Just a little reminder that if you live in a Super Awesome Incredible Tuesday state you should go vote today. And if you don't live in such a state but do know people who do, you should exhort them to vote. Participation is essential.
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Go Vote
05 Feb 2008 09:10 am
Comments (43)
I am sure this post will have a big effect but a cool music video might have even more impact ...
Remember that a vote for Hillary is a vote for 100 more years of war and potentially a worldwide famine.
And a vote for Obama will make you feel nice and tingly all over and ready for four years of saccharine filled bromide capsules at constant disposal of every American.
Go vote. Unless you're voting for Hillary. In that case, STAY HOME. We don't want you to vote.
Can I call collect in my GotV?
Participation is essential? Why? I've always been troubled by the claim that voting is a duty--sometimes it may be rational not to vote (even leaving aside the argument that one's individual vote is never decisive). For example, I'm very closely divided in my choice between Hillary and Barack--why should I force myself to give my entire vote (which I can't split) to one or the other? Maybe it makes the most sense for me to abstain.
Maybe you mean to say that widespread participation generates excitement that will carry over into the general election. I can buy that. Ideally, I would have liked to find someone who is as undecided as I between the two, and then we could have agreed: one of us votes for Hillary, the other for Barack.
Damn I wish Edwards had stayed in for another week.
If you're some fat housewife considering voting for Hillary today, ask yourself: wouldn't I rather watch The View, Oprah, and Dr. Phil instead?
Or if you're some emasculated castrato like gregor above, perhaps you might consider a visit to the salon for a pedicure and a nice hot wax?
I'd love to vote, but seeing as i do not belong to either party i'm forbidden - at least in NY.
Tony, why not adopt the philosophy that in close calls, go with the underdog? That's what I do in sports, about which I care not a bit.
If you want a less flip answer, I would say this. They are in a close race. The winner will face McCain for the future of the country. I know, all of this is obvious, I'm not trying to talk down to you. Most of their policies overlap, but there are differences between them. There are intangible differences between them, and those can be important, too. You have to find something important enough to distinguish them, and vote based on that. I believe, anyway. In theory, I believe in abstention, although I've never done it, since I have an opinion about everydamnedthing. But, for example if I had to choose between Lieberman and McCain I would abstain. That's a choice between one kind of bad and a similar, yet equally bad kind of bad. That's an informed abstention.
But I don't think that's exactly what you're saying here. You're saying you can't make up your mind. I think you can.
[Read this part subliminally obamaobamaobamaobama]
Participation is irrelevant. Your vote will not make a difference. There will be exactly zero delegates that will be allocated differently depending on whether you vote or not.
Remember: VOTE or DIE!
Remember: VOTE or DIE!
Well, that kind of sucks for independents in states with closed primaries (like me in NY).
I'm voting for HILLARY today. As I tell my friends, a vote for HILLARY is a vote to end male domination of our world!
Dear Mr. Superdelegate,
Please get off your ass and change the vote your party chairperson cast for you from "Clinton" to "Obama". Unfortunately, your vote DOES matter, a hell of lot more than it ought to. Thanks for not listening, as usual.
Love,
some dude whose vote is worth 1/100000th of yours
Just voted. In a bold act of rigid designation, I hereby propose that the sarcastic name for Super Tuesday be "Thunderdome Tuesday." Two candidates enter; one candidate leaves.
Two candidates enter; one candidate leaves
Cool name, but I'm pretty sure they're both leaving.
I like it for the general, though. A reprise of 2000 would be too much for me.
one's individual vote is never decisive
Well, that's why you don't vote as an individual. You vote as a progressive, or an African-American, or an opponent of the war, or a woman, or a New Yorker, or a Democrat, or some combination of categories.
As for your dilemma, Tony: Flip a coin.
Susan,
Hillary is not a woman. I like women. Hillary is a fembot. I do not like fembots, and I do not support fembot liberation or the promotion of fembots to positions of great power and influence any more than I would support the empowerment of, say, vintage pants, exotic reptiles, or a block of cheese.
If you want to be dominated by fembots for the next 4-8 years, that's your business; but please do not force me to live under a fembot regime, just because fembots happen to look a bit like women.
I look forward to an orderly election that will reduce the need for bloodshed. When you are locked in your voting cubicle remember to vote for Senator Ko...I mean, Senator Clin-ton.
I got up before dawn this morning to vote before I went to work. It turned out I was the first one to vote in my precinct. I feel vaguely rah-rah-stars-and-stripes about that. Also, since Jersey allows open primaries as long as you declare affiliation at the time you vote, my prediliction for Obama has made me finally commit to the Democrats. Eep.
