11.2 million. That’s the number of American citizens who rank climate change as their top issue but didn’t vote in the 2024 election, according to research by the Environmental Voter Project. For context, Donald Trump won the presidency in 2024 by less than 2.3 million votes. For a little over a decade, EVP has been [...]Read More... from If So Many Americans Care About Climate, Why Don’t They Vote Like It?
Just because someone is accurately describing the effectiveness of a single vote does not mean they are saying you shouldn’t do it. It’s supposed to be a call to action. Like, if you really care about political outcomes, voting should be the least thing you do.
I don’t think it accurately describes a single vote. That’s like looking at a large data set and only showing a single data point. The point is that there are A LOT of votes.
It doesn’t read like a call to action to me at all… Reads like a doomer post, which is what comment OP says they’re mocking but it definitely doesn’t read that way.
Either way, I’m in agreement with both of you, but I disagree with the approach. I believe it’s the opposite of the stated intent.
Personally, I think it’s more doomer to insist that everyone beat their heads against the wall doing the same one thing that has been proven to not work than to say, “hey, this isn’t working, we should try something else.”
Given that voting doesn’t really affect policy (like at all, studies have shown this), I don’t think it can be considered the baseline. If you want to count yourself as politically active and not just passively acquiescing to the system, you have to be involved with organizing your community.
To be clear, this isn’t telling you not to vote. It’s telling you to do more than vote.
Yes.
That’s not really how it reads? The end of the comment is the definition of apathy. “Oh my vote doesn’t matter”…
Just because someone is accurately describing the effectiveness of a single vote does not mean they are saying you shouldn’t do it. It’s supposed to be a call to action. Like, if you really care about political outcomes, voting should be the least thing you do.
I don’t think it accurately describes a single vote. That’s like looking at a large data set and only showing a single data point. The point is that there are A LOT of votes.
It doesn’t read like a call to action to me at all… Reads like a doomer post, which is what comment OP says they’re mocking but it definitely doesn’t read that way.
Either way, I’m in agreement with both of you, but I disagree with the approach. I believe it’s the opposite of the stated intent.
Personally, I think it’s more doomer to insist that everyone beat their heads against the wall doing the same one thing that has been proven to not work than to say, “hey, this isn’t working, we should try something else.”
Totally, I don’t insist on beating any heads against any walls.
But simultaneously, I am against apathy posts.
Voting is the baseline. The absolute minimum effort required. Its the least effective yet simplest thing to do to fix things.
Anyone who doesn’t vote doesn’t get an opinion. But pretending that voting will magically fix everything on its own is equally dumb.
“thoughts and prayers are the baseline for gun control” and other supernatural beliefs meant to steer people away from actually changing anything
Given that voting doesn’t really affect policy (like at all, studies have shown this), I don’t think it can be considered the baseline. If you want to count yourself as politically active and not just passively acquiescing to the system, you have to be involved with organizing your community.