Rock The Vote? A Delusion Of Grandeur?

[Aloysius]

a single vote doesn't really make a difference in national elections, especially considering the two-party tyranny that has made the entire voting system almost irrelevant. Obama and Santorum and Romney and Newt all want us to have more wars, they all propose budgets that increase the deficit (to varying degrees), they are all in the pockets of special interests... and they all put on a great theatre about why they're all so different. I sympathise greatly with non-voter apathy; people say you have no right to complain if you didn't vote, I say you have every right to complain if you didn't vote because you didn't feel represented by either candidate.

anyway, I'm trying to have a bigger impact. merely voting doesn't make much a difference, but getting involved in the process can make a difference. in the primary season, if you're realy committed to one candidate who, I don't know, might actually be significanty different than the others like a Ron Paul on the right or even a Dennis Kucinich on the left (say what you will, he's at least a good principled man who bothers to stray from the party lines now and then), then in the primary seasons you can organize rallies and pass out literature and speak at your caucus and maybe even try to become a delegate to a convention. there remain within the system things that people who are excited and committed can actually do to influence the vote. in PA our delegates are directly elected and I have my name on the primary ballot so people can vote for me to be a delegate. 4 people go from my district, there are 12 on the ballot, so I have about a 1/3 chance to be a delegate, where my vote will be one out of about 2400... I'd say I've significanty increased my odds of having an effect on the nominee.

I actually wish there was a bit more of these kinds of things, to be honest. pure democracy means you have a bunch of people all lining up to buy their national lottery ticket... a more republican form of voting, maybe even having some type of caucuses and the like in the general election (more well regulated than the primary ones), would make it more possible for a single man with conviction to have an effect on an election. If we had more systems in place like these, we could get rid of the statistical garbage guilt trip about everybody voting and if you don't vote you can't complain, and instead inspire the people that DO care to stand up and try to make a difference, while letting the people that don't care sit down and stay uninvolved as they please, letting the people that do care make the difference.