Isn't your vote much more likely to make a difference today than in a general election? Every state is proportional, right? So even one vote in one district might change a delegate. And Clinton and Obama will be counting every last delegate.
I can see the case in most years about your vote not counting, but this seems like the one in which your vote matters more than ever.
Hillary is not a woman. I like women. Hillary is a fembot.
Wow, that's truly loathesome.
I wonder if that post was from a Clinton supporter -- seeing as I can't give "Tim" a good kick in the balls, pissing him off with a big Clinton victory seems like the next best alternative.
LOL Tim. Senator Fembot lose!
know your rights!
Obviously in any decently sized democratic vote - anything more than 50 votes - your vote has virtually no effect. So don't vote if you think it'll make a difference.
However, do vote if it makes you feel better about yourself.
"Super Awesome Incredible Tuesday"
I'm calling it "Super Duper Fat Tsunami Tuesday from Hell"
lemuel: I hear is physiologically impossible to kick any male Hillary supporter in the balls due to a lack of male genitalia.
Obviously in any decently sized democratic vote - anything more than 50 votes - your vote has virtually no effect. So don't vote if you think it'll make a difference.
The curious thing is that if there are a bunch of rational individuals like Joe Strummer staying home from the polls, and a bunch of otehr people who do think their votes make a difference, public policy will be decided according to the preferences of the other folks. Soon enough the Take All Joe's Assets And Divvy Them Up bill will pass easily. So who's rational, and who's irrational?
You know, as far as stirring and inspirational reasons to vote go, I prefer this to the essentialness/effectiveness of it:
People died for the right to vote. Women have been jailed and beaten, black people intimidated and threatened, and men without property left out of the equation for many years as well. Universal suffrage in this country is thanks to the blood, sweat, and tears expended by few people still around today.
If you're not going to vote, you should have a pretty damned good reason for it. Sez I.
Jen,
"You have to find something important enough...and vote based on that."
Yes of course there are differences, and on balance, my preference was for Obama--I could never vote for Hillary for the nomination because of the war. But then Obama came out with that demagogic attack on Hillary's health care mandates, and it reminded me of all the other ways in which he has turned me off--his squooshy non-partisan centrism, his vote for class action litigation "reform," his legitimation of the fraudulent claim of a Social Security "crisis," and his admission that maybe he wasn't sure how he would have voted on the war if he was in the Senate in the fall of '02. So I can't really vote for him with any enthusiasm. We are all socialized into the high school civics idea that we "have" to vote. But abstention can be a principled, rational course. You acknowledge that you might abstain given a choice between two repulsive candidates. Why not abstain given a choice between two closely matched so-so candidates?
Well, obviously, you can do whatever you want to do. My rationale for not abstaining was at 10:58. For me, it's not a matter of high school civics but a point of personal ethics to vote. I think that you can always find a tie-breaker if you look.
James Fallows has a good, thoughtful non-endorsement endorsement if you're still looking.
http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/if_i_were_voting.php
Tony,
There's no shame in leaving part of, or even the whole, ballot blank, but it really is part of your civic duty to hand in a ballot. If you think about it there is never any rational reason to vote besides it being the right thing to do (your vote will never make the difference), and the fact that you don't have a preference between the two candidates doesn't override your duty to vote. Or at least that's how I see it.
You can abstain from the presidential portion and still vote on other stuff. I had a $38.5 million bond issue for my local schools to vote on.
I can go along with Jen that voting or not voting is a matter of personal ethics, but, sorry, JK: I have never been well-disposed to the claim that we have a "duty" to vote. Civic engagement is certainly admirable, and should be encouraged, but the claim that it's a duty has overtones of authoritarianism to me. Certainly, in the extreme case of a choice between two horrid candidates, I would feel an obligation not to vote. When I vote, I do so as a personal expression of my values, not because I think I'm "accomplishing" anything or fulfilling a duty to anyone.
So? Are you going to vote?
Huckabee wins WV! Could Romney have any worse luck?
I guess I'm not entirely clear on the distinction between "personal ethics" and "duty." Isn't a duty just the the requirement to act in an ethical way? Regardless, the point is that there is never a truely rational (utilitarian) reason to vote, so I don't see how the lack of a perference would alter your decision of whether to show up to vote or not.
My personal ethics are that if Elizabeth Cady Stanton could fight half her life for the right to vote for such luminaries as Zachary Taylor, and die years away from attaining that dream, that I owe it to her and to others to get my butt to the polls absent a very compelling reason.
I believe this holds true for women and men of all types, because we all benefit from universal suffrage and effective democracy.
It is a deeply held personal conviction. I suppose that's different from civic duty, I see it more as an honor.
Still hasn't told me whether he's voting or not.
