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Some things I say are sarcasm, but all of my sarcasm is based in truth. This is evident in my first post. I will let you figure out where the line is.

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If it is not already clear to you: your vote does not matter.

I will use data from my riding in the previous BC general election to illustrate this point.

In the past 3 elections in the Burnaby-New West riding the NDP has won with ~45% of the vote. This data only goes back 3 elections and there have been no real differences aside from independent candidates and minor parties joining and leaving the elections over the years.

I will bet $1000000 that the winner of the next election will be the NDP candidate. There is almost nothing I or any of you reading this can do to change this outcome. If anyone would like to take my bet, email me: Christopher.Kalitin@gmail.com

There are countless ridings just like this one. If you are not in a swing riding your vote doesn’t matter. The same goes for states as well.

In the last general election in Canada, there were 17 million votes cast. 62.2% voter turnout. Rejected ballots have been increasing in the last 3 elections in my riding. There’s hope!

When hearing this 17M number you may come to the conclusion that 17 million people controlled the result of the election. This is not the case. As I laid out above, only swing ridings matter. California’s gonna vote blue, Texas is gonna vote red.

What is the real number of voters that have a disproportionate impact on the election? According to this CBC article there are 60 swing ridings out 388. 15%. 17M*0.15=2.55M.

If you live in a swing riding, take your vote seriously. If not, have fun with it!

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In my mind, there are only two valid reasons to vote if you don’t live in a swing riding/state.

First, posterity. You can prove your previous thoughts through your voting history or allow random teenagers to analyse the data years later. Statistics is a great reason to vote.

Second, practice. If you take voting seriously you may get better at it. Sadly the vast majority of people don’t do rigorous research before voting - this goes for every side of the political spectrum, liberals who talk about “research” while not changing their thoughts are not free of blame. I will never again speak of the left and right is such an unacademic way. Tim Urban speaks in a very academic way about such problems in his book. Read it.

I see the second reason as less valid than the first. I have only seen one person ever talk about voting the way people should discuss it, Tim Urban. Read his book!

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I’ve covered people who have valid reasons to vote. Now, for the majority of you reading this.

DON’T VOTE!

By voting you are supporting representative democracy. Fuck representative democracy. It’s horribly underoptimized. If we decrease voter turnout enough, something must happen to overthrow representative democracy and replace it with something better!

Centralizing power appears to have often been a bad thing throughout history. Representative democracy centralizes power with politicians. Better than aristocracies, but still not ideal. “Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.”

I’ve come to a conclusion given these two insights: (i) your vote doesn’t matter and (ii) supporting representative democracy is bad. My conclusion is you shouldn’t vote, or at the very least you should waste your vote.

For voters in Canada, there is an obvious option: Vote for the Green Party!
The Green Party will never win! They get under 5% of the vote! Might as well vote for them for fun! I support the turtles!
Or even better: Vote for Quebec to succeed! Give it back to France!

Humor is the only reason to vote!