I would love to see Jill in a performance of Swan Lake.
Since I've been following his campaign, I know for sure that Gary Johnson is on the ballot in all 50 states and apparently Jill Stein is 42 states according to her website.
i _really_ wish that "No Vote" was a valid/acceptable option, and there were ramifications if "No Vote" got the majority support. I just don't buy into the "you are obligated to vote" choir, or see any value in the "vote against somebody else" vote.
Something other than the plurality voting system would greatly improve this. The "vote against somebody else" is a form of strategic voting, and a propensity for strategic voting is seen as a major flaw in a voting system (deterministic voting systems can never completely eliminate strategic voting, but there are systems that are far better).
Interestingly enough it seems like there is no federal rule barring states from adopting non-plurality voting systems for the president, as it is still technically the state governments that appoint the electors, and the constitution only requires that it not be "...in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime."
The House of Representatives elections rules are established with a lot more federal oversight, so I have no clue if non-plurality voting systems could be easily accomplished at the state level. Proportional representation would be specifically banned by 2 U.S. Code § 2c though.
> Proportional representation would be specifically banned by 2 U.S. Code § 2c though.
But it might be politically possible to get that prohibition on multimember districts narrowed to what it was designed to deal with, which was having multiple at-large plurality-elected seats to suppress minority representation. (When it was passed, no one was using multimember districts with PR, so they simple weren't a consideration.)
Score/range voting and approval voting are particularly bad for single winner elections in ways that typical mathematical simulations fail to account for because mapping from sentiment to binary approve/disapprove or score ratings is inconsistent between individuals (and, as has been studied fairly extensively in the case of score rankings in non-bullying contexts, have particularly strong ethnic/cultural variation.)
If you could directly measure internal sentiment and use a consistent function to map it it to scores, score/range voting would be a good method, and mathematical simulations tend to model this case rather than reality.
(Approval voting is good for group decisions with non-secret ballots where people can opt-out of the activity selected, and an "approve" vote is also a commitment to opt-in, because then there is a consistent meaning; range/score voting similarly can be good in group decision-making what shows are tied to a concrete price that is to be paid for or to avoid an outcome, which again makes the ballot marking have a consistent meaning.)
My personal favorite system for single-winner elections is approval voting (basically just vote for as many people as you want). There are systems that are mathematically much better, but they are all considerably more complicated, and I'm of the opinion that if voters don't understand the voting system, it will damage their confidence in the electoral process.
Also, as a fun fact: note I said "deterministic" systems can't eliminate strategic voting, but the most simple voting system of all completely eliminates it: pick one ballot at random, and what/whomever was voted for on that ballot wins. Obviously you would never have a reason to vote for anything but what you want to win, but it has oodles of problems in practice.
Not the internet, that's for sure. There's so much misinformation out there. From the Instant Runoff people claiming "ranked voting" as their moniker (ranked ballots are GOOD, but IRV is a bad counting method for single-winner elections), to wikipedia improperly describing Condorcet voting but rejecting efforts to modify it, to the various arguments that speak glowingly about "top-two" primaries, it's a mess.
I've gotten very into this whole subject in the past - I'm generally in favor of a "Condorcet Winner Interstate Compact", sort of like the national popular vote compact except for Condorcet Winners, but I basically stopped when I realized that even if you had a perfect voting method that perfectly captured the public will, it doesn't matter if the voters are poorly educated. Better to have even a flawed voting method that encourages voters to self-educate, than a perfect voting method that encourages people to stay ignorant.
I am not sure how many third-party voters realize that Trump wins if no one reaches 270 EVs.
Anyway, I am not sure how to find a voting method that encourages people to self-educate, but in general that's part of a wider subject on how to reduce willful ignorance in the world, which is pretty fascinating to think about.
Aw man, when first I read the actual algorithm for IRV, my first thought was "This has got to be the worst way of managing ranked-ballots that preserves some semblance of enforcing voter will.
[edit]
Okay it's not actually that bad, but it's poor, particularly since the mid-90s we've had the technology to cheaply run as many simulated elections as we want given machine readable ranked-ballots.
I would be highly in favor of a state adopting ranked ballots without changing their counting method - just continue to count the top choice as your vote, like before. But then we'd have some amazing data sets. That's the dream.
Wouldn't this nullify the primary advantage of range ballots, if I understand you correctly? Namely, you'd still have to rank one of the two main candidates as first so that the other doesn't win.
Yes, there wouldn't be any additional benefit in terms of vote-counting at first. Our current "vote for one candidate" approach is the same as picking your top choice in a ranked ballot.
But the benefit would be that we'd actually have data on being able to say, "Here's who would have won if we had used IRV, here's who would have won if we had used Condorcet", etc. And then later pick the actual counting method that proves effective.
I mostly like the idea is because I think the debate over counting method gets in the way of the debate over using ranked ballots.
A risk would be someone picking a different first-choice candidate than they otherwise would, out of improperly believing that their preferences would be counted.
That risk is sorta what I was bringing up: if it only counts the top person then people have to vote strategically and hence will not be voting in the same manner as in IRV so we still wouldn't know who would have won by IRV.
It would be best if they picked their plurality vote, and then could optionally rank candidates; we could then tally up how many people vote for their non-favorite as a big stick to wield.
If preferences beyond the first don't mean anything to election results, the data sets produced will be garbage because people won't spend any thought on them for the most part.
Yeah, I think you're right - your comment and aidenn0's below have convinced me you pretty much have to pick the counting method at the same time as introducing ranked ballots. Darn, because the IRV people have a clear marketing advantage at this point.