VOTE OR DIE
I don't know if thats a threat, a warning, or both :-(...
Classic anarchist slogans:
Don't vote - it only encourages them.
If voting could change the system, it would be illegal.
No matter who you vote for, the government gets into power.
Don't vote and the choice is theirs. Vote - and the choice is theirs.
Vote for Guy Fawkes - the only man to enter parliament with honest intentions.
"A man that would expect to train lobsters to fly in a year is called a lunatic; but a man that thinks men can be turned into angels by an election is a reformer & remains at large."
— Finley Peter Dunne
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. & suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
— Mark Twain: Manuscript note, c.1882.
American democracy is perfect...the rich to ravage the poor & convince the poor they wanted it...Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so."
— Gore Vidal
"Those who cast their vote decide nothing.
Those who count the votes decide everything."
— Josef Stalin
US: The campaign staff of the Elder Party's inveterate presidential candidate announced today that Cthulhu will not be running in the 2004 election.
"George W. Bush has undermined our entire campaign platform," complained one staffer, who went on to explain that Cthulhu's presidential campaign slogan has always been, "Why Vote For The Lesser Evil?"
"Ever since Dubya rose to power, the Great Cthulhu is the lesser evil. How could anyone — or anything — compete with his vile policies and sinister agendas?"
The Anarchist Case Against Voting and Elections
http://infoshop.org/page/Voting
Oh, and I forgot:
For those like Al, Fred, Mixner, and the like, who enjoy bowing down before those in power:
KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!
Vote for your ruler
When I first came to your planet and demanded your homes, property and very lives, I didn't know you were already doing so, willingly, with your own government. I can win no tribute from a bankrupted nation populated by feeble flag-waving plebians. In 2008 I shall restore your dignity and make you servants worthy of my rule. This new government shall become a tool of my oppression. Instead of hidden agendas and waffling policies, I offer you direct candor and brutal certainty. I only ask for your tribute, your lives, and your vote.
-- General Zod
Your Future President and Eternal Ruler
Zod's Campaign Platform:
# I do not take orders. I give them. Congress shall no longer have the ability to impeach me or override my decisions, and the Supreme Court shall not meddle in government affairs.
# Your freedom will be expanded. You will be even more free to give your money and lives to me, and to be my eternal subjects.
# Eliminate the Iraq War. The Iraq War has shifted $187 billion to the defense industry. How is this "defense industry" to kneel before me? Are my praises to be sung as footnotes in their paperwork? You will stop giving these corporations your wealth. I suggest you put the money into your own schools and health care, so that I may have intelligent, healthy servants. I will indulge your wishes if you all want a Westernized, unpopular regime in Iraq, and I too shall gloat in its troubles, but it will not be done at my expense.
# Universal health care. Even a criminal like myself is shocked that millions are not able to get health insurance and cannot pay for basic surgery. Who are these power brokers that allow the pigpen to become wormy and filthy? I demand your very lives, but I am not such an imbecile as to institutionalize suffering and poverty. You have my assurance that this shall change swiftly.
# Corporate reform. You people have become disgusting minions to these things you call "corporations". These things take your money and your land, put you into debt, send your jobs overseas, provide you with unsafe foods, and sue you when you say anything bad about them. Yet you people fatten them up at the ballot box. You give them free land, name your stadiums after them, allow them to telemarket you, and even sacrifice your own bankruptcy protections. Quite frankly it astonishes me. I will break this sickly codependency. It is I who shall be your ruler. I shall empower you with wealth to give me as tribute. A corporation cannot bow to me or give me tribute that comes from the heart.
# You will buy U.S. made items. Why do you buy Chinese-made items when you know that it sells out the jobs of your family and friends? How will you buy those cheap things when you have no job? You are sending my wealth and tribute to foreign lands. I will not tolerate this.
Jen,
I've been away from the computer until now. After more agoninizing, I did wind up abstaining, and subsequently regretting it.
But that is basically emotional, and doesn't detract from my argument: voting isn't a duty, it's basically a personal expression of values. (I took this to mean what you meant by ethics, a term that I would prefer to avoid.) To JK, I would say that the fact that voting is not a utilitarian, but an expressive act, actually strengthens my argument--if voting is basically a matter of personal expression, how can it be morally compulsory? (That's what duty means, after all.) Probably the best expression of my views would be to give Obama say, 53% of my ballot and Clinton 47%. But that's not possible. To give one candidate all, and the other nothing, actually misrepresents my relative valuation of the candidates. Abstention more nearly reflects it. (But again, I admit, I regret not having voted--it's an emotional thing.)
Comments closed February 19, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Essential for what?
Posted by JH | February 5, 2008 9:14 AM