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I am what you might call a disillusioned voter. Over the past year I have become passionately convinced that elected officials, in all levels of government, and irrespective of the major party they affiliate with, are not working with Americans' best interests in mind. They are more concerned with taking personal jabs at each other than they are working together to solve problems affecting us at the local, state and federal level. They only take into account the needs of the most vocal, influential, wealthy or powerful individuals. They only care about staying in office as long as possible, at any cost, instead of taking the time to listen and truly understand their constituents needs. They all regurgitate the same talking points, how the other party is evil and you can't trust them, instead of being bridge-builders and leaders. I could go on.
I've become so convicted in this, that I believe the best way to vote is to cast a completely black ballot.
Reasons:
-Your ballot is still counted, and will contribute to voter turnout statistics.
-You have the right to cast a vote for no one.
-You don't have to worry about picking the lesser of two evils, since you're not making a selection at all.
-Your vote for no one affirms that you believe democratic processes are important, and your lack of selection communicates dissatisfaction with the major parties. A sizable voter turnout with no candidates selected may cause them to change their platform to appeal to dissatisfied voters.
Arguments against this that I am not persuaded by:
"But that means the [party/candidate I oppose] will win." Yes, that will likely happen. No, it does not bother me, nor does it pursuade me. And that will be the case unless and until we are able to get more effective leaders on the ballot. It may very well take a darker period in our country's history to wake enough people up to the issues with the two-party system.
"But aren't there things that [major party] supports that you also support?" Yes, but I do not wish to involve myself in partisan politics, anymore. I believe that candidate selection should be based on their character, their ability to be charitable, kind, compassionate, driven, and most importantly, a leader who is willing to actively listen. I want nothing to do with the whole, "the other party is bad so you must vote for me" BS. I could care less about political parties at this point. Get more decent human beings up for election and then I'll consider voting for them.
"But you should vote to support [social issues]." I'm not voting to support a cause. I'm voting to find the most qualified candidate.
"It's anti-democratic not to pick a candidate." It's anti-democratic to not show up at the polls. It is completely democratic to cast a blank ballot. You're freely communicating that no candidates are fit to hold office.
"Then vote for an independent or minor party candidate." Independant candidates are not always on the ballot and with the stranglehold the major parties have on our election processes, minor parties will never gain a meaningful foothold in public offices. Ranked choice voting and citizen-funded elections would help, but no major party candidate would support it because it means the major parties would have less influence.
"But you need to vote this way or with this perspective, because reasons." No I don't. I have the right to cast my vote how I see fit, just as you do. I'm really not a fan of collective ideologies surrounding voting.
Other than the above, I am willing to hear any other arguments.
I mostly understand how the electoral college incentivizes a two party system, but it still boggles my mind about why with so much dysfunction and dissatisfaction a new party just doesn't cannibalize any party. Heck even splitting a party should have been possible, what is it with American politicians so sheepishly toeing the party line? Obviously we know a party overtaking other is possible since Republican party took over the Whigs vote. We know that outside candidates can make an impact if it wins like Reform party. What incentive does one have to prefer an already established party other than the obvious ones like connections to donors, rising up through the ranks faster etc?
Because it's much simpler to primary people - like, in a parliamentary system, yes, Trump would've created the America First Party and gotten 21% in the parliamentary elections, and maybe gotten a coalition with the Mitt Romney-led Republican's, etc.
Also, here's the thing, yes, a lot of people are upset with the current parties, but nobody agrees that much - some people think both parties are too left-wing, some parties thing both parties are too right-wing, some parties think they're too war-mongering, others think they're too soft, etc., and so on.
The Whig's had also been falling apart for basically 20 years over splits over slavery, and the reality is, there is no issue in America today - even abortion, immigration, etc. that comes close to what slavery was in America in the 20 years in the lead-up to the Civil War, so there was that. Also, whether you think the Democrat's or Republican's are weak, they're both getting 45-50% of the vote every national election - a party would have a chance if say, the GOP was losing 60-40 every time, because hey, why not try if we're losing anyway. But, since both sides believe that defecting means the side they agree with even less could win and install a lot of terrible policies, you stay as a good soldier and try to win the next primary.
