> > Voting is a weird thing. I do believe it's important, but only on a large scale. Darien pointed out why: my own individual vote is meaningless. Where I live, even close local elections are decided by thousands of votes. State and federal elections are usually won by millions of votes.
> >
> It's even worse than that, I think. Even when an issue *would* have come down to being tied or a one-vote victory for one side (or one vote away from a runoff, etc.) -- the remarkable situation where your vote *could* be construed as somewhat meaningful, you have the case where the "best outcome" was so difficult to resolve that about as many people were for it as there were against it. I'm assuming, for this, that it's an issue/election with only two sides, where the majority wins.

Fortunately (or not), if a major issue were to come down to a tie or one-vote victory, the social factors would far outweigh the votes.

First, I think we can virtually guarantee that there is at least a little fraud going on in any major election, and hopefully under normal circumstances (a win by thousands or millions) the honest electorate overcomes the fraud. In a tie or one-vote victory, it's reasonable to assume the fraud would play a major role, however.

Second, there's the various recount mechanisms, which, as we've all seen, put officials under such heavy pressure that they may rationalize choices that are unwise.

In short, while the math suggests that a single voter has an infinitesimal chance of swaying a major election, electoral practice reduces that chance to zero.

Finally, I recall once voting for a guy who promised a humble foreign policy. I don't vote anymore.

-Gabe