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.
