Civic Duty and Voting

[Akrion]

It's a bit of a catch-22. They do this because it works. We still vote for them regardless. Don't expect anyone to change their campaign if it's worked for them and worked for their predecessors.

So... what do you do about it? If you don't vote, you only make the voices of those who DO vote stronger. (hey, that's how the forum works too!) Even if you vote for a clear loss, you've diminished the overall strength of a vote, which is a start.

To me this is a bit of a contradiction. "They do this because it works" and "If you don't vote, you only make the voices of those who DO vote stronger."

I personally see opting to not vote for someone as a vote. You talk about voting to make as much as a difference as possible. Well, choosing to not vote to say "No, your mud slinging tactics don't work for me" is just as powerful as voting for a candidate that you like slightly more than the others.

Choosing not to vote for someone doesn't make anybody's voice stronger. It's 1 less vote against someone just as it's 1 less vote for someone. The voice as a whole dropped by 1 vote.

I vote to not vote for candidates or measures that use dirty tactics in attempts to gain my vote. If you believe that's not going to make any difference, then my vote for whatever candidate won't make any difference either.

[Dhalin]

In my state (PA), I'm mildly pleased with the election results.

The lesser of the two evils got elected more than not; maybe this state will finally see a turn-around after years of sinking deeper and deeper into a hole I'm not sure we can dig ourselves out of.

[Vahrokh]

I'd almost call it a "Cold Civil War", to be honest.

The mudslinging gets worse every year, and it seems nobody can be in the middle and be taken seriously

It's not a Civil War and it's not even limited to the USA.
The crumbling and general drying up of past ideologies (of both kinds) created a void.
Void is easily filled with random garbage and personalism, therefore politicians resort to that. There is not someone with Vision, that has a sort of Enligthened Plan to take people (and humanity in general) out of the declining path they took.
Therefore lesser, tasteless men ascend to high ranks, all they are good for is to shout as loud as their wallets allow for.
Of course, the general street man is the general, unknown, globalized stockastic idiot who WILL fall to these men claims.

Voting? It's a civic duty, the only slowing down for this snowball effect of idiotizing the new generations into submission. Because raising muppets is what's needed to have many trouble-less sheep.

[Guaran]

I voted. Of course I went mostly democrate and one independent. And this is oklahoma so of course none of them won. I voted no on that shennanigans "sharia law" item, but it still passed 70/30. Probably be found to be unconstitutional.