Politics

Not Voting? Don't Worry About It

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Didn't vote? Don't want to vote? Don't worry about it. It almost certainly won't matter anyway. In this 2008 video, Gordon Tullock, a Professor Emeritus at the George Mason University School of Law, and one of the founders of public choice economics, explains why. 

Vote if you want to. Vote if you enjoy voting. Vote if you care about a candidate, or about the process itself. But don't vote because you feel obligated to do so, or because you think your vote alone is likely to make a difference. And no matter what, if you don't vote, don't feel bad about it. 

In 2012, Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward explained why your vote doesn't count. And over at Bloomberg View, Megan McArdle* offers five good reasons to skip voting today. For the counterargument, here's Reason's Ed Krayewski making the libertarian case for voting

*I am married to this person.