It's absolutely the case, if you look up how the 12th amendment actually works, the representative breakdowns by state, and cross-reference by the public statements that the various Republican representatives have made - not to mention many of them being actual Trump delegates. Trump has the House locked up with a lot of room to spare.
Did you know that the House of Reps absolutely has to limit their choices to the top three EV recipients? There's absolutely no scenario where Romney or Ryan wins.
> Did you know that the House of Reps absolutely has to limit their choices to the top three EV recipients?
Well, yes, but for some reason it slipped my mind when I posted the response, and I would have deleted it if you hadn't responded first. So, I'm just going to edit it down to an "Oh, nevermind" and be done with that whole line.
There's actually some imaginable scenarios where Trump wouldn't win (and where other options would be available), but it requires electors realizing before casting their votes that their won't be an electoral majority if votes are cast normally, and then colluding to vote "faithlessly" in order to give the House different options [0]. But, while imaginable and legally possible, this is quite improbable (but then, so is no candidate getting 270 EVs.)
[0] In principle, this could happen even if there was an apparent electoral majority, but its even less plausible in that case. It really only makes any kind of political sense as a response to the condition where a lack of an electoral majority means that there is going to be an unclear mandate for whomever is elected.
Yeah, I generally categorize those kinds of outcomes as hoping that your enemies will act in your interests. Like, people who prefer differently than you somehow voting for an outcome you want - so I generally disregard them and lump them in with "impossible" just for the sake of convenience. :)
The main problem I have with third-party voting is that it actually increases the probability - however remotely - that the House of Reps scenario happens. (Plenty of caveats apply.)
> The main problem I have with third-party voting is that it actually increases the probability - however remotely - that the House of Reps scenario happens.
Well, clearly third party voting is required for it to happen (barring, for the moment, faithless electors or bizarre vote tabulation errors where people who get no actual votes are certified as the winners of state-level elections, rejection of electoral votes in the Congressional count, electors simply not voting at all, or interference by state legislature to assign electors other than those that would be chosen based on the popular vote); if all popular votes are cast for one of the two major-party candidates then all electoral votes will go to one of the two major-party candidates and one of the two major party candidates will, of necessity, get a majority of EVs.
OTOH, third party voting is more likely to change which major party candidate wins certain electoral votes than it is to actually give EVs to minor candidates (and even if it does the latter, its pretty unlikely to contribute to a sub-270 situation.)
269-269 is actually possible but seems very unlikely this year. But yeah, I agree that third party voting is more likely to yield spoiler effects than EVs.
Instant Runoff Voting is pretty terrible, but is still far better than plurality. (Its multiseat generalization, is a reasonably good method for multiseat elections.)
(IRV -- or STV -- can be made better by simply dropping the loser-elimination step and still proceeding until a candidate reaches the quota, and I think there is actually a name for this method, but I don't know it off the top of my head.)
There's a lot of mathematically better (e.g., always pick the Condorcet winner) ranked-ballot methods for single winner elections, but I'm not sure that they are better all around. While I think the Condorcet criteria is very attractive, there are merits to simplicity and ease of implementation (particularly, in ease of tabulation, including manual tabulation) that may militate in favor of something more like IRV-without-loser-elimination.
"Obligated to vote" is not how I'd put it, personally. Choosing not to vote is your right, but frequently the arguments I hear from people against doing so are things like "It doesn't make a difference, they're both liars" or "I don't follow politics". I don't find these reasons, on their own, to be particularly good reasons not to vote. It's the apathy that gets the choir singing. People are well within their rights to not vote, but my experience has been that the majority of people I've spoken with simply do not care to understand the impact that one candidate being elected over another may have on their lives, their family's lives. I find that irresponsible. Long story short, I support not voting insofar as the person not voting has given it some modicum of thoughtful consideration, and understands the ways in which the candidates, however terrible they might be, will affect our country if elected.
> but my experience has been that the majority of people I've spoken with simply do not care to understand the impact that one candidate being elected over another may have on their lives
Here's the impact. If you vote for my team everything will be super cool and awesome. Vote for the other team and democracy dies and the terrorists win.
This has been the political narrative since the beginning of time.
I'll go ahead and argue the unpopular opinion. The more dismissive the population is of politics the more empowered they are to take direct action and have a real impact of their livelihood.
Instead of binging on mainstream news for a hours a night, you could be broadening your horizons in terms of fitness, education and building on personal relationships.
In my experience people who are nuanced in mainstream national politics are divisive and generally unpleasant to be around because they think they know what's best for you. There's a reason it's socially unacceptable to bring up politics (and religion). It's polarizing and devoid of objectivity.
There are more than two decisions. Vote for a third party. Help them get federal funding and onto the debate stage.
No, you should not spend every evening absorbing politics. But you should spend a few hours one time looking at (all of) the options and their positions.
Voting supports a broken collectivist system, and even worse pollutes one's own mind. It's pop culture that rots one's brain even worse than TMZ, because it masquerades as Serious Business.
The actors play people's discontent while differentiating themselves by promising top-down solutions to divisive personal issues. The fundamental meta-issues fucking our society are permanently off the table - eg sane monetary policy so a middle class can save again, or restoring the rule of law and putting the NSA traitors in prison [0].
The bad policies of the next salesperson are already written, and whether the Idiot or the Criminal wins this popularity contest only affects which companies' folders they come out of. After election, the winner's job will switch to selling the status quo to their supporter-victims. This further destroys people's rationality as they double down to justify their mistake.
[0] I'll preemptively head off the "third party" comment - it's just another level of control. The idiotic divisive politics are the result of emergent behavior based on what appeals to your average person. In the event the Libertarian party actually starts picking up steam, the same thing will happen to it as happened to the Tea Party. The fundamental problem is the centralization itself, of which our blind worship of Democracy is a pillar.