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I don't want to convince you your vote isn't meaningless, but I sense a free lunch here. Would you be willing to vote the way I ask, since you are indifferent to what the actual result of the election is?
What do you have in mind?
Straight Democrat in all possible cases.
I will say this. The DNCs platform is closer to what my views tend to be, which I would describe as a bit of social democrat and a bit of libertarian. Not hard-in-the-paint, taxation is theft libertarian, but individual rights-supporting, freedom of the individual-supporting libertarian. From the social democrat side, I take support for universal healthcare, gun control reform, and higher taxes on the wealthy.
That having been said, I won't vote straight Democrat because I believe the DNC would not entertain some of my personal ideas -- for example, a complete overhaul of our election system, an independent nonpartisan commission for confirming federal judges and cabinet members, term limits on members of Congress and a Citizen's Assembly. I don't believe their career members or their donors would want anything that could threaten their ability to stay in power.
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I have not heard of any cases where one could exert more influence by participating less. Just as you feel your vote has no weight today, your lack of a vote will not have weight either. If you had any preference at all for one of the candidates, on any small issue, you give up what little you were doing to shift things.
If you want to exert more power, then exert more power. Participate in local politics, write a blog, spam memes, win hearts and minds, live a double life as a nocturnal caped crusader.
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Amusing anecdote: I remember a few years ago when some dime-a-dozen voter advocacy group did an AMA on Reddit. In light of the recent controversy over election fraud, a Redditor asked about what steps are taken to ensure the sanctity of elections. The advocacy group gave a boilerplate response about how elections are super duper secure, and that even if, hypothetically, election fraud did occur, it occurs in small enough numbers so as not to impact elections.
To which a glib Redditor responded, “kind of like how my single vote is too small a number to impact elections?”
The mic drop was deafening. He did not get a response.
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This seems like a misunderstanding of the reasons our democracy is failing to deliver compelling candidates. It's not the system, it's not the candidates, it's not some shadowy "they" at the top that will see the signal in your blank vote and adjust things to compensate. It's that we, the voters, have no single coherent thing that we want or can demand. Some few individuals, over represented on this forum, have thought out coherent ideas but as citizens in general we collectively want lower taxes and more government spending. We want less immigration but cheaper labor. We want our burgers to cost less but the guy flipping them to be paid more. What we would want is impossible so we can't have it.
What's the platform you imagine a better class of candidate would even run on? We've all had the self indulgent experience of imagining the speech we'd give on the campaign stage to bring the nation together. But after your elegant and coherent vision is expressed to the camera the other guy is going to accuse you of wanting to raise taxes or failing to support some popular increase in services and they'll be right.
The truth is that we're a divided people under a system that is designed to lock shut if there isn't a mandate. Our representatives can't push through what we want because it's not popular enough but they can shut down the other guy's thing that also isn't popular enough and we're going to keep supporting them in that shutting down because we find their radical ideas repellent. That's the way things are and they way things will stay until we as a nation are able to come back together and unite under a shared vision.
Vote blank if you want, it won't do anything because it can't do anything. You're screaming into a void and no one is listening.
I think its a little bit the system. I think first past the post combined with primaries distorts things towards polorization in a way that RCV and multi member districts would somewhat alleviate. Like most things where there is a large and persistent problem there is a good chance that perverse incentives are the issue and a difference system with different incentives could help.
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Well, that is an incredibly bleak outlook, but also sadly true, I feel.
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My whole take is that your individual vote is meaningless, but as soon as you participate in discussions with other people about your vote with the attitude of treating it seriously and thoughtfully, suddenly your vote regains meaning. You play an important role that can only be seen in aggregate, but can be seen clearly. You affirm the importance of the vote, and equally as important, you have the opportunity to nudge someone's viewpoint. In an optimistic view, if you speak with say 15 people about what or who you want to vote for, and change 1 person's mind and nudge 2 others, this chain can self-propagate. If those people -- even just the one! -- speak with 15 people, then you could have a distributed albeit real and tangible effect. It's also on an order of magnitude greater than your singular vote.
As they say about a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear, if you cast your vote without ever speaking your intentions to another soul, it may as well not have happened. Talk about it, and you get a drastic paradigm shift. That's my take.
