My assumption is based upon the idea that if one were to randomly asked people not to vote, the number of people who tend to vote Democrat and the number of people who tend to vote Republican would be roughly the same. If one were to deliberately target Democratic-leaning voters or Republican-leaning voters, then there would be no point to asking people to not vote. To urge Democratic-leaning voters not to vote would be to throw the election to the Republicans and to urge Republican-leaning voters not to vote would be to throw the election to the Democrats.

As much as I disagree with Joel’s solution of simply not voting, I think he’s basically correct when he argues that the system is “corrupt” and “unjust.” Any system that allows the political party or parties in power to exclude other political parties from the ballot (or make it extremely difficult to attain ballot access) is inherently “corrupt” and “unjust.”

I suppose if one is a partisan Democrat or a partisan Republican, however, the system works just fine. No matter how horrible your political party is, you’re always assured at least second place.

I’m also puzzled by the assumption that failing to win a majority of the popular vote denies a President a mandate, or that, conversely, that winning a majority of the popular vote grants one. Democrats have rejected both propositions: failing to win the popular vote in either election did not, in their view, rob Bill Clinton of a mandate, and winning a majority in the 2004 election did not provide George Bush with a mandate. It seems to me that a President has a mandate when they win 270 votes in the electoral college, regardless of the total number of votes cast for each candidate was when you tot up all the statewide elections across the country.

I do agree with the chorus of condemnation of Joel’s rather silly and overheated post, though. It’s really quite difficult to take seriously a post that starts from the assumption that “the system” is “corrupt” and “unjust” to the point of having become “political tyranny.” To say the least, this is disconnected from reality, and I suspect that what it really boils down to is what such complaints always boil down to: “I’m a reasonable person; what I want is reasonable; therefore, if the system isn’t producing results I think are reasonable, the system is broken.” Which isn’t particularly persuasive.

I agree with you that we need to send politicians in Washington a forceful message, but I think simply abstaining from voting is the wrong idea, for the exact reasons stated by Entropy and Krit.

We know that there is a subset of voters who reliably vote Democrat (no matter how bad those Democratic candidates might be) and a subset of voters who reliably vote Republican (no matter how bad those Republican candidates might be). I’ve never seen any data measure how large these subsets might be, but I’d wager that at least 20% of Americans are knee-jerk partisan Democrats who reliably vote Democrat while at least 20% of Americans are knee-jerk partisan Republicans who reliably vote Republicans.

By abstaining from voting altogether, we ensure that these partisan voters form an even larger percentage of the electorate.

A much better alternative, in my opinion, is to vote for candidates other than Democrats and Republicans. This could be done by voting for either third party candidates, Independent candidates, or write-in candidates. Sure, they have no chance of winning, but it’s better than not voting at all, and here’s why:

By abstaining from voting and encouraging others to do likewise, you might put a dent in the total number of voters voting, but the overall percentage of votes won by Democrats and Republicans remains the same. For example, in 2004, Goerge W. Bush obtained 50.7% of the vote while John Kerry obtained 48.3% of the vote. Even if you had managed to convince a million people not to vote, you probably wouldn’t have altered that 50.7% to 48.3% result.

If, on the other hand, you had managed to convince a million people to vote for a third party/Independent/write-in candidate, you would have depressed the percentage won by BOTH Bush AND Kerry. Instead of 50.7% for Bush, 48.3% for Kerry, and 1% for third party/Independent candidates, we might have ended up with something like 50.2% for Bush, 47.8% for Kerry, and 2% for third party/Independent candidates.

And if you had managed to convinced two million people to vote for third party/Independent candidates, you would have managed to deny either Bush OR Kerry a majority of the popular vote, and thereby denying the winner of any so-called “mandate” (it’s kind of hard to call the election a mandate when the majority of voters voted against you).

Convincing large numbers of Americans to abstain from voting and convincing large numbers of Americans to vote for third party/independent candidates are both daunting tasks. But if you’re trying to send a message to Washington, the latter is a modestly productive measure while the former is not productive at all (and would likely be counter-productive since it gives more voting power to Democratic and Republican partisans).

For those of you who don’t care for either of the two major parties but don’t want to vote for any of the existing third party or Independent candidates…vote for the only person whose views truly reflect your own…yourself. Yes, even writing in your own name as a write-in candidate does more to decrease the percentages attained by the major party candidates than not voting at all.

Government isn’t a business you can boycott!
It isn’t a business you can strike against by walking off the job,
The result would be that the few people who will vote, and there will always be some, will determine how our country is run. How does that improve the system?

Nothing ever got done by NOT doing.
Get involved with groups that advocate for change, and there will be a much better chance of achieving reforms.

I favor public financing for elections.
I favor MUCH TOUGHER ehtics rules.
Choose your own medicine and then work to make the government take it.
Pouting doesn’t usually accomplish much.

I would point out, that the trouble in Washington starts with the trouble with us. We have no unity of purpose, no unity of vision. So what do you expect the governmet to achieve when it’s being pulled in several, uncompormising directions at once by the constituencies?
Dirty politics wouldn’t be possible if we, the people weren’t delighted when it works for our side. Portk barrel spending couldn’t happen unless we, the people were delighted when the pork comes our way.

How not voting would make us into a kinder, gentler, more co-operative nation, I faild to see.

Not voting–my god, what a terrible idea.

Alternatively, we can exert influence by writing or e-mailing our representatives, writing op-eds in the local paper, starting petition drives, becoming more active in party politics or by running for office ourselves. That seems like a far better option to me than voluntarily disenfranchising ourselves!

Another option would be to register as an Independent- so that the two parties would no longer be able to take our votes for granted. Still another would be to vote for proportional allotment of the electoral vote for each state. Any and all of these are preferable to just sitting out an election that is as important as the next one.

More involvement- not less is the answer.