Why Didn't You Vote?

[g5000]

Almost half of all eligible voters didn't vote in the recent election.

What's your excuse?

my candidate was stabbed in the back, multiple times mind you, by the crony Establ DNC machine sooo..... I decided to sit this one out.

Sanders was never going to win. In fact, he made it as far as he did precisely because of Clinton, not in spite of her.

 

[Siete]

my vote was a write in ... any vote is never wasted.

 

[Lewdog]

You left off an answer..."There wasn't a candidate I thought was qualified to be President."

I wasn't going to vote for Trump because he is a lying fraud with a dangerous disposition.

I wasn't going to vote for Clinton because she is crooked and got good Americans killed.

I wasn't going to vote for Gary Johnson when the guy didn't know what Aleppo was or who Harriet Tubman was.

I wasn't going to vote for Jill Stein because... she just is flat out not qualified.

I'm sorry I don't believe in voting for someone to be President just because I hate someone else more. I take my vote more seriously than that.

My view is different. I voted for Johnson as support for the LP, not because I thought he would actually win. I also voted for a candidate I knew wouldn't win to show the 1st and 2nd place winners that there are active-voting Americans who didn't approve of either of them.

This is the exact right answer.

A vote communicates a message. Not voting is interpreted as not giving a shit.

A vote communicates the message, "Keep doing what you are doing." This is exactly why we should not vote for even a lesser evil. I absolutely refuse to tell an evil, lesser or otherwise, "Keep doing what you are doing."

When you vote for someone other than the top two evils, you are telling those top two evils how much you think they suck.

However, voting for a propellerhead like the Liberatarians is almost worse than not voting. It's dumb to avoid voting for two evils, but then vote for a stone cold crazy party.

And this is coming from someone with a wide libertarian (small l) streak.

Which is why I usually write in a name. Someone who is sane and the better good.

...and writing in someone's name is useless because not only is that person not going to win, their name isn't going to get written in enough times for your "point" to show up on tallies for the candidates to know, and also the third party candidates don't get the chance to earn future campaign money for their parties.

I agree with g5000 that voting for someone other than "the lesser of two evils" sends a message and I disagree with you that it's useless.

Consider the election results: Neither of the "lesser of two evils" garnered >50% of the vote. Why? Because of protest and/or third party votes. The 50% number is significant since neither can say they won over the majority of Americans.

In the end it doesn't matter, Trump is still President. And the problem is, as g5000 pointed out in a post, the real election choices are made in the primaries when you have multiple candidates to choose from.

When the election cycle first started way back when... I was actually somewhat excited that Trump was running to shake things up, however I though Jeb Bush was the best candidate in my mind. He was largely moderate Conservative. I was ready to vote for him... but as the primaries went on and I saw he wasn't going to get a shot, and the more I heard from Bernie Sanders and I started to study his history in Congress, he was my pick. Then he got screwed by Clinton, because he never had a chance with the Superdelegates. Then it basically came down to the four we ended up with... and it is quite sad that these 4 were the best our country could come up with.

 

[Lewdog]

Almost half of all eligible voters didn't vote in the recent election.

What's your excuse?

my candidate was stabbed in the back, multiple times mind you, by the crony Establ DNC machine sooo..... I decided to sit this one out.

Sanders was never going to win. In fact, he made it as far as he did precisely because of Clinton, not in spite of her.

The only reason Sanders wasn't going to win was because of the establishment and Superdelegates.

 

[g5000]

You left off an answer..."There wasn't a candidate I thought was qualified to be President."

I wasn't going to vote for Trump because he is a lying fraud with a dangerous disposition.

I wasn't going to vote for Clinton because she is crooked and got good Americans killed.

I wasn't going to vote for Gary Johnson when the guy didn't know what Aleppo was or who Harriet Tubman was.

I wasn't going to vote for Jill Stein because... she just is flat out not qualified.

I'm sorry I don't believe in voting for someone to be President just because I hate someone else more. I take my vote more seriously than that.

My view is different. I voted for Johnson as support for the LP, not because I thought he would actually win. I also voted for a candidate I knew wouldn't win to show the 1st and 2nd place winners that there are active-voting Americans who didn't approve of either of them.

This is the exact right answer.

A vote communicates a message. Not voting is interpreted as not giving a shit.

A vote communicates the message, "Keep doing what you are doing." This is exactly why we should not vote for even a lesser evil. I absolutely refuse to tell an evil, lesser or otherwise, "Keep doing what you are doing."

When you vote for someone other than the top two evils, you are telling those top two evils how much you think they suck.

However, voting for a propellerhead like the Liberatarians is almost worse than not voting. It's dumb to avoid voting for two evils, but then vote for a stone cold crazy party.

And this is coming from someone with a wide libertarian (small l) streak.

Which is why I usually write in a name. Someone who is sane and the better good.

...and writing in someone's name is useless because not only is that person not going to win, their name isn't going to get written in enough times for your "point" to show up on tallies for the candidates to know, and also the third party candidates don't get the chance to earn future campaign money for their parties.

I write in a vote because my vote is very precious to me. I served on active duty for 20 years, and I've seen how important the right to vote is.

I absolutely refuse to whore my vote to a lesser evil. I will not do that.

VOTER WRITE IN FRAUD !

Some people like to vote for down ballot candidates, and leave the top of the ballot blank.

However, poll workers have been known to fill in those blanks.

So I always make a point of filling out the WHOLE ballot.

 

[g5000]

Almost half of all eligible voters didn't vote in the recent election.