I'll even go out on a limb for a bit and say that if people truly care about an issue, and achieve a sensible majority about it, sometimes there's a time lag (occasionally pretty long) but the US democratic system usually ends up representing these opinions at the end of the day. For example, I'm bullish on Congress banning individual stock trades within the decade, even though classic political microeconomics/game theory says this would be irrational.
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What does "most qualified" mean to you? For me, it's the person most capable of advancing the causes I support. Politics isn't and shouldn't be some HR checklist of who had the most jobs that are roughly similar to this job and can tick the boxes for being "qualified". I want them to agree with me on the issues I care about the most and demonstrate the capacity to legislate accordingly.
Here is an example of a candidate I would consider supporting. According to his bio, he seems to be running to genuinely represent his district and won't play partisan games. https://www.robert-smith.org/
I mean, he seems fine, but his website and platform look more-or-less bog-standard blue-state Republican running for Congress to me. Sure, he dresses it up in non-partisan "let's just roll up our shirt sleeves and get it done" language, but this looks exactly the same as half the Republican congressional campaign websites I've seen.
Sounds like you just prefer an older version of Republicans who aren't trying to do a bad Trump impression. There's plenty out there, they're just out of political fashion and haven't been doing well in primaries the last 8 years or so.
It's not so much that he's a Republican that would attract me to vote for him, but the fact that he (allegedly) is willing to engage in bipartisanship.
At this juncture, I would vote for any decent human being that isn't MAGA and isn't beholden to their party's interests. Maybe I'm asking for the moon, IDK. I'm just sick of all this shit. I'm 30 years old and there's elected people acting like out-of-control toddlers.
And all Im saying is these types of candidates are everywhere. Throw a rock while in a purple suburb and you'll hit one. The whole "let's set our differences aside and put people over partisanship" shtick is as old as partisanship itself. Candidates espousing things like that are pretty common. I just don't see the need for doom if all you're looking for is a normie centrist. Your dreams aren't unachievable. Move to a suburb and start volunteering for local campaigns.
There aren't any normies centerist candidates in the suburb that I live in. And no one wants to vote for a normie centerist because the don't take polarized hard-line stances. No one appears to want to elect critical thinkers.
Is the problem that people aren't good critical thinkers, or that you don't like the product of their thinking? The two are easily confused.
We had a thread about BLM and its consequences last week; it drew some engagement, but not, I think, as much as it deserved. "Critical Thinking" seems like it ought to offer a fairly solid answer to whether the consequences of the BLM movement are more dead black people than WWII, Korea and Vietnam combined, in a shorter amount of time. Once you have an answer, though, it doesn't seem to me that critical thinking offers cooperative solutions to the problem, and it's pretty clear that this is because there are no cooperative solutions. Polarized hardline stances are, in fact, sometimes the correct response to a sufficiently fraught situation. It seems to me that we're in such a situation.
There aren't any good critical thinkers, and if there are, they mask it with their ad homs and personal or partisan attacks.
I don't have a problem with this. What I do have a problem with, is approaching folks on the opposite side of the argument with dehumanization, with bickering, and disrespect.
Like, if the spat that happened in that committee hearing last week between AOC and MTG happened in my presence, I'd tell them they're both wrong for attacking each other and walk away. Like, you wouldn't act like that in public if you weren't a politician, so why is it OK when you're in government? And I know that's very naive to think, but we're talking basic human decency here, even towards people like MTG who say vile and disgusting things every day.
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I guess I'm looking for something that most people don't want: politicians who are authentic human beings. They all seem to be robots parroting whatever the most recently trending culture war issues are and then saying what they think the public wants. None of them give a shit insofar as what keeps them in office.
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All I can say is it was ever thus. Politicians optimise for politics, that's what makes them politicians.
My recommendation if you're uninterested in supporting one of the candidates on offer is to write something on your ballot instead of leaving it blank. Give whoever sees it some indication of what you want and why you're dissatisfied instead of making them guess.
Yeah, I may do that instead of leaving it blank, especially since SSCReader says it would likely not be counted.
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The way our system works in practice is that our votes are only for causes. Biden isn’t Biden, Biden is the team of qualified agents behind the name who promote a particular agenda. The same with Trump (perhaps to a lesser degree because he’s not well-trained in politics). They are not writing policies, agendas, calendars or speeches. They don’t even write their own biographies.
