The odds are your vote isn’t going to sway an election. Yet, despite this, people keep trying to bully their way into your time by encouraging you to vote as a moral decision.
But, the rationale they hold up is especially bad.
There’s a few different moral justifications for voting. Let’s go through several of them.
One argument starts by pointing out that failing to vote for the lesser of two evils means that your act of defiance condemns millions of poor people to worse lives. While the magnitude of this harm is potentially large, the question remains whether it is especially likely that you acting will change anything.
Most people when they ask for you to vote don’t have a principled reason why people should participate in general, and instead want to shift you towards a specific outcome. And, to be honest, this approach to voting makes more sense. Who has been helped if people in equal numbers vote for or against a specific bill. If the outcome is the same, all other things being equal, more people’s time is wasted.
Or, if people aren’t voting for great reasons, should that play some effect. Most people lack basic knowledge of the functions of government. Sophistry and bullshit run rampant. The odds are people just want to see their enemies lose, kind of like sports.
If participation is an inherent virtue, it begs the question of why. Why do people have to participate in this game? I’d rather freeload, so why is this being pushed upon me?
Isadore Johnson's Website 