Wouldn't it be better for uninformed people to not mess up the results rather than voting for whoever sounds good or looks nice?
I mean, how many people are really putting in the necessary research and deep consideration for choosing the person most well qualified to run the (currently) most powerful country in the world?
Probably not many.
It seems more like two competing hype machines. Which bandwagon do you want to jump on? Except we're not choosing our favorite sports teams. The repercussions can change the fate of billions.
I would rather the uninformed/uninterested stay out of it than voting randomly. Yes, I think everyone should be able to vote. But no, I don't think everyone should.
I kinda feel like that is Gary Johnson... I mean I personally agree with a lot of what he says, but most people consider it a throw away vote. For me it's a vote that says, even though I do think one candidate is less bad than another. I strongly dislike Trump/Clinton. Please come back with better options next year.
Also I'd love it if he would win, but I'm a realist mostly I'm just telling both parties they miss my vote.
I’m sympathetic, but as someone who remembers the 2000 election and how it was clearly altered by a third party candidate, with actual serious ramifications (war, etc…), I can’t support this view (at least not in a state that might matter).
If you don’t vote for a plausible candidate, then you lose the right to complain when you don’t like what happens. "I didn’t vote for him/her”, isn’t a valid excuse unless you voted against him/her.
I recognize this is a dissapointing and compromised viewpoint, but there are literally lives on the line.
It's ridiculous and patronizing to suggest anyone "loses the right to complain" because they've participated in the system in a way you don't personally approve of. I've always been irritated by this position as applied to people who don't vote, but it's even worse to suggest your choice of candidate can invoke it. What's next, you lose the right to complain if your candidate wins? If you vote Democrat? If you haven't consecutively voted in every election? If you didn't run yourself?
Voting for a third-party candidate is a vote against Trump and Clinton.
There are "serious ramifications", to my mind, under both a Clinton or Trump presidency. Neither is any worse to me.
The best outcome of the upcoming US Presidential election, as I see it, is an eventual "major"-party winner having such weak popular support as to cause their party to distance itself from the President. A Trump or Clinton with no popular mandate and lack of support from their party is what I'd certainly like.
I can't do that. I can't vote for someone that I feel is a terrible choice that will have serious ramifications without actually believing in them. I won't send the message that I want a candidate unless I actually want them.
I'm not voting against a candidate, i'm voting for one. And if there is nobody that represents me, i'm not going to vote. I'm not going to show approval for one of the candidates that I don't actually support, and i'm not going to feel like it's "my fault" when one of them wins.
Hypothetical:
Candidate A is a genuine sociopath and serial killer.
Candidate B was indicted for tax-fraud, but got off for BS reasons.
Candidate C runs a non-profit and loves kittens, but has no chance in hell of winning.
I don't want to vote for A or B. I want to vote for C. But if by not voting for B, A gets elected, that's partly on me.
This isn't our exact situation, but if you genuinely believe one plausible candidate is better than the other (even if still bad) and you vote 3rd party, then you're wasting your vote.
Whether Gary Johnson gets 5% or 12% of the vote isn't going to fix the two party system. If you want to do that, you need to start at the local and state levels. Just running a candidate for president every four years is for publicity and messaging, not because you're ever going to win.
I don't see it that way. It's not on me that 5X% of the people who voted voted for the serial killer. That's on them. If that is who the population wants, then that is what they will get.
My vote is the voice I get in democracy. I'm not going to use it to vote in someone I don't agree with on most issues, just because the other guy is worse. Me withholding that voice (or using it to vote for someone I know won't win, but who i genuinely believe in) is the way that I can be heard. It's my way of telling future politicians that if they support X (or something close to X) that they can get a portion of those who voted for C last election.
It's my way of sending a message that the next candidate shouldn't be a serial killer AND shouldn't be involved in tax fraud. It's my call for someone who better represents me and my beliefs.
As I said earlier, in 2000 people voted for Nader and its a pretty direct path to a trillion dollar war that cost thousands of American lives, cost hundreds of thousands of non-American lives, and led semi-directly to ISIS.
I don't blame Nader voters, because they didn't realize what could happen. Voters in 2016 have no such excuse.
Why can't we blame the democratic candidate, who was so unappealing to progressive voters that they preferred Nader? I would suggest it is the fault of that candidate (and his party) that they lost the election. No one is entitled to anyone else's votes, regardless of how bad the competition is. Voters have agency, and have no compulsion to vote for one specific candidate to avoid another evil one (that specific candidate still must earn those votes).
Yep. It's a myth that Nader lost Gore the election. In Florida, 10x as many registered Democrats voted for Bush as voted for Nader.
The main argument for voting for a guaranteed-to-lose third-party candidate is that it gives the parties a clear, quantitative signal about how many voters their base-unfriendly policies are losing them.
And also the down-ticket races, of course, though many of them are so gerrymandered here that your votes don't matter in them, either.
> Yep. It's a myth that Nader lost Gore the election. In Florida, 10x as many registered Democrats voted for Bush as voted for Nader.
This isn't a counter-argument. Yes, there are innumerable ways Gore could have gotten the handful of votes needed to push him over the top in Florida.
But it's difficult to argue that, if Nader voters voted for their second choice instead, Gore wouldn't have gotten enough votes to win. To argue otherwise is to argue that a majority of Nader voters would have picked Bush as a second pick, and that's difficult to imagine.
I don't blame Nader voters either, because they didn't cause any of that, just like how they didn't contribute to Kim Jong-un being in the position he is.
