Are you registered to vote? If so will you vote? The reason I ask is because I know people who are registered but say they will skip the ballots and polling places this year. WTF? Why are you even registered to vote then?
I will almost certainly vote early since I work on the island, have to be at work at 7, and have class on Tuesdays until 9.
From the title, I thought this might be one of these: pole pole pole pole pole pole pole pole pole pole
I am not registered to vote but I, along with my fellow Republican operatives, will be voting..........many times..........in Florida... (cue the evil laugh...)
What about "I am registered and I already voted?" We of the decided breed should have our own special option
If it wasn't for the important propositions on the ballot for the Houston area, I might not have been set on voting. I may go and leave the presidential pick blank.
Hey it would be interesting to do this in the hangout and the game action threads. My prediction. You wouln't get around 90% saying "registered and voting."
I'm just a lowly permanent resident, so I can't vote. You better believe that I would vote if I could.
Don't Vote - It Makes More Sense to Play the Lottery We might be headed for another close election, which means your vote could really matter this time, right? Wrong. Your vote didn't matter in 2000, it never mattered before 2000, and it's very unlikely to start mattering now. Last time around, everything came down to Florida, where Bush's official margin was 537 votes. (Yes, yes, I know, if they'd been counted differently there'd have been a different margin and perhaps a different outcome. But that's not what this column is about.) If any one of Florida's 6 million voters had stayed home, Bush's margin would have been 536 or 538 votes, and he'd still have won. Even if you voted in the most hotly disputed state in the mostly hotly disputed election in American history, your vote did not change the outcome. Your individual vote will never matter unless the election in your state is within one vote of a dead-even tie. (And even then, it will matter only if your state tips the balance in the electoral college.) What are the odds of that? Well, let's suppose you live in Florida and that Florida's 6 million voters are statistically evenly divided—meaning that each of them has (as far as you know) exactly a 50/50 chance of voting for either Bush or Kerry—the statistical equivalent of a coin toss. Then the probability you'll break a tie is equal to the probability that exactly 3 million out of 6 million tosses will turn up heads. That's about 1 in 3,100—roughly the same as the probability you'll be murdered by your mother. And that's surely a gross overestimate of your influence, because it assumes there's no bias at all in your neighbors' preferences. Even a slight change in that assumption leads to a dramatic change in the conclusion. If Kerry (or Bush) has just a slight edge, so that each of your fellow voters has a 51 percent likelihood of voting for him, then your chance of casting the tiebreaker is about one in 10 to the 1,046th power—approximately the same chance you have of winning the Powerball jackpot 128 times in a row. For those of us who live in New York State, the situation is far worse. Last time around, about 6.5 million votes were cast for major party candidates in New York state and 63 percent of them went to Al Gore. Assuming an electorate of similar size with a similar bias, my chance of casting the deciding vote in New York is about one in 10 to the 200,708th power. I have a better chance of winning the Powerball jackpot 7,400 times in a row than of affecting the election's outcome. Which makes it pretty hard to see why I should vote. The traditional reply begins with the phrase "But if everyone thought like that ... ." To which the correct rejoinder is: So what? Everyone doesn't think like that. They continue to vote by the millions and tens of millions. Even for the most passionate partisan, it's hard to argue that voting is a good use of your time. Instead of waiting in line to vote, you could wait in line to buy a lottery ticket, hoping to win $100 million and use it to advance your causes—and all with an almost indescribably greater chance of success than you'd have in the voting booth.
Claim: To impress upon readers the importance of casting their votes, lists circulate that perpetuate a variety of "one vote" canards; e.g.; In 1645, one vote gave Oliver Cromwell control of England. In 1649, one vote caused Charles I of England to be executed. In 1776, one vote gave America the English language instead of German. In 1845, one vote brought Texas into the Union. In 1875, one vote changed France from a monarchy to a republic. In 1923, one vote gave Adolf Hitler leadership of the Nazi Party. In 1941, one vote saved Selective Service - just weeks before Pearl Harbor was attacked. Status: All the above claims are false. Origins: Regardless of the value of casting a ballot, the fervor to incite others to vote doesn't abrogate the need to be factual in the claims used as prods. The falsities listed above routinely find their way into the media, most likely because they have so often been circulated as part of larger lists detailing incidents where one vote made an important difference that this year's inciter doesn't think to question them. Worse, not only are these lists published as gospel both in the traditional print media and on the Internet, they often survive attempts to debunk the various erroneous claims made in them. Election year after election year, screwball "one vote" lists have life breathed back into them through impassioned readers' letters on the editorial page, in the body of news articles by paid journalists, and in the offerings of advice and opinion columnists. http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/onevote.htm#news
I haven't missed a Presidential election since 1980, and I don't plan on ever doing so. If you don't vote, you have no right to complain.
Why do people keep saying that? My right to complain is protected in the Constitution. I'm thinking of not voting and then complaining to high heaven, just to annoy those people who say I can't complain if I don't vote.
Don't worry about it. Stay at home. You live in Texas and the chance of you casting the deciding vote are the same as simultaneously being struck by two separate bolts of lightning while being transported through a rogue wormhole into a parallel universe where Taco Bell serves sashimi for 59 cents to evil robots that have enslaved the human race. -- Doctor Robert Apologies. I was interrupted by a business call -- somebody who didn't know I was doing something important. But, at least, Doctor Robert is consistent in his virulent advocacy of apathy via hopelessness.
