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Early voting in starts Monday. I'm not sure when I'll get to dropping off my ballot, I'd like extra paid time off from now through day to be sure I don't miss my chance.

· · SubwayTooter · 1 · 0 · 0
@SecondJon don't waste your time. The chance of any single vote changing the outcome is astronomically low, less than one in a million. You literally have better odds of being struck by lightning.

@hector Sure, all actions of any one person in the view of all history may be irrelevant. I just figure that in life I hope to nudge things in the right direction, as a parent, employee, citizen. I figure that voting fits with that, but you can certainly make the argument that voting and all of your life is meaningless and all actions are not worthwhile in the big picture.

@SecondJon it isn't that your vote doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things - it's that it doesn't matter, period. Unless you cast the deciding vote, and as I said the chances of that are astronomically low. Plenty of other things you could do with your time that actually would make a meaningful difference.

@hector Casting a vote only takes a few minutes. I may have spent more time on this thread than I did on the ballot. The last US presidential election was decided by pretty narrow majorities in a few states, and is often decided by turn out : more individuals with one perspective deciding to use their time to vote, so I think it matters because there's a cumulative effect.

@SecondJon there is no "cumulative effect" in a first-past-the-post, winner-take-all election. Either your vote is the deciding one or it isn't and is a waste of time. Doesn't matter how much time you spent on it - if I spend five minutes every four years performing a ritual to exhort Cthulhu to intervene in the election with his eldritch powers, the result would be the same as if I spent five minutes sending in a ballot in an election with a victory margin greater than a single vote.
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