The Importance of Voting

This is very important to me. I know all ten of you reading the strip probably aren't reading it for this sort of thing, and most webcomiceers would probably say go ahead and leave if you don't like it, but if you yourself are wondering, "Why would I want to vote?" - and even if you're not - I implore you to stick around. Not only because I want the readers for my own ego, but because I feel very strongly about this and I feel everyone I'm trying to appeal to needs to read this.

I understand why you might not think it's worth it to vote. Writing this, I found myself questioning my own desire to vote. It's been suggested, in an academic setting, that the impact of voting is so infinitesimal that, if the cost of voting is anything at all, it's not worth it to vote. Of course if no one votes, the system breaks down - not to mention there's suddenly a reason to vote again, because your vote suddenly becomes super-decisive. That remains the case for the first four or five votes before the value of your vote starts sinking back down to "why bother?" levels. You can see why even a member of the hundred-strong United States Senate might wonder why he'd bother to show up for all but the most narrow, party-line votes. (Of course, his votes are public so there's at least a little bit of incentive there.)

But over the next few weeks, leading up to the election, I aim to demonstrate why you - especially if you're in my demographic and age group - SHOULD vote, and hopefully deconstruct every reason you might have NOT to vote. That's the goal; if anyone has anything to add, any arguments I missed, they can e-mail me at mwmailsea at yahoo dot com. You can also leave a comment (possibly on this post) if you have any suggestions fo the series. If, after reading this entire series, you're still not convinced of the effiacy of voting, you can leave a comment as well and I'll aim to take care of any concerns you may have.