Voters in 2016 are the same. Not liking a candidate doesn't mean I should feel any obligation to vote for their "main opponent". I'm voting for who I feel represents myself and my beliefs best, and if the candidate I dislike ends up winning, that's on the ones who voted for him.
If you vote for Candidate B just so that Candidate A doesn't get into office does that make me culpable for all of the bad things that Candidate B does in office?
Do I "lose my right" to complain about Candidate B's bad choices in the same way that it's claimed I lose my right to complain about Candidate A being a sociopath when they get elected if I don't "vote against" them?
You always have the right to complain that both choices suck and the two party system hurts our democracy. But the best way to do that is not to vote for someone else; a symbolic, but possibly harmful act.
Petition the government to support rank voting (the best solution to this issue).
Vote for a third-party candidate in a local election that they might win.
> I'm not voting against a candidate, i'm voting for one.
You shouldn't attach too much to the meaning of words. People give way too much emotional weight to the difference between "voting for" and "voting against", when the actual math behind the hood of the political system may well make them indistinguishable - and it's the math that matters.
By all means, vote third party if you believe this advances your goals! But however you vote, do so on the basis of objective math, not subjective meanings of words, or as a symbolic gesture. And in a FPTP system, the math is pretty clear - a vote for one is automatically a vote against all others - as are the consequences. If you believe that your goals are achievable, and their benefits will more than compensate the negative effect of other consequences, then it's justified. As a symbolic flipping of the middle finger, not so much.
This is bigger than just the math of this election.
Our votes will be analyzed, the platforms of the candidates will be analyzed, just because this election is lost, does not mean that votes for the losers were entirely worthless.
By voting for who I actually want and not voting defensively when I don't support any of the major candidates, I am making my voice heard. Maybe not for this election, maybe not for the next, but my hope is that eventually the main 2 parties will take notice and adopt some of the policies from "lesser" candidates that end up with a non-profit amount of votes.
Consider a hypothetical situation where the vote is between two major candidates, one of which is utterly corrupt, but can be relied upon to at least preserve the existing system, while the other one is running on a platform that is likely to preclude fair elections in the future altogether (in some countries, this is a real thing - when Russia voted Putin in back in 2000, that was exactly the choice on the table).
Now, if your long-term strategy is to keep voting against both to draw attention, you'd have to treat such an election as a special case, because if the "greater evil" wins, you cannot continue with your strategy in the next cycle at all. So it would be in your self-interest to vote for the "lesser evil".
This case is fairly clear, because the advantages and disadvantages are easy to compute, being on the same scale (affecting the power of your vote). But the same arithmetic applies to issues on different scales, too, so long as you have some sort of preferential ranking for those scales, so that you can unify them.
For example, you might want your vote to have more power, but you might also want to ensure that there's no repeat of something like the Japanese-American internment. If the latter is more important for you than the former, and it comes up as an issue in one particular election, it would be more important to vote strategically in a way to prevent it, even if it doesn't advance (and possibly sets back) your other goal.
Ranking the scales is subjective, of course. I'm not saying that this election is necessarily like that from your perspective. But I urge you to at least consider that possibility - tally up all the effects of either major candidate winning, and see how that stacks up against the beneficial effects of adopting some of the policies of "lesser" candidates in distant future, as well as probability of that adoption.
A better system: vote for as many as you like. Then you can vote for your conscience, PLUS an acceptable mainstream candidate. And if the 'moral' choice has a broad enough base they could win.
I don't think that they will have the same effect at all, but I can't in good conscience put my "stamp of approval" on either of them.
By voting for a candidate, i'm adding to the number of people that supported them. I'm adding to the number that can be looked at later to see what the american population supports. I'm adding to the percentages that will alter what future politicians will base their platforms on.
I can't do that when I don't believe in the vast majority of what either of their platforms are based on. So I'm not going to vote for either of them.
In a FPTP system with no "none of the above" option and no turnout limits, a vote for a candidate does not equal to support of that candidate. It only expresses the preference of that candidate compared to other candidates, and nothing more. So don't think it's a stamp of approval; it's not (but convincing you that it is in order to influence the way you vote can be a very efficient tactic).
It's not even a stamp of approval for the electoral system itself. If you pay me $X, but I believe that you owe me $Y >> X, I don't relinquish my claims to the remaining amount by taking what's currently on the table, unless I claim that I consider the debt settled. Same thing here - you can vote within the existing system without accepting the full legitimacy of that system. You're only accepting the limited power that your voice has in that system as a small part of the greater power that you believe you're owed.
It's not putting your stamp of approval. Imagine a school bully coming up to you and saying, "Would you rather me punch you in the face or in the stomach?" Saying "I don't want either" means he's going to be the one picking. Going with the punch in the stomach doesn't mean you actively want him to punch you in the stomach, it just means you don't want to get punched in the face. When those are the only options, you should probably pick the better one.
Don't think of it as a stamp of approval. It's not. There's no public record. No one is going to say "Klathmon voted for the lesser of two evils; look what a compromised person he is!"
Vote the vote that has the best chance of improving (or screwing up less in this case) whatever you care about.
It is though. It may not be linkable to myself as a person, but the numbers are still there, and they still represent the voting public.
Next election, politicians look at past elections. They look at what percentages each candidate got, they analyze that based on each platform, the numbers, the demographics of each state and what they voted for.
By voting for a candidate, i'm adding to the number of people that voted for them. I'm becoming part of that statistic. So i'm going to use that statistic to my advantage to get my voice heard. I'm going to vote for someone I actually believe in, even if they won't win. Then next time, at least those numbers are on the table. Maybe the next candidate will consider that by supporting "platform Y" they can get a percentage of those votes, and maybe i'll eventually have someone I support.
