Tuesday, March 22, 2016

This guy thinks...

This guy thinks ... we should all be legally required to vote.  Under our current system, I think that's completely absurd, for reasons given right in his article: for many of us, voting is a completely meaningless act.  Why?  Because we know our vote wouldn't count for a darned thing.

For instance, here in Utah casting a vote for a Democratic candidate for president is just such a meaningless act.  The state is completely in the tank for Republicans, and there is precisely zero chance that a Democratic candidate could prevail.  So what would be the point of forcing someone to cast that vote?  It will have no effect on the outcome at all.

Utter uselessness aside, I also object on a different basis.  Refusing to vote is just as much an electoral choice as casting a vote is.  The absence of my vote for, say, Trump is contributing to the outcome exactly as much as a vote for Clinton – but without endorsing Clinton.

Then there's this.  Consider that the likelihood (at the moment, anyway) is that the November election will be a choice between Trump and Clinton.  The idea of forcing someone to choose between those two is morally repugnant.  It would be like forcing someone about to be executed to push the button that injected them with fatal drugs...

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