Multiple reasons, but the main reason, and why it’s not a widespread problem problem, is because it’s a nearly worthless gesture that nonetheless is morally wrong. Your individual vote is almost never likely to matter, so why commit a moral wrong (even if you know you won’t be caught) with no gain.
Inb4 the usual suspects whine: don’t be so childish, that’s 1.0 votes for the evil toxic waste container, fuck you!
Also, and as an aside… it’s lol-tastical that a buncha ex-poker players, who even if they weren’t tourney players, should be aware of what the ICM is, counting all votes as either 0.5 or 1.0. For some reason tons of peeps intentionally turn off their reasoning skills as soon as they classify something as “politics”.
No, because you stupidly posted about it on a public message board. Assuming no stupidity, yes.
I don’t care all that much how people here vote. Many of us are arguing about what it makes sense for people to do. I don’t really care if you start shooting up heroin everyday, but I’d argue pretty strongly here against someone saying people should shoot heroin for the health benefits because that doesn’t make any sense. That may get misconstrued as caring strongly about whether you vote/shoot up.
I’m picking up what you’re putting down
I’m not sure how robust your declaration of potentially withholding your vote is. But the degree to which I’m on your side isn’t about whether I will ultimately vote for Biden. It’s that if I want to affect his political decisions, one of the most effective rhetorical devices I have to get his attention and shift his decisions is to threaten to withhold my vote.
This has nothing to do with whether I will actually withhold my vote on election day. I realize this can be a semantic distinction that suddenly takes up all the oxygen in the conversation, particularly if a person is a literalist that can’t speak in subtext. I don’t mean this as a slight to anyone ITT. Some of us are on the autism spectrum and struggle mightily to even perceive subtext, let alone have an entire conversation based on it.
But as I understand or would at least apply Mystery’s point, for me it is like if someone argued endlessly over whether Starship Troopers is a good sci-fi movie. It was deliberately bad and overtly fascistic as a criticism against those things. Bad sci-fi in a story about military fascism was just the vessel for the message.
And similarly, threatening to withhold my vote is the vessel for the real conversation. It manifests the energy of leverage without requiring a commensurate weight to the threat.
You could say that makes it an empty threat, but if a person is still arguing against me literally withholding my vote, they are still not having the same conversation as me. They have missed the subtext as the supertext.
(not sure if I believe any of this, just exploring Mystery’s POV and how it might manifest in my own life)
Sure, some, maybe most, are discussing peeps in general. But several don’t seem to be able to make that distinction. This second bunch are prone to outbursts like: “stop being fucking childish, get ye to vote!”.
How about my Q? I can create a cheating vote for the stupid potato, without risk of getting caught. Should I do so ???/?
If I were you I would not. A mix of "It’s wrong"and “Can you really be sure you won’t get caught?”
The vote on if I should create a cheating vote is so far is 1-2 against. The reason given so far, besides personal risk to me, is that it would be wrong (in a certain sense of the word, obviously).
How about trying to create wholly illegitimate but technically legal votes? I’m sure I would have been a lock to have created two of these kinda votes also. Which would be worth -2.0 votes for the evil toxic waste container, as per the IDM (Incompetent Donkey Model) that the fools ITT like braying on about.
Should I have attempted to create these illegitimate votes?
We are sort of in the play money stakes of vote withholding, the tiers for someone publicly making this threat and the results would be something like
Play Money: Randos, message board peeps
Results: No impact at all
Small Stakes: Rando Celebs eg Susan Sarrandon
Results: Twitter criticism, no impact on election
Mid Stakes: Major celebrities and well known liberal politicians eg Lebron, Bernie
Results: Major media coverage + Some impact on election
High Stakes: Major Liberal Political Celebrities eg Obamas, Clintons
Results: Major media coverage + Major impact on election
Would the vote with holders be doing the same thing if they had more influence? It’s not super interesting if they are only doing it because they know nobody cares.
There essentially is a rule. Biden has no power now. He can’t be pushed to the left or the right because there’s nothing he can do and by the time he can do anything it will be too late, your vote will already have been cast.
If he’s president in 2021 will he have to earn our votes to be re-elected or will he be able to take those for granted? I suppose there is more than voting. You could always use donations and volunteering as a carrot for the behavior you want from him.
There are certainly real threats to democracy and the Democracy we have and have had has been pretty subpar already, but if Trump wins I would happily take a bet getting 3 to 1 that there is an election in 2024 and a Democrat wins.
Would I in that situation? Yes, depending on the risk - being unofficial proxy votes makes it not immoral.
If you’re asking whether I’d vote using, say, enough dead people’s IDs to make a difference if there was zero chance of being caught, I’d say it would depend entirely on how critical the election was, so normally definitely no but to keep out an undisputed fascist, yes.
POTUS BOWL 2020: Libuuuural vs Bro
When I suggest that a group of people threaten to withhold their vote you first assumed that I was talking about unlikely voters who skew younger and lower income. I clarified that I was referring to likely voters who were not young. I appreciate you listening, but now we are at another objection: you think my demo is too small.
When other posters like sky, trolley, cuse, clovis, riverman, etc. suggest that just two years into the future we support and elect more progressive candidates, that gets no push back from you. Their hypothetical and my hypothetical are both assuming that there currently exists a demo of likely voters who lean progressive.
I would like to move on in our discussion, can we agree that the demo that they assume exists does in fact exist?
I hate poker analogies. But I feel like I’m attempting to have a strategy convo discussing different lines. I’m proposing a semi-bluff with a hand where we have decent equity, and people are responding with “don’t fold!”. Yeah guys, none of us are folding in this spot. please don’t @me on this analogy, as debating the merits of an analogy within the context of a hypothetical is too esoteric for even me
I keep reading that this might be the last free election. Do the people who post this act like they believe it? If the end of democracy is a credible threat one should spend every minute and every dollar to either win the election or get out of the country. I highly doubt this is what the doomsayers are doing.
No that’s good. I think I get it.
Progressives thankfully don’t think like this. Capitalists do. See: the environment.
I mean, there’s a difference between thinking the country is about to become Nazi Germany and thinking the country is about to become a complete cult of personality oligarchy like Russia. I think the Russia type outcome is the likely one. Not great, but survivable.
That’s not something you’d want to avoid at all costs?