What's your excuse?

my candidate was stabbed in the back, multiple times mind you, by the crony Establ DNC machine sooo..... I decided to sit this one out.

Sanders was never going to win. In fact, he made it as far as he did precisely because of Clinton, not in spite of her.

The only reason Sanders wasn't going to win was because of the establishment and Superdelegates.

Nope.

Sanders was the anti-Clinton candidate for liberals.

No Clinton, no Sanders. He would never have got off the launch pad without the huge anti-Clinton nausea wave.

 

[Lewdog]

Almost half of all eligible voters didn't vote in the recent election.

What's your excuse?

my candidate was stabbed in the back, multiple times mind you, by the crony Establ DNC machine sooo..... I decided to sit this one out.

Sanders was never going to win. In fact, he made it as far as he did precisely because of Clinton, not in spite of her.

The only reason Sanders wasn't going to win was because of the establishment and Superdelegates.

Nope.

Sanders was the anti-Clinton candidate for liberals.

No Clinton, no Sanders. He would never have got off the launch pad without the huge anti-Clinton nausea wave.

Just like Trump was launched by the anti-Bush nausea wave.

I definitely don't think that is true. Many of the people that voted for Sanders are the young people that would have never even gotten involved in politics.

 

[g5000]

Almost half of all eligible voters didn't vote in the recent election.

What's your excuse?

my candidate was stabbed in the back, multiple times mind you, by the crony Establ DNC machine sooo..... I decided to sit this one out.

Sanders was never going to win. In fact, he made it as far as he did precisely because of Clinton, not in spite of her.

The only reason Sanders wasn't going to win was because of the establishment and Superdelegates.

Nope.

Sanders was the anti-Clinton candidate for liberals.

No Clinton, no Sanders. He would never have got off the launch pad without the huge anti-Clinton nausea wave.

Just like Trump was launched by the anti-Bush nausea wave.

I definitely don't think that is true. Many of the people that voted for Sanders are the young people that would have never even gotten involved in politics.

Nope.

Sanders had very low voter turnout among the young and poor.

 

[Lewdog]

my candidate was stabbed in the back, multiple times mind you, by the crony Establ DNC machine sooo..... I decided to sit this one out.

Sanders was never going to win. In fact, he made it as far as he did precisely because of Clinton, not in spite of her.

The only reason Sanders wasn't going to win was because of the establishment and Superdelegates.

Nope.

Sanders was the anti-Clinton candidate for liberals.

No Clinton, no Sanders. He would never have got off the launch pad without the huge anti-Clinton nausea wave.

Just like Trump was launched by the anti-Bush nausea wave.

I definitely don't think that is true. Many of the people that voted for Sanders are the young people that would have never even gotten involved in politics.

Nope.

Sanders had very low voter turnout among the young and poor.

 

[g5000]

Meet the Press - April 24, 2016

CHUCK TODD: We crunched some interesting numbers here. So 17 of the 25 states with the highest levels of income inequality have held primaries. Sixteen of those 17 states have been won by Hillary Clinton, not by you. Why?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Well, because poor people don't vote. I mean, that's just a fact. That's a sad reality of American society.



Bernie Sanders said poor people don't vote

 

[Lewdog]

Meet the Press - April 24, 2016

CHUCK TODD: We crunched some interesting numbers here. So 17 of the 25 states with the highest levels of income inequality have held primaries. Sixteen of those 17 states have been won by Hillary Clinton, not by you. Why?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Well, because poor people don't vote. I mean, that's just a fact. That's a sad reality of American society.



Bernie Sanders said poor people don't vote

You said that young people didn't vote for Sanders... that's about as far from the truth as possible. He was about equal in voting with Hillary in under 44 Black voters, and held a 2-1 lead in under 44 White voters.

 

[g5000]

Young voters’ low turnout led to Sanders’ big loss

 

[Lewdog]

Young voters’ low turnout led to Sanders’ big loss

That's in California... not the entire cycle.

 

[g5000]

From the above link:

“The young (voters), the poor ones and those with no party preference were Bernie’s key supporters ... and they didn’t show up,” said Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc.

What was most surprising is that while 25 percent of California’s record surge of more than 2 million new registrations was made up of voters aged 35 years and under, they made up only 10 percent of those who had mailed their ballots back by the Monday before election day.

 

[g5000]

Young voters’ low turnout led to Sanders’ big loss

That's in California... not the entire cycle.

California has the most delegates. It would have put him over the hump.

And low young voter turnout was true across all the primaries.

18 to 25 year olds are always the lowest turnout demographic.

 

[TNHarley]

If im not mistaken, sanders was out performing Obama with the youths. Also, I remember reading that bernies young votes outnumbered trump and Clintons combined.

 

[Lewdog]

Also something that hurt Sanders was the states that didn't allow Independents to vote for the Democratic primary.

 

[g5000]

Young voters are failing Bernie Sanders, just as they’ve failed so many before

 

[Lewdog]

Young voters’ low turnout led to Sanders’ big loss

That's in California... not the entire cycle.

California has the most delegates. It would have put him over the hump.

And low young voter turnout was true across all the primaries.

18 to 25 year olds are always the lowest turnout demographic.

Again...that's ONE state. You really didn't pay that much attention to the Democratic primaries if you think Sanders didn't do well with young voters.

 

[g5000]

Also something that hurt Sanders was the states that didn't allow Independents to vote for the Democratic primary.

Closed primaries are intended to prevent Rush Limbaugh style attacks.

Rush Limbaugh urges vote for Obama - CNN.com