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Votes are not insignificant as winners and losers consider the actual votes not just who won. (ex: When drawing district maps.) Further, even if you dislike all the options for president, congress, local election, etc there are still generally referendums where obtaining is meaningless as they are direct Y/N questions.

Not voting on the other hand accomplishes nothing and convinces the system that you don't matter.

PS: I don't necessarily mind you conceding all your power to other people. I simply object to flawed logic.

The act of voting, from an individual perspective, is objectively irrational. Since the chance of your particular vote affecting the outcome of an election is 0 your time and effort is wasted.

The lesser of two (or few) evils argument only applies on a collective level but you are an individual making ab atomized decision, not a collective.

Since your particular vote has no effect on the outcome if you are going to do so anyway you might as well vote for someone you believe in. And if no candidate exists that fits that criteria you are not just wasting your time, you are willingly participating in your own delusion.

Voting is like praying. Both have zero effect on the world, but there are huge structures that rely on maintaining the illusion to the contrary.

> Not voting on the other hand accomplishes nothing and convinces the system that you don't matter.

Once again, these embedded assumptions about the 'system' and my responsibility to it, all under the pretext that it is a system which is capable of significance if only more people, or the right people, took part in it. Reminds me of the cliche definition of 'crazy', expecting different results.

There's plenty of more useful ways to affect the world than that. But by all means, if you think things will be different next time...

And there's a difference between active vs passive involvement. By staying home and not voting I'm not actively negatively affecting the system. My involvement is entirely passive.

I am not trying to convince you to vote. Please feel free to stay home as that's probably better for me than you going out and voting.

Still, to give a specific example: Republicans want to replace the affordable care act. They also want to get elected.

So, let's figure out what explains their actions. People who vote, political donors, or everything else such as people send out angry tweets etc.

PS: It's possible for the 3rd option to be important, but frankly your actions not going to be.

> Republicans want to replace the affordable care act.

And that got rejected in congress unsurprisingly, just like all of his more extreme policies which everyone freaked out about (how's that wall coming?).

The latest executive orders will make a difference but a minor one in the long run. The US government's involvement in the healthcare system is still a super expensive mess.

Despite the intense discourse, billions of dollars spent, countless hours of us vs them, the US isn't much different than a year ago. I'm not saying it all doesn't matter but I'm struggling to see the utility in caring in my short life.

So far trump signed 53 or more bills into law. Now, yes they might not make headlines, but they are very much different laws than if he had lost.

The US does not change quickly. But, just because you stop paying attention does not mean you are not impacted.

But the election wasn't just about Clinton and Trump; it was just as much about Merrick Garland and Neil Gorsuch. Even if you still don't see a difference between the former two, surely you would recognize a difference between the latter two.

Do you think politicians pander and offer concessions to people that are motivated to vote?

Or do you think they spend a majority of their time trying to please non-voters and suss out the particular reason they aren't voting?

I depends, if they follow political consultant focus-group research they'll probably just be hitting up the same voters as last time, with the usual safe party topics.

Which is why I believe Trump (and Sanders) was able to hit up a very cynical voter base, and cross typical party lines, by going totally off the mainstream script. Which may have played a big role in why all of the standard projection models missed their mark so badly. While Clinton was the polar opposite. Which also attracted the 'fuck you' votes against Clinton, even from people indifferent to Trump.

As someone totally disinterested in voting I saw appeal in that, although I'm too much of a logic/rational person to toy with stuff like that.

But there's definitely something deeper there, a deep seated dissatisfaction with the entire system and a voter base not being addressed by standard messaging. Sadly, we're all back to ignoring that fact, blaming Nazis and obsessing over the daily Trump gossip, like celebrity Entertainment Tonight.

Trump got no extra votes, Hillary simply drummed up less support. Voter turnout actually declined signficantly.

"he got fewer votes than Mitt Romney in 2012, fewer votes than John McCain in 2008, and fewer votes than George W. Bush in 2004." This despite the growing US population.

Republican candidate got: 2004 62 million votes, 2008 60.0 million votes, 2012 60.9 million votes, 2016 59.7 million votes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/11/10...

"She got 6 million fewer votes than Barack Obama did in 2012, and nearly 10 million fewer than he did in 2008"

I was referring to a poll I read showing a notable portion of Trump voters either didn't vote last time or if they did vote it was for Obama in 2012 or 2008. That's all I meant by my comment... not that he had some new big number of voters?

It's been well covered in the press Trump got less votes than a number of presidents in the past, which only contributes to my general point.