WHY VOTE FOR THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS?Because it's the lesser, dummy. Who wants the greater of two evils making decisions for them?BUT MY VOTES DON'T AFFECT ANYTHING!Voting for your representatives is more important than voting for the President, and infinitely more effective than complaining from your seat, because Congress and your local government affect you more than any other members in government - they directly make decisions, but YOU choose represents you.
Usually I would say you should vote for the party that best represents your interests regardless of how many votes they are going to get. I am extremely stubborn like that. But it seems in the US there are no real alternatives.
I think basically if you don't vote then morally you have to fight and protest and campaign until you do have someone to vote for. People are lazy so they don't bother with all that.Vote for Republican: Get gun rights
Vote for Democrat: Get everything else I care aboutFuck, why can dems just embrace guns like everyone else and make this easy?I should vote, but we all know that everyone votes for whoever looks the best on the biased tv advertisements
We need the new breakdown site for these political events I've mentioned before! Its like a next generation reddit, but I just need volunteers to help program it!
It won't let me vote for any of those Ohio guys…I have to vote for these shitty Florida candidates.
It's pretty much symbolic. After the votes are cast the candidates and their friends do what they want anyways.
It's really easy to forget, because you see them as entities more than anything else, but your local, state, and national representatives are human, just like you and I. And many of them aren't really more qualified, or have the best morals, they're just the only ones who step forward and gather enough support to run. What Toast said is true, but its way easier to be sarcastic and try to sound witty.
Most races aren't really all that close. If you live in some kind of swing district, it might be worth showing up, but even if your old white guy of choice gets in you shouldn't expect much. Otherwise it's an entirely symbolic gesture. When I lived in the US my congresswoman, Anna Eschoo, was fairly shit on most counts, in the sense that she was entirely status quo and funded mainly by health insurance companies, but as far as I know she didn't want to send gay people to death camps or anything like that. I'm not familiar with the republicans who ran against her, but given the politics of the area they'd probably be typical Silicon Valley neoliberals like her. Might even be pro-choice.
There are better things to do than vote; banging your head against a wall (or student politics, I think some people call it), direct action on issues both local and global, industrial organizing (depending on if/where you work), getting a nursing degree and volunteering in Pakistan or Somalia or something, heavy drinking, flying over to Syria to shoot the Unislamic State with the quasi-anarchist (but still quite problematic) PKK, starting a Food not Bombs, or indiscriminately murdering politicians, cops, and capitalists can all be far more effective methods for making the world less shit.Since the majority of people in the US don't vote, I won't be convinced that they don't matter until it's proven wrong. When the majority is apathetic enough to not spend 2minutes in a poll booth, who's going to step forward and do something HARDER like legitimately protest (not dance like an asshole at a 4chan thing), or even running for office.