Your view hinges on the idea that a blank ballot is more meaningful than a 0.0000001% influence on the country. But it’s not. No one will care about your blank ballot. It’s healthy to be disillusioned and not give a shit about the election, and that’s why it’s only every so often that you have to vote. It’s worth it given the minuscule amount of time invested. You concede that there is a lesser of two evils and that’s what life is about, you should always pick the lesser of two weevils.
He who would pun would pick a pocket.
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Correct, and I feel that votes should be for the right candidate, instead.
That's fine, that doesn't bother me.
I would give a shit about the election if the major parties weren't so polarized and concerned with circlejerking and if minor party and unaffiliated voters had equal representation on the ballot. Thus, I disagree with your last sentence and instead suggest that you shouldn't vote for anyone.
We go to the ballot box with the election system we have, not the one that we might want.
Well, then in that case, I choose not to go to the ballot box at all.
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I came to similar conclusions as you a long time ago without much disillusionment about politics because of the simple math of voting: the only way that my vote matters in terms of who gets elected is if one of the elections in which I voted was decided by exactly 1 vote, after all the recounts and such, and the odds of that happening are so astronomically small that the very real guaranteed cost of taking the time and effort to go to a place to vote or to fill out a form and mail it in aren't worth it. However, I voted in the 2016 and 2020 US elections for 2 different reasons, which you might find compelling.
First of all, I don't think I'm a very good liar, so I wanted to place myself in a situation that I wouldn't have to lie convincingly. Given that, I wanted to honestly be able to say that I voted for the first woman president of the United States merely for the historic reasons (whether or not I think the whole "first person of [x] in position [y]" should be historic, it is historic) which is why I voted in 2016. Didn't quite work out that way, but the chance of positive upside seemed worth the cost. In 2020, I voted for Biden, because I wanted to be able to honestly say that I helped to vote out Donald Trump from the White House, lest I face severe negative consequences from people who consider not voting against Trump to be a mortal sin. Of course, the exact mirror situation could happen with people considering not voting for Trump to be a mortal sin, but my own assessment of my risk was that Biden supporters were far more likely to enact such negative consequences on me than Trump supporters. I'm not sure I'll vote for Biden again this year rather than abstaining like I did in 2012, since the fervor to keep Biden in the White House while preventing Trump from getting back in, for some reason, doesn't feel as strong now as the fervor to knock Trump out of the White House in 2020 (I'm guessing that Covid & the riots of that year probably had a lot to do with it).
While I am aware that such people exist, have you actually encountered them in any meaningful context in real life? My friends are pretty much all normie blue tribe liberals, some even work for the federal government, and no one seems all that surprised or bothered that my views do not match their own.
Are you?
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No, at least not people to the extent that the negative consequences I face from them would be considered "severe." It can be a bit difficult to guess at due to the fact that I've literally never met a single open Trump supporter among my IRL social circles, though I have a friend who's fairly right-wing and occasionally, hesitantly, shyly open about it, and the extent of negative consequences tends to be just ostracization rather than anything severe. In retrospect, I was being paranoid in a similar way as the people in 2016 who were saying death camps for gays would be around the corner if Trump got elected.
Yeah, I get the reticence, particularly within a monoculture of people that aren't necessarily close friends. I'm just asking because my own experience with being hard-right on a number of issues, including things like advocating the elimination of multiple federal departments, just doesn't seem to get actually get me any real blowback. Maybe it's because I tend towards either being kind of jokingly sardonic or dryly policy focused rather than coming off as a cultural enemy, but it's just really not consistent with what I hear people expecting.
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I think this is underselling it a bit: my mental model as a self-identified swing voter is that my vote or the votes of others like me could be the deciding factor in an otherwise-close race. My vote is worthwhile, because if everyone who felt that way voted together, it would actually merit attention from The Powers That Be.
But I will also support casting a blank ballot as a better, valid protest vote over not casting a ballot at all.
I used to think somewhat like this, but I realized that whether or not I decided to vote, I wouldn't affect the behavior or votes of others like me. Others like me will make their decisions on whether/who to vote based on their own beliefs and values. Those beliefs and values will likely be similar to mine, and so their decisions will likely be similar to mine, but it's not as if me changing my mind now to vote would influence them to make similar decisions.