> Next election, politicians look at past elections. They look at what percentages each candidate got, they analyze that based on each platform, the numbers, the demographics of each state and what they voted for.
There doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence for this? In 2012, the GOP did a huge study on why they lost and came to the conclusion they needed to court minorities. Not only has that not been attempted by the Presidential nominee, but it's failed at the congressional level too. As for third-party candidates, it's not clear what effect Perot, Nader and others have had over the years beyond helping elect Bill Clinton and W.
A large third-party vote this election is almost certainly going to be a reflection on the likability of the two main candidates, and not on their policies.
Meanwhile the risk that our country could be substantially worse off in the meantime is real, and there's precedent for that.
That's in the party primaries - where each vote is literally a stamp of approval. That's the whole point of power in a two party system - you have your vetting and approval at the primary level, where Sanders and his supporters changed the DNC platform. Then at the national presidential level, you have voters side with which party represents them and their interests better. If you aren't satisfied by either then go get people with like minded views to participate in the primary process.
The platform direction is determined by the primary process, not the presidential election. For the election the candidates are trying to engage with whatever groups are on the fence to get them to swing towards them - the aim is the middle.
During the primary candidates don't have the luxury of the middle - they need to find a large enough group of support that can push the party in some direction that's going to get widespread party approval while trying to find a candidate that still has a chance at winning the election.
If you don't want to vote for president then at least go vote for the many other things that will be decided that day!
> how it was clearly altered by a third party candidate, with actual serious ramifications (war, etc…), I can’t support this view (at least not in a state that might matter).
Nothing was altered. You vote your conscience.
It's when people start playing games and vote for the less bad option because they don't want someone else to win that we get these kind of ridiculous candidates. Each candidate will take ridiculous positions and then essentially blackmail the electorate with "what are you going to do? vote for the other guy?". That is not a healthy recipe for a democracy.
There are no 3rd party candidates. There are only candidates. Vote for the one you actually want. There's plenty to choose from.
Elections, especially under First-Past-The-Post voting, are coordination games- not opinion polls. If you can assemble a coalition of ~70 million voters for a third party within the next two months, sure, do that. Otherwise, you are abstaining as far as the outcome is concerned.
It's very easy to dislike both candidates in play today, and certainly feels good to vote for neither.
But they are not equally bad. One candidate views large swaths of Americans as inherently illegitimate, while the other is perhaps garden-variety corrupt.
Your conscience is what stops you from doing things that feel good, but hurt others.
Because people made a similar decision to what we're talking about now, a majority of voters saw their least favorite candidate win, which many found to be an unfortunate result.
As others mention, this is fixable if you can rank your choices, but until then...
This analysis, like other similar ones, assumes that a vote for a third party is a vote "stolen" from one of the two major parties. Which implies that those two parties "own" votes, since you can't steal what someone else doesn't own. Which strikes me as a very disrespectful attitude, all in all.
In my opinion, the mistake is here:
"If you don’t vote for a plausible candidate, then you lose the right to complain when you don’t like what happens."
You're placing the full responsibility on the person who, given the bad choices, with one slightly better than another, elected to not choose either. I think that responsibility in this case rests largely with those who proffer the choices. In other words, if you want, say, Jill Stein supporters to vote Democrat, well then, Democrats should 1) adopt a platform that clearly makes them a much better choice for Greens, and 2) offer a candidate that represents that platform in a convincing way. You don't "own" those voters - it's up to you to convince them to vote for you. If they aren't convinced and vote for someone else, and you lose, the fault is largely yours.
And from their perspective, they are doing the rational thing - by rejecting your candidate for not doing enough to accommodate them, they're strategically voting to push you towards either offering a better choice next time, or reforming the electoral system such that they can express their preferences in a way that affects you less (e.g. by adopting some form of transferable vote). From their perspective, they sacrifice the chance to let the "lesser evil" block the "greater evil" in one particular electoral cycle, for a very long-ended play to try to change the rules of the game in their advantage, so that at some point they can actually get "good" elected.
This isn't to say that there is a certain amount of responsibility for not anticipating indirect effect of your vote, given the constraints of the political system. Depending on how much is at stake, the strategy above is not always applicable, if the losses in the current electoral cycle would be more than anticipated long-term gains. Many people, myself included, believe that this cycle is one of those, and that the long-term goal requires allying with the "lesser evil" for the duration of the crisis.
I don't think its a throwaway vote, but here's my logic.
So, multiple states are probably going to go one way or the other without much likelihood of change. I'm in ND and it will go Trump and MN will go Clinton. There are certain states that might shift (the so called battle ground states) and partial split electoral votes (ME & NE).
If you are in a battleground or split state, then they will miss your vote. If you're like me, they won't, but you really aren't voting for the win. You're voting for the next election. If a third party can get a decent percentage (like Perot in 1992), then they can get on the stage the election cycle and that will make a difference. You might actually get your better option.
Heck, I just want him to get into the debates. Having only two parties debate things they care about without a third voice means most of the TV-watching American public won't ever realize that there are better alternatives.
Voting for Johnson isn't a wasted vote, if the Libertarian Party can start showing double-digits, they will start getting invited to debates etc. Until they are invited to televised debates, they will indeed remain a joke.
> i _really_ wish that "No Vote" was a valid/acceptable option, and there were ramifications if "No Vote" got the majority support. I just don't buy into the "you are obligated to vote" choir, or see any value in the "vote against somebody else" vote.
In the presidential election, this is practically never going to happen, because the two-party system is a stable system[0], and they will maneuver to ensure that there is never a plurality of voters who dislike either (major-party) candidate enough not to vote for them[1].
That said, this does not hold for other races, such as Congressional races (or state-wide and local races). It's not uncommon to see an uncontested incumbent win with only a thin majority of the vote, due to undervoting. In that case, the electorate has signaled that they're ready for a primary or general election challenge, and this is often what happens in the next election cycle.
[0] in the literal sense
[1] At the national level, not locally. That is, regional parties have been successful to a degree (see: American Independent Party, which was essentially a Southern segregationist party).
A "No Vote" could basically just be what remains after considering voter turnout[1]. But historically I don't think anyone looks at it that way.
For example, in the 2012 presidential election, Obama received 65,915,796 votes (51.1%), Romney received 60,933,500 votes (47.2%) and voter turn out was 54.9%[2].
This country doesn't even have the capacity to support 100% voter turnout. It's physically impossible in a great many precincts due to the constraints the various legislations have put in place, whether it's voter id laws, number of available machines, etc.
> No vote is an option we've always had, it's just not voting
No, it's undervoting. Not voting (not casting a ballot at all) is very different from casting an empty ballot (or casting a vote of no confidence).
The difference is massive. Undervoting demonstrates active disaffection with all available candidates. Refraining from voting entirely demonstrates apathy (insufficient interest) towards the election at hand.
Is this a thing that is actually tracked by anyone? In a quick search I didn't see any info about it for the US. I haven't ever voted, but if this were an actual tabulation in elections, I absolutely would. If not, is there really any difference between a no vote and a protest vote?
> Is this a thing that is actually tracked by anyone? In a quick search I didn't see any info about it for the US. I haven't ever voted, but if this were an actual tabulation in elections, I absolutely would.
Yes, it is. Both write-in votes and undervotes are tracked. For example, this is how New York reports the certified results: http://vote.nyc.ny.us/html/results/results.shtml . Note that every write-in candidate is separately listed, including candidates who aren't even valid (Zephyr Teachout does not live in the 7th Congressional District, but two people wrote her in anyway). And the number of undervotes are separately listed as well.
Your local elections board/town clerk/etc. may present them differently, obviously, but they very much are required to track all votes, rather than simply ignoring all ballots that don't count towards one of the listed candidates.
I think what's being asked for is the "none of the above" option. When that is present, and people are particularly unhappy about all the candidates on the ballot, they can express it by picking the "none" options. If enough people are unhappy, that option draws votes away such that no candidate gets the requisite majority. There are several different approaches to resolving the election from there; for example, it could trigger a run-off election, in which the top two candidates may receive a different distribution of votes. And if the run-off sees "none" as the most popular option, it would indicate that neither candidate is acceptable to the populace, so election restarts without them in the play.
"Not voting" is not interpreted by the media (and thus the public consciousness) as dissatisfaction with the given options. It is interpreted as anti-patriotism, carelessness, or ignorance.
A 3rd party vote despite the prevailing wisdom of them being wasted is slightly more resistant to these types of reductionist criticism, but still not as powerful as a "no confidence" vote would be.
Not to mention, in this primary race.. what the hell do i vote for? With this stupid voting system (first past the post) i am dammed to not vote for who i agree with or believe in, but rather some strategic vote move.
I totally agree with voting locally, but voting for for a president.. especially this year, is a difficult to comprehend for me personally.
Then you probably shouldn't vote. Nothing wrong with that, despite what some absolutist people say. Maybe some day in the future you will invest enough time in understanding how it works and where you stand (even it's it's still 'neither'). Fortunately sites like this now exist to make it easier to take that step.
I don't think the goal here is to earn money, but rather to earn influence. So the question would be, what do they intend to use that influence for? What is the end goal?
Freedom is not a done deal. Not in America, not anywhere.
The founders did not give us freedom. They gave us a process for slowing the inevitable erosion of freedom.
This is that process.
There's a lot of talk here about whether higher turnout is a worthy goal, if that means expending energy to overcome the apathy, indifference, or jadedness of people who are thus unlikely to be astute, well-informed, or community-minded.
I say that high turnout is a good in its own right. Turnout itself—for whatever result—is an antiseptic to corruption. Low turnout is a bellwether for how much people in power can get away with. Local beat reporters are leaving journalism as the newspapers fold. Who's minding the shop? We are.
It's not just about results, it's about culture. If we are indifferent to the indifference of others, we pass a weaker democracy to the next generation.
I personally was turned off by the use of "f^ck" (/s/^/star/ as hn italicizes) here:
> There are so many reasons, but it really all comes down to… don’t let the future get f*cked.
Using a curse word can be effective - but in some places it's just unprofessional, awkward, or comes off as trying-hard to be authentic which always has the opposite effect. It's even worse when not spelling it out as "fuck" and instead half censoring it with $,&,-,@, etc. Either use bad language or don't. Everyone is reading it in their head as "fuck", half-censoring it with stars or doesn't make it any different or less 'naughty'. Be adults about it.
From one millennial to another: you're in the minority. This type of shit works on our peers. (Well maybe not our peers, but you know what I'm saying.) Most people our age get their news from Facebook and BuzzFeed.
It's a good thing then that the elderly (primary recipients of social security) vote in high numbers.
Now, if only the government did anything to the benefit of younger people (or really anything at all, seriously, look at what has been passed in this session) perhaps young people could be bothered to leave work (which will in a lot of cases cause illegal employer push back) and vote.
> perhaps young people could be bothered to leave work (which will in a lot of cases cause illegal employer push back) and vote.
If you're going to make an argument about widespread illegal activity, please provide some evidence of that. While there are isolated cases of this happening, there is scant evidence that this is widespread ('a lot of cases').
Remember that, in most states, it's not that you're allowed to take leave whenever you want in order to vote. It's that employers must ensure that you have sufficient time during polling hours to vote (ie, if your shift starts at 9AM, and polls open at 6AM, they have satisfied this requirement). If you do not have sufficient time outside working hours to vote, employers may not punish you for taking time to vote. (Note that this time may be paid or unpaid leave, depending on the state and nature of employment).
The reason young people don't vote is not because of insufficient time off. (If it were, youth voting rates in states like Oregon and Washington, which allow by-mail voting, would be dramatically higher than they currently are. As it is, they're higher than other states, but demographically-adjusted nowhere near what you would expect if insufficient time off were the primary driver of low youth turnout).
There are now more Millenials who can vote than the 65+ cohort. What exactly should the government be doing for them to entice them to vote other than what they're already doing (providing a stable society, infrastructure, etc)?
It is entirely your own fault if you don't spend time educating yourself on the issues and don't vote for a candidate who is congruent with your beliefs. If you don't find a candidate to your liking, run yourself.
Much harder than posting pics to Instagram or swiping left or right, but them the breaks of democracy.
Compulsory voting is a terrible idea. The government should not force me to officially endorse a politician or take part in an election if I don'the think it's fair. (I don'the think elections in the us are currently rigged but I would be naive to think it's not a possibility in the future.
I feel that voting should be mandatory, but a "no opinion" option should be provided for everything.
"none of the above" is a valid choice, and it would help politicians get a better picture for what the general population wants (instead of the current situation of "compared to X i want Y")
As long as we're wishing for changes in balloting, why not go whole hog and rank all the candidates in order of preference, including normalization entries for "Nobody (keep office vacant)", "Zero (I approve of everyone above this line, and no one below it)", and "Indifference (everyone below this line is ranked equally)"?
So I can vote {Nobody, Indifference, Zero, X, Y} if I think the office itself should be abolished. I can vote {Nobody, Zero, Indifference, X, Y} to say the office is stupid and that both the candidates for it suck. I can vote {Zero, Nobody, Indifference, X, Y} if I just don't like this crop of candidates. I can vote {Zero, X, Y, Nobody, Indifference} if I think X is the lesser of two evils, but either would be better than nothing. I can vote {X, Zero, Nobody, Y, Indifference} if I think X would be fine, but Y a bigger disaster than leaving the office empty. I can vote {Indifference, Nobody, X, Y, Zero} to say I don't care about this race at all.
If the default vote configuration starts at the "don't care" ordering, voters can drag the other entries up above the indifference line to indicate what they really care about.
...and then the politicians can more easily discern the will of the people that they can subsequently ignore completely, as usual.~
I absolutely agree. Ranked voting (it has a better name that i can't remember right now) is absolutely the way to go.
I'm not sure how I feel about the "Nobody"/"Zero" votes though. I can see where you are coming from, and they could have some use, but I think that would be the part that would throw some people over the edge of being confused by the system.
A simple "rank your candidates from best to worst, you can stop whenever you want" system is simple enough that everyone can get it, and solves a ton of problems with the current single-vote system we have now. Plus by putting nobody on the ballot (but still submitting it) you show "nobody" implicitly. (and you could even make it an explicit checkbox if you want)
I think what you're thinking of is called either Ranked Choice or Instant Runoff Voting. We're actually voting on a citizens' referendum in Maine (U.S.A.) to institute it here - part of the interest in it is due tot he fact that we've elected our Governor with less than 50% of the vote many times over the past 20 years or so, and our current governor (elected w/ 38% and 48% of the vote in respective terms) has been an embarrassment lately. We're going to make it applicable to state and federal offices (Reps and Senators) too.
We tend to have a lot of Independents and Greens run here (one of our current Senators is an Independent) and be successful. I'm really interested to see how it turns out.
I can't answer for the other person, but here's my reasoning.
abstinence from a vote is a form of social protest.
Voter turnout is fairly decent sign of voter confidence in the power of their vote to make a lasting change.
If you establish a form of mandatory voting, the state loses the feedback loop of 'non-voters' to establish voter confidence and also exerts another pressure on the citizenry; further hurting the citizens' feeling of self-control.
Basically, 'None' option or not, you're just taking another choice away from the voter.
Many tend not to remember this, but there are plenty of registered voters who don't show up or ever vote. This isn't necessarily a failure of voting advocates to get them in the booths, it may very well be an intentional protest on the part of the voter.
you show up, take your ballot which registers a receipt, and abstain on that particular office/issue. but at least showing up to register your abstention IS your vote.
Really wish the definition of democracy included by default the right to vote that you object strongly enough to significant options not to vote for any of them.
> Really wish the definition of democracy included by default the right to vote that you object strongly enough to significant options not to vote for any of them.
It does. Even with places with mandatory voting, you usually are only required to turn in a ballot paper, it can still not actually vote for any of the options.
Of course, that's just ceding your involvement in the choice (as it should be -- you are, in effect, voting no preference between the available options.)
Yes, it's true everyone dies, but we're not talking about death and it's obvious that it's possible to have a voting system that's able to tell the difference between indifference, objection, and support of the potential candidates/parties in a general election.
With most voting systems if a single person votes, it's a valid election. If the majority decent, it's still a valid election.
It should be that if the majority decent, the election is nullified - otherwise it's a recipe for a toxic political environment.
"equally unacceptable" is not what "no preference" means. i'm astonished you're trying to argue these are equivalent.
"differently unacceptable" is also a terrible situation though! this is the entire point of my argument. I may find some candidates more bad than others. being forced to vote for less bad is still being disenfranchised to a significant extent.
No, having the opportunity to vote for less bad is being enfranchised. The franchise is an entitlement for to have an option you like provided for you by someone else, not is it an entitlement to have your most preferred option be successful through the filtering that happens in the political process you are entitled to participate in before the stage of a general election ballot is reached.
FPTP is a bad system of aggregating preferences where there are more than two options in principle, and produces bad effects in the filtering (and voting) process because people adjust for the bad way that it aggregates preferences. And there are lots of sensible, obvious, and proven ways to make that better. But none of them guarantee you a situation where you aren't forced either to not vote it to vote for a less-bad alternative (though ranked ballots methods move some of the filtering process into the general election, down-ballot votes are still votes.)
the voting franchise is a fundamental right of citizens in a democracy. the fact that you're referring to it as an entitlement is misinformed, and in fact, quite warped and reveals a deep misunderstanding of our form of government.
the state we find ourselves in this year is abundant evidence of the terrible malfunctioning of the American political process. the system we have in place now struggles to reach even the basic requirements of legitimacy and consent of the governed.
what does popular sovereignty mean anyway if large majorities of the populous are very very very unhappy with their government?
No Confidence is a term of art for a vote against the government in power (usually, specifically in the content of a parliamentary system, in a vote by parliament, though arguably a public recall vote of the head of government in a non-parliamentary system is a fairly direct analog, and any vote against an incumbent in any system is a loose analog, as are mechanisms that aren't formally votes of No Confidence of removal-of-existing-incumbents-by-legislative action.)
You (or your MP or other legislative representative) can usually do some or all of these things in most systems that are recognized as democracies.
What you seem to want is something different, the option to vote for No Representative in a regular election and cause the office to be vacant when the next term would start (whether this actually leaves the office vacant or triggers the usual succession mechanism that would apply if it had been filled and then became vacant through death, resignation, etc. is unclear.) This, I can't see a coherent argument for.
yes, understood that No Confidence has historically referred to a parliamentary procedure.
I think the term is appropriate here as well but might be problematic because of its historical usage. Avoiding confusion or conflation is a good thing, so maybe a different term should be used for this situation.
I think your suggestion of No Representation is a decent one. I'm not suggesting that that should result in an unfilled office though. My view is that if No Representation actually wins (takes the plurality of the vote), it should trigger a special election where new candidates must be nominated and a new popular vote must be held.
> I'm not suggesting that that should result in an unfilled office though.
I don't think anything else is even remotely reasonable, in the end.
> My view is that if No Representation actually wins (takes the plurality of the vote), it should trigger a special election where new candidates must be nominated and a new popular vote must be held.
A special election is a not-uncommon vacancy-filling mechanism, but I think you are still going to have to accept vacancies caused by a No Representative win if you want the option at all: by design, elections are usually proximate in time to the end of the term -- the two month time between US federal general elections and the start of Congressional terms is about the length usually specified for a special election, leaving no time to actually tabulate and certify election results before the next term would start, and even if you can squeeze in one special election between the regular election and the start of the term, what happens if you get a No Representative win in the second election? Or does the supposed "democratic right" to vote against all candidates only apply once per cycle (and if it does, why do you think you'll get more acceptable candidates in the second try)?
I have most frequently seen this option called "None of the Above". A special election consisting of all new candidates seems like the best practice for when NOTA wins an election.
in UK Parliament a vote of no confidence (which is cast by MPs rather than popular vote, but still, a possible example), leads to the current parliament being dissolved and a new general election being scheduled for the near future. Canadian parliament is similar. In the German government an analogous procedure exists, except the general election is not an obligatory outcome.
in these parliamentary systems its a way to avoid total deadlock where the executive and legislature cannot come to terms. this is obviously a problem we suffer from acutely in the U.S. right now. however, that's a somewhat different scenario than what we're discussing here specifically, where the no confidence vote would come directly from the popular vote instead of as a parliamentary procedure.
In the context of a popular general election, this would be similar to failure to form a quorum, meaning no participant in the election can be considered to have a mandate or consent of the governed.
what would it mean for this outcome to "win" the election? Clearly that the procedures that nominated candidates for office had malfunctioned and that none of the nominated candidates are satisfactory to a sufficient slice of the electorate. This would be a protection against a form of oligarchy or minority rule. I think the reasons for considering this are abundantly clear in the U.S. in 2016.
what should happen as a result of a general no confidence result? my suggestion would be a special election where the candidates of the previous election are barred from being re-nominated. if the special election also failed to select a candidate with a mandate to govern then it should automatically trigger a constitutional convention, since that would represent a PROFOUND failure to represent the people and would need to be resolved by extraordinary means.
Also, places like Australia that have compulsory voting do not check that you have marked the ballot in any fashion, only signed in, taken a ballot, and put it in the box.
Sure it is - but it's universal to citizens participating in that society. if you're outside the system, YOU'RE OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM, including UBI. Doesn't mean you have to pick one candidate - you can abstain, as long as you show up to record your abstention.
Sam Altman spends his summer advising vote.org in his role as a YC Partner.
Soon after demo day, Sam Altman decides to launch what amounts to a clone knock off of vote.org. Paul Graham tweets about VotePlz at launch calling it the most important thing to happen today, after never mentioning the YC funded vote.org on his twitter all summer as far as I can tell.
Shouldn't YC be as friendly to not-for-profit startup founders as they claim to be to for-profit founders?
I'm all for there being lots of voter-registration organizations. YC should fund lots of startups in this space.
It seems though that the role that YC Partners play as trusted strategic advisors is incompatible with those partners going on to start directly competitive organizations, whatever their tax status might be.