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• Reputation: 21 Q&A: 0 0 0 27 6 0 Classifieds: 0 0 what's this? Follow Following 0 Charles Borwick

  3 0 I was also thinking about this recently and came to the conclusion, fairly easily, that the answer was "no". You shouldn't vote on issues you don't care about because: 1. Most issues tend to be somewhat complex and if you don't care it is likely that you are also not well informed. If you are not well informed then you shouldn't vote because you probably don't really know what you are voting for or against. 2. If you don't care, there are many who do and the people that care should be left to make the decisions about the things that matter to them. By voting you are potentially changing the outcome on an issue that has meaning to others and not to you. That's not ethical. 3. Many of the issues are won or lost on fairly narrow margins and so it has never been more obvious that every vote counts. Perhaps the best example of this is the re-election of Justice Sanders to the Supreme Court (see Eli Sanders article on The Stranger: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/high-court-hypocrite/Content?oid=5062389) I would be willing to bet that a significant number of people voted for him with absolutely no idea who he was or what he believed in. Most people would not say "they don't give two hoots" about who is on the court, but based on the research they do before they vote (i.e. little to none) for a court justice one would think they didn't. So not giving a damn is probably simply a question of not fully understanding the issue or the candidate. That's understandable since it can get somewhat overwhelming, but it's unethical to vote for something when you may be having a profound impact and don't care about or understand that impact. Charles Borwick answered in Expert Panel: Journalists and Commentators about 1 year ago | Report 2 comments by Tom and Tom… 0 0 Charles, Thank you for your thorough response. 1. The issues that are complex to me tend to involve social economics. My wife and I each receive a bombastic voters' pamphlet that matches neither my concern for the environment nor, in many cases, my interests. Which leads to: 2) I agree. If my uncaring vote affects someone who cares, then why should I vote? 3) How obvious was it previously that every vote counts? 4) If an uneducated person is more likely to find an issue comples and to vote rather by chance than by opinion, Isn't that redolent of a grandfather clause? Tom commented about 1 year ago | Report 0 0 *complex Tom commented about 1 year ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

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  0 0 I might actually argue that the apathy itself is unethical. IMHO this is why endorsements exist. If you know that you generally agree with the ethics of X organization but you don't have the energy or interest in researching the issues yourself, then I don't see that it's too horribly unethical to take X's advice on the better options to vote for. I agree that the OMFG tone of the materials on either side of an issue is frustrating. But it's worth noting that they take such a EVERYBODY FREAK OUT stance precisely because of people out there who don't care. FWIW here are the endorsements that I recommend, since I agree with their baseline ethic of the public vs special interests: http://protectwashington.org/ lilzilla answered in Expert Panel: Journalists and Commentators about 1 year ago | Report 1 comment by Tom… 0 0 Thanks for your opinion. It took me a while to figure out what IMHO stands for. I too support people promoting their materials. I followed the link you included and it saw a list of Initiative and Referendum numbers. I think they should have descriptive titles on websites like that. If somebody asks me what my favorite book is I don't reply with a dewey decimal number. Tom commented about 1 year ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

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