It's not that it would influence them, it's that the hundreds/tens of thousands of other "you"s are also considering the exact same choice. If all ~75,000 of the statistically equivalent "me"s out there in the country all decide 'who cares about my 1 vote', then we may all tip to the side of not voting. But maybe if I decide that I must be part of a statistical block of similar people rather than a super unique individual, then maybe all the "me"s also decide that, and we end up voting anyway.
At least that's how I like to think of it (even if I'm overestimating the number of "me"s out there, on any given simple issue it grows much larger).
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But why would you believe this? After all, it's those same democratic processes that gave us our current parties and politicians. Have you considered that maybe this is the inevitable outcome of the system and its incentives?
You can believe that, but that's clearly not how they're actually selected, and I don't see how to change that. What if that goal isn't really achievable?
What if modern democracy isn't actually compatible with having "decent human beings up for election"? Consider that perhaps the nature of American politics makes the current crop you find so distasteful unavoidable. That this unfortunate outcome is simply what American democracy is.
What if some better democracy, with better candidates, simply isn't achievable, and the only choice is between the current dysfunctional, partisan democracy that has you disillusioned; or abandoning democracy altogether?
Intermediate options have certainly existed. The available policies with regard to democratic representation aren't universal suffrage or bust.
Except, first, I'm not sure how restricting the franchise would resolve the issue in question, at least not without restricting it down to a tiny fraction of the population. (But which one, then?)
Second, I'm not sure how it would be done. Because I remember once looking up, over a decade ago, the historical precedents for narrowing the franchise — without eliminating it, that is. And while it's been awhile I do remember a few things from what I was able to find. First, that no nation with universal adult suffrage has ever even tried to narrow the franchise back from that (again, as opposed to suspending or ending democracy entirely). That the only one I found that tried to go back from universal male suffrage was the 2nd French Republic, with the 31 May 1850 electoral law. This mostly served to let Louis-Napoléon grow his support with the people by opposing it, and he undid it the next year, and restored universal male suffrage, during his December 1851 auto-coup, in which he assumed dictatorial powers, and which led to a new constitution a month later that essentially ended the Republic, and set the ground for the Second Empire officially declared that following Christmas. And lastly, that every place that tried to narrow the franchise significantly saw massive political unrest, destabilization, and, similar to ol' Napoleon III, some sort of coup or dictatorship emerging.
Sure, there were some times in early US history where various states made changes to their voting laws that removed the franchise from some subset of voters; but in all of those cases that I found, those same changes also expanded the franchise to some other, generally larger, set of new voters, leaving it an expansion in general.
Tl;dr, the franchise never really gets narrowed in any lasting manner, only expanded or eliminated.
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I have not considered that. However, just because the outcome is inevitable doesn't mean it shouldn't be changed.
Well, yes, I agree that it isn't compatible. That's why I would hope that undervoting across the board might help communicate that we need to come back to basics -- mutual respect, recognizing the humanity of every individual, etc.
Then perhaps democracy as a system of government should be retooled or abandoned.
If it's inevitable, doesn't that mean, definitionally, that it can't be changed? At least, not without replacing the entire system itself.
What makes you think it's a matter of "communicating"? That doesn't really change the fundamental incentives, nor does it address irreconcilable differences in fundamental values, or deeply incompatible group interests.
In which case (particularly the latter, which is my position), voting a blank ballot — which, as you note, affirms belief that the current democratic processes are important — is not the right response.
(Indeed, it remains a bit of a question, how one best expresses in a democratic election opposition to democracy and elections.)
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Generally, very low voter turnout is considered a signal that people become disillusioned and that a change of course is needed.
Marking you ballot in any way except the accepted one on the other hand is usually considered a simple mistake and counted as such. So currently the message you are sending the politicians, as seen from their pov, is that you're happy with the system as-is, but you just failed to follow very simple and easy to understand instructions.
I'm wondering if you misunderstood. I'm saying, folks should go to their polling place, ask for a ballot and intentionally submit it blank. You still get marked down as having voted, and those ballots would conceivably get counted along with marked ballots under voter turnout stats, but it wouldn't be counted in the results.
