We hear the word "election" and we typically think of a Tuesday in November (very encouraging choice of day/month to get people to come out and actually vote) every four years where some of us go and flip a switch usually pretty arbitrarily and go home and maybe turn on the TV to see who the next president will be etc. etc.
It's not only flatly uninspiring but also psychologically disempowering. What does it say when the supposed "biggest decision every four years" for every American is a decision that most people don't even bother to make?
Even if the outcome of the election is important, that is MUCH different than saying that it's worth it for a specific individual to go vote, because it's likely that their state would vote in the electoral college one way or another regardless of their individual vote. Even if their individual vote actually decided their state it's still unlikely that their state would decide the outcome of the electoral college. Even if one person's vote actually decided the presidency, Arrow's impossibility theorem shows that ranked voting isn't actually a good way of determining a winner, even if they were only voting for president based on one single issue, not the dozens (at least) that people consider now.
Compare this "election" to the actual word election, that clearly indicates an element of choice, that people are "electing" to do something instead of something else. In other words, an election can really be any time you're making a decision between two things. This can obviously be applied to countless situations we're in every day. Choosing to sleep in, or choosing to go work out. Choosing to work hard, or choosing to take it easy. My point here is not to berate people for not making "correct" decisions, but to show that elections can be empowering.
An election can be any time you're making a decision, so why don't we choose to think about them as occasions when we can actually directly and immediately take action to change our lives?
The real elections aren't every four years on a Tuesday in November. They're every day, and they matter much more than that one.
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I like this take. Thank you.
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