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Derek Young

Thinker and Experimenter,

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What is your argument for or against "Voter Apathy"?

What is "voter apathy"?

People should always vote, right?

If you do vote, can you affect a system of government, or if you don't vote, can that have a greater impact on a system of government?

Ye or Ne?

Topics: voter apathy
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  • Nicole Binns

    • +3
    Oct 12 2012: I used to sometimes vote. I was a libertarian. But I stopped voting.

    Several years ago I learned about computer hacking, the hard way, when I was being harassed by someone over the internet. I learned that all computers are vulnerable to hacking, no matter which operating system they use. If someone wants to get into your computer badly enough, and if they have plenty of time, then they will get in, even if you try to protect yourself.

    There is a very strong motivation to hack into the computers that process our votes. It turns out that these computers are not very well protected at all - they are just ordinary computers like the ones everybody else is using. I read this article: (I'm not sure if this URL will be formatted properly): http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm. The title of the article was 'Evidence mounts that the vote may have been hacked.' I think this is the same election where David Siegel said he might have done something illegal to help get George Bush elected. (This was something he mentioned in the movie 'The Queen of Versailles.') This article talks about how the people's responses in the exit polls were different from the official vote counts. The people walked out after voting and answered a poll asking them 'Who did you vote for?' The results of this poll suggested that the other person won the vote, not Bush.

    I have enough experience with hacking, from a victim/target's point of view, to know that hacking is extremely commonplace and easy for people to do, and very hard to protect against. If it's true that our vote computers are just ordinary computers with no special protection, then of course, someone will hack them. Even if they were very 'secure' and well protected, there would still be a huge motivation and payoff for someone to hack them, so they would try harder and spend more time and money trying to get in. I am sure they would succeed.

    I advocate for civil disobedience and individual action nowadays.
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      Derek Young 30+

      • 0
      Oct 12 2012: Hi Nicole, so I take it that you are in favor of "voter apathy"?

      • Nicole Binns

        • +1
        Oct 13 2012: Hmm, true, I didn't directly say what I was in favor of. Well, if everyone stopped voting, what would happen? I find that hard to imagine. I imagine that only a few people would stop voting if someone told them that the voting system is so corrupt in so many ways that it isn't effective anymore. Many people would still keep voting. So... I'm in favor of voter apathy for anybody who feels frustrated and helpless and wants the system to change drastically from the way it is now. I would tell people to do something like join, or start, an intentional community, if they want to feel like they have some control over the way things are done in their community. It's not just voter apathy that I'm in favor of. It's more like, I would tell people to invest their energy into something they have direct control over. That's not apathy, really. But yes, I would tell people, 'Don't bother voting.'
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          Derek Young 30+

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          Oct 19 2012: The term "voter apathy" itself has a different ring to it than when it is actually examined and the term meaning so much more than "I don't care about voting" is precisely what some individuals don't understand. Thank you Nicole! =)

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