[Foundation-l] Don't waste your vote!

[Anthony]

On 7/1/07, Jon Harald Søby <jhsoby at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/1/07, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> >
> > On 6/30/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Not true. If your only aim is to prevent a particular candidate from
> > > winning, you should vote to everyone else.
> >
> > <snip>(...) and one vote isn't going to change the election anyway.
> > </snip>
>
>
> Yay, that's the attitude. If just everyone else realised what you have
> realised, I would be GodKing of the World by now.</irony>
>
Actually, if everyone else realised what I have realised, it'd no
longer be true.

> Everyone should use their right to vote, both on-wiki and in real life; it
> is true, your vote only has a small impact, but it still has small impact.

In a normal large election, 99.99999% of the time your vote has no
impact.  0.00001% of the time your vote has an impact.  Of course,
0.0001% of the time you die in an accident on your way to the polls.
Percentages made up, of course, but I do believe the chances of dying
on my way to the polls outweigh the chances of having my vote make a
positive impact (which is even less than the chance my vote will make
an impact at all).

Of course, Wikipedia elections aren't that large, but also aren't normal.

> Think about it; what if all the other people who didn't vote agreed with
> you, think of the impact you could make together.

OTOH, if you know someone who is going to vote in the opposite way as
you, the two of you can simply agree to both not vote, and your
non-votes cancel out (and not-voting is carbon-neutral, unlike driving
to the polls).

> (I'm not saying that
> people should be coordinating their votes here, just that this is people's
> one chance at influencing, and should seize it. It doesn't even cost you
> anything.)
>
As the "cost" of voting on a Wikipedia election is small, I do agree
with you that it doesn't hurt to vote.  I thought about casting a
blank ballot for this reason, but so far I've been too lazy to bother.