"Jesus a radical feminist?" - MAGA Inc.

Voting is a chore. You have to set aside a block of time, drive to a polling station, stand in line, and vote. Gas is expensive. Time is expensive. Groups of people who are agitated gathering in the same place is risky. The return on that investment of time, at a personal level, is practically nonexistent. From an individual cost-benefit perspective, voting does not make much rational sense.

So you have to appeal to something beyond rationality. Emotion. You need someone to be so swayed by what you say that they forget to think critically and simply go out and vote.

Committees have approved these ads. They understand that the system is not driven purely by rationality. And they have engineered these messages to influence people into making irrational choices voluntarily.

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njovin 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Voting is a chore

In some states, sure. In many, you simply fill out a form and drop it in your mailbox. Takes approximately ten minutes, which you can do on the toilet if pressed for time. No driving, no waiting, no money spent.

If your state doesn't allow this, it's time to vote in new representation and fix that.

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enjoyyourlife 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The fact check on that: https://www.factcheck.org/2026/09/paxtons-ai-heavy-ad-leaves...

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lenerdenator 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> voting is a chore

compared to the other way of creating political change, it's a vacation.

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shafyy 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Voting makes absolute rational sense, what are you talking about. It's just that it makes sense in aggregate, but for that to make sense everybody must do their part.

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djoldman 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Looking at history, one person choosing to vote is statistically useless if the goal is to influence the outcome of a presidential or congressional/senatorial election in the USA.

The chance of one vote being the difference between a tie and a win for a candidate has been approximately zero. And in the extremely rare times when there has been such a one vote difference, there have been re-counts that conclude with a margin that is larger than one vote [0][1].

Mathematically/statistically this makes intuitive sense. One might ask: what's the chance that a vote ends in a tie when there are 10, 100, 100,000... 10 million voters? As the voting pool increases, the chance decreases.

The most common objection is along the lines of, "if everyone decided not to vote because their vote didn't matter, then no one would vote!" Yep, that's correct... but that doesn't describe reality: clearly people vote a lot.

Voting because one enjoys it, gets satisfaction of some sort from it, feels that they are doing their "civic duty" and discharging a responsibility, etc... that's fine. But don't vote because you think you're gonna change the outcome.

[0]https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w8590/w8590... "THE EMPIRICAL FREQUENCY OF A PIVOTAL VOTE"

[1]https://archive.ph/ThMlo NYT: "Why Vote?"

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shafyy 4 days ago | parent [-]

That doesn't make sense. If nobody votes, what happens?

	▲	djoldman 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> If nobody votes, what happens? This is like asking, "if pigs could fly, what happens?" -> all sorts of things... but pigs can't fly. "if nobody votes..." is a hypothetical that has never been true because people DO vote. I don't know of a good reason to believe they'll stop voting. Obviously the futility of voting to change the election outcome isn't stopping them so far.

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Someone 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It's just that it makes sense in aggregate, but for that to make sense everybody must do their part.

I don’t understand that. The fewer people vote, the more impact your vote has, so the more sense it makes to vote (up to a limit, of course. If too few people vote, revolution gray be around the corner)

	▲	shafyy 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Well think about it: If nobody votes, what happens?

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FergusArgyll 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Voting makes absolute rational sense, what are you talking about.

Try to do an expected value analysis of your vote. Say the difference between your candidate winning or losing is worth 1000 USD. Multiply that by the odds that your vote will cause them to win. Take that very small number and see if you'd drive 2 minutes for that or just calculate if the lead used up on the pencil is worth that.

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shafyy 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

That's a weird way to think about democracy and civic duty.

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krige 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The difference is far, far more than 1000 USD. Just see how much did the current POTUS cost the country and every individual.

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FergusArgyll 4 days ago | parent [-]

How much did you donate to PACs?

	▲	krige 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Bluntly, none of your business?