Andrew Suffield wrote: > On Wed, Apr 07, 2004 at 03:47:40PM -0500, Adam Heath wrote: >> On Wed, 7 Apr 2004, Philippe Troin wrote: >> >> > I always vote, probably for the same reasons I vote in my country's >> > elections (mostly to prevent the people I disagree with the most to >> > get into office) and without having any trust nor hopes in the system >> > whatsoever. >> >> Voting in real elections makes sense, to stop bad seeds from getting into >> office. > > I don't think there's actually any evidence to support that. Hell yes there is. There would be even more incredibly dangerous people in the US government than there already are, if everyone thought that. "Oh, it doesn't matter, Bush and Gore are the same." (Well, in that case it didn't matter because the election was *stolen*, but it's quite clear by now that a Gore administration wouldn't have decided to trash environmental protection or doctor all the scientific reports, for instance.)
> Usually Maybe usually. But certainly not always! > there are no options on the ballot that will have any practical effect > on anything that matters. Most politicians react the same way when > they're actually in power, regardless of ideals or promises from when > they were trying to get elected. But there are certainly some *exceptionally* bad ones who are well worth avoiding. For another example, those whose promises when they were trying to get elected were *already* creepy and dangerous -- unfortunately, you can't rely on fascists and theocrats to *break* their promises of fascism and theocracy! And we do get avowed fascists and theocrats running for office with significant chances of winning, here in the US. OK, since this is off-topic, I'll shut up now, but I had to respond to this piece of stupidity. -- Make sure your vote will count. http://www.verifiedvoting.org/
