A challenge for democrats

[elwoodblues]

[ QUOTE ]
I mean, I suppose hypothetically your vote could be the one that changes the election (though the odds has to be greater the one in a billion).
[ QUOTE ]
Greater than 1 in a billion? LOL. Retard.

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

You honestly think there is less than a 1 in a billion chance that your 1 vote would be the deciding vote in a national election???

[latefordinner]

[ QUOTE ]
You honestly think there is less than a 1 in a billion chance that your 1 vote would be the deciding vote in a national election???

[/ QUOTE ]

sure, try running some basic analysis of very close distributions and it becomes virtually impossible for one vote to matter once the total number of votes is high enough.

--

Sorry to pull a Nielsio here, but I'm going to have to just link to a longer essay to explain my thoughts about this. Mark Lance, an anarchist and philosophy professor at Georgetown discusses consensus-based decision making processes vs voting in this essay -- Basically, any decision making process is useless in and of itself - that even the most open egalitarian decision making process (like consensus, which is the de facto process of probably 80%+ of all anarchist orgs I have worked with) can be gamed and even the most unopen decision making process can be completely fair (the hypothetical ideal dictator)

Each decision making process is useful in certain circumstances and not useful in others and procedural rules can be enacted to circumvent some of the undemocratic issues that arise (one could, for example, think about Instant Runoff Voting, Proportional Representation, Campaign Finance Laws, etc as ways to mitigate the effects of a plutocratic winner-take-all system)

besides the discussion about a decision-making process, we also have to discuss enforcement of the things decided and this is where I think market anarchists have reservations about any sort of social anarchism in that they see any sort of enforcement mechanism that might assert the will of society or the community or the collective over the will of an individual as inherently coercive and unjust because the basic right of freedom is embodied on an individual level.

I don't think this is the case but as of yet haven't had the time to write up a long post explaining why.

[hmkpoker]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I mean, I suppose hypothetically your vote could be the one that changes the election (though the odds has to be greater the one in a billion).
[ QUOTE ]
Greater than 1 in a billion? LOL. Retard.

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

You honestly think there is less than a 1 in a billion chance that your 1 vote would be the deciding vote in a national election???

[/ QUOTE ]

You may be interested in this SMP thread.

The way it works is that if you have a national popular democratic election of 100,000,000 people (which is what most people want in this country anyway), the odds of one vote mattering, assuming each voter is coinflipping, is about one in ten thousand, give or take a factor of two. However, there is a VERY steep dropoff if the voting probability isn't 50-50. If each voter has a probability of 50.1% of voting for a certain candidate, the odds of one vote tipping the scales swells to one in a million. At 51%, the number becomes so astronomically tiny that it is not worth calculating.

The reason that elections seem close and uncertain is because we just don't know what the actual probabilities are.

I should also point out that, in the event that the race is closer and votes assume a "good" chance of winning, chances are that the candidates have already compromised their positions so much in fighting for the middle ground that there isn't much difference between the two anyway.

[hmkpoker]

[ QUOTE ]

I don't think this is the case but as of yet haven't had the time to write up a long post explaining why.

[/ QUOTE ]

You never write these long posts.

[Borodog]

[ QUOTE ]
The idea that individual votes don't matter seems wrong to me. Taken to the extreme this means no one's vote matters so no one shows up. We're than governed by the one person that did show up...

[/ QUOTE ]

No, we aren't. Do you see why?

[Bremen]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The idea that individual votes don't matter seems wrong to me. Taken to the extreme this means no one's vote matters so no one shows up. We're than governed by the one person that did show up...

[/ QUOTE ]

No, we aren't. Do you see why?

[/ QUOTE ]
Because votes do matter so people do show up to vote.

Somehow I think thats not what you mean...

[mosdef]

[ QUOTE ]
When confronted with the notion that one vote doesn't matter, most democrats are quick to point out that while one vote may not matter

[/ QUOTE ]

Nobody who actually supports democratic rule would say this, at least not one with a rudimentary understanding of logic.

Assume that a vote has no impact on an election. Then, regardless of the number of votes cast, there will be no impact on the outcome. But if 1,000,000 can change the outcome of a vote, then one vote must have some "meaning", otherwise you would have 1,000,000 x 0 = 0 impact on the election, which is simply not true. QED a single vote matters.

No, the real problem you are pointing out is that many Americans can't vote for anyone they want to vote for. This is a problem with the electoral system, not a problem with democracy. Attributing all shortcomings of the U.S. government to democracy is a fallacy.

[Dan.]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
When confronted with the notion that one vote doesn't matter, most democrats are quick to point out that while one vote may not matter

[/ QUOTE ]

Nobody who actually supports democratic rule would say this, at least not one with a rudimentary understanding of logic.

Assume that a vote has no impact on an election. Then, regardless of the number of votes cast, there will be no impact on the outcome. But if 1,000,000 can change the outcome of a vote, then one vote must have some "meaning", otherwise you would have 1,000,000 x 0 = 0 impact on the election, which is simply not true. QED a single vote matters.

No, the real problem you are pointing out is that many Americans can't vote for anyone they want to vote for. This is a problem with the electoral system, not a problem with democracy. Attributing all shortcomings of the U.S. government to democracy is a fallacy.

[/ QUOTE ]

A mathematician friend of mine has a quote related to this:

[ QUOTE ]
[If an individual vote does not matter], the argument for democracy, then, amounts to the proposition that by adding together enough zeros you can get a nonzero sum – true only in calculus.

[/ QUOTE ]

[mosdef]

[ QUOTE ]
A friend, and mathematician friend of mine has a quote related to this:

[ QUOTE ]
[If an individual vote does not matter], the argument for democracy, then, amounts to the proposition that by adding together enough zeros you can get a nonzero sum – true only in calculus.

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess if we have an infinite number of voters my proof may break down.

[The once and future king]

[ QUOTE ]
then it is unreasonable to conclude that each person's voting power is equal.

[/ QUOTE ]

Voting power is of course exactly equal. When Fox persuades someone to vote X over Y they are exercising power but not voting power.

Also not every democracy has only 2 candidates etc etc. Voting systems vary widely and in Europe many countries have proportional representation which means there is much more diversity of candidates (who stand a real chance of being elected) and that each vote has more weight.