Having run elections before, blank ballots we just put in a pile and basically ignore. Those who are written on but not filled out correctly, we did have to report on specifics, but blank ones the only thing we reported was the number, and given we don't know if it was supposed to be a protest or someone's pen didn't work and they failed to notice or something else, we didn't actually carry that through to our election reports in any meaningful way. There are always blank votes, but being blank doesn't actually tell you the person meant to submit it blank.
Your assumption is that the people running the elections will interpret a blank vote the same way you meant it. I am not sure at all that is true.
If there were some kind of publicized campaign (Vote for none of the above!) then maybe. But without it, a blank vote doesn't carry useful information in and of itself.
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Yes, I understand you correctly. I've had the discussion on not voting vs false/unmarked voting vs protest voting a bunch of times by now. Whether you keep it blank or do whatever else that results in your vote not counting, it will at best just not end up being noticed at all. The voter turnout is high, the good parties are being voted for, everything is fine. At worst, if people look at statistics on unmarked/wrong ballots they'll just conclude you're to dumb to fill out the ballot appropriately. I've seen that literal reaction in action "oh did you know that like 10% of ballots end up not being counted because they're unmarked or so? That seems high." "Yeah some people can't even vote lol".
Imo the correct course of action is either not voting (after all, if you're disillusioned about something, you would usually not continue engaging in it) or protest vote.
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I think it’s the opposite. Very low turnout means voters are largely happy with the government and don’t think it’s worth spending a few hours voting.
High turnout means you have two groups with broad disagreement that you care deeply about. It gets me to vote. In my view the left is completely insane and the right has some (not all) good policy. If I were in Europe it would be even more important as I think those countries are dying thru immigration.
I'm reporting on how it's perceived by the establishment politicians, and they're usually pretty clear that high turnout = good. Likewise, the establishment media will usually report negatively about record low turnouts and positively vice versa (unless the wrong parties are being voted for, but OP takes care not to do that).
Do the politicians who won actually care about low turnout? The losing candidates and liberal media in my neck of the woods always complain about low voter turnout after every election, but I’ve never gotten the impression that the winners mind in the slightest.
In the short term, no, but in the longer term a low turnout means increased risk in the next election, which drives prioritization and strategy.
The nature of low turnout is that the lower it is, the less stable it is for the incumbent, because ever-smaller groups of interested voters can be decisive in upturning it if they either switch or even just re-enter the voting ranks next election. As voter participation can be volatile, this means that it's relatively easy for sudden surges of voter engagement to turn against an incumbent. As a result, politicians would rather win with low engagement than lose, but what they really want is higher voter turnout of their base, to be more resilient, and a failure of turnout on their end means- even if victorious this time- that things need to change.
Personally, I'd consider this an advantage of voluntary over mandatory voting systems. In mandatory voting systems, there's considerably less volatility as there's a lot less sway in overriding existing factionalism / voter commitment to past votes. (People are less likely to vote against something / someone they've already voted for, and such.) While whether volatility is itself good or bad is questionable, in my view it's an important part of being able to actually challenge incumbents, and incumbents have enough built-in advantages that challenges to them on irregular voter sentiment sways is a good thing.
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I agree with you completely, and I take it a step further by not voting at all. Whatever marginal benefit my blank ballot would have on voter turnout statistics is negligible compared to the inconvenience of voting.
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Your vote for no one doesn't matter: the only thing it does is create, in your mind, a relationship between you and "democratic processes." It cannot change the results of the election, and a burst in spoiled ballots isn't going to influence policy or governance.
The main effect of casting your ballot is going to be how it influences how you think and relate to the State, granting it more legitimacy than actually exists. It's the secular equivalent of hating religion, getting nothing out of it, and nevertheless insisting on going to church with a constant grimace on your face to register your objection.
(It's still better than voting for "the lesser of two evils," which has a tendency to drive people to adopt a tribe and shift their positions to make the lesser evil feel less evil or even actively good.)
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I'm guessing this is a typo, you probably mean "are not working with Americans' best interests in mind"
At any rate, I don't expect many people here will disagree with you
Yes lol. Thanks, I just edited it.
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