Voting Rules Going forward (Genie is out of the bottle)

[Occam's Banana]

Most of us came here because we wanted to have Ron Paul become president. We wanted to VOTE for him. We had hope. He had hope and he still does.

I wish I did.

I get where you're coming from. But I won't stop voting either for the candidate that I believe who will be best or against the candidate who I believe will be the worst.

One of them will win regardless of PAF's pie in the sky dream land society.

By the way, if I believe that both are the same, then I'll do what I've done in the past. I'll vote for Ron Paul.

I feel you. And I'm not asking (let alone telling) anyone not to vote.

Vote or don't vote, as you wish. I just don't think it really matters, one way or the other.

At least among libertarians and their fellow-travelers, too many people spend too much time obsessing about and agitating over voting (either for it or against it).

I think it's silly to condemn, denounce or criticize people who do vote by blaming them for the way things are (or will be).
I think it's silly to condemn, denounce or criticize people who don't vote by blaming them for the way things are (or will be).
I think it's silly to condemn, denounce or criticize people who dont't vote "the right way" by blaming them for the way things are (or will be).

Voting is essentially just sticking marked-up pieces of paper into boxes. That's all. Nothing more. It's just an epiphenomenon.

Voting doesn't (and can't, and won't) change anything outside the range of what the "deciding deciders" are willing to tolerate. Even within that range, voting is not going to somehow make the "deciding deciders" change anything except what it already suits them to change, in the way that it suits them to change it.

I caucused for Ron Paul - but not because I thought it would substantively change anything. I did it for the psychic gratification of affirming (publicly and to myself), "I'm with him." I strongly suspect that this (or it's obverse, "I'm not with him/her/them") is the reason that actually lies at the ultimate root of peoples' votes (and not the belief that their votes actually have any substantive weight, whatever rationalizations they may have for that belief). And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. We just shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking that there's anything more to it than that (which is the mistake that both the ardent "pro-voting" and ardent "anti-voting" factions make).