Is Voting A Moral Duty? Is Voting Worthwhile?

Most people have heard the view that if you don't vote you can't complain. I've also seen a related view on bumper stickers, expressed as, "Don't blame me, I voted for _____" where the blank was whomever had lost a recent election. The implication is that voting for the loser absolved one of responsibility for the outcome. And lots of public service ads have encouraged voting. I think MTV endorsed the view that, "It doesn't matter how you vote, just do it."

But I heard something quite different a few times. One fellow in college said that voting was giving your endorsement of the outcome. He said something like this: if there were a vote between rulership by dictator Pol Pot or rulership by Thomas Jefferson, that if you had voted, and if it turned out that Pol Pot had won, then you had contributed to the legitimacy of Pol Pot's rulership. In essence, he was saying that if you DO vote you can't complain. Another fellow in the Southern California C.S. Lewis Society seemed to hold a similar view.

So the question arises of who is right? I don't have confidence in my answer yet.

For now my view is that non-voting is not immoral. Further, voting for a candidate who would have upheld restrictions on government is voting in self-defense, and one's vote in such a case ought not to be held against the voter.

Thoughts?

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I've never missed a chance to vote. Was it a waste of gas, research time, and driving time? If I had voted for the Democrat every time, no elections outcomes would have changed. If I had voted for the Republican every time, no election outcomes would have changed. If I'd gotten sick every election and been unable to vote, no election outcomes would have changed. Is voting worthwhile?

Here's an effort to analyze the odds.
Don't Vote. It makes more sense to play the lottery.

I hope nobody reads that and says, "But what if everybody thought that way?"

First and most important: that will never happen. People disagree, even on math or whether the earth is flat. "Everybody" will never think the same way. Second, if somehow most people thought that way, and as a result the numbers of voters dropped to one percent of last election's turnout, then the odds change, and it becomes somewhat more sensible to vote.

David