• thebestaquaman@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    In a lot of countries you can be held legally accountable for not helping someone, and your negligence leads to death or injury. I think that’s quite similar to refusing to vote, when voting can save lives.

    Your vote does effectively pass to the next person in line, because you not voting means their vote becomes a larger proportion of the total. By not voting you are blindly accepting the will of others, without using your possibility of affecting the outcome.

    Saying that there are no legal requirements for a primary is not a good argument for abstaining from voting in them. By your own arguments, the candidates want votes, and the party wants to nominate a candidate that has wide support. Voting in primaries is, if nothing else, a clear way of signalling what candidates you want.

    • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      In a lot of countries you can be held legally accountable for not helping someone, and your negligence leads to death or injury

      In every country, giving assistance to one criminal to stop a different criminal is still a crime.

      Your vote does effectively pass to the next person in line, because you not voting means their vote becomes a larger proportion of the total.

      No it doesn’t.

      An individual vote is extremely unlikely to affect the outcome, but what it does affect are the margins, which can be factored into future calculations. A non-voter or a third party voter is someone who could potentially be won over. My vote still exists regardless of whether I exercise it or not, and nobody else gets to use it if I don’t. I completely disagree with your framing, always have, and always will.

      Saying that there are no legal requirements for a primary is not a good argument for abstaining from voting in them.

      I didn’t mean that you shouldn’t vote in primaries. What I meant is that I don’t believe in relying on something that the DNC provides, controls, and could take away at any time, as a reliable method of opposition.