[ExI] Conscientious objections

[Anders Sandberg]

There is also the question what you are objecting to. The candidates, 
the current political system, the constitution, the concept of liberal 
democracy? Not voting is itself not telling much: it is better to 
explain to people what you think is wrong - that way an open society can 
start figuring out what to do about it (if anything).

In proportional voting systems there is often a "protest vote" on 
non-mainstream political parties, and it does tend to be recognized as a 
protest against the current parties (it also tends to shake things up as 
small parties with little experience get involved and typically 
selfdestruct hilariously after a while). Voters abstaining or giving 
blank votes is mostly of interest to political science people, they do 
not seem to be regarded as a protest by the typical pundit.

I'm sometimes thinking that my networking and punditry means I 
*shouldn't* vote for fairness reasons, since I do influence things more 
than the average person. But that seems spurious too. If I believe X is 
good, then I should act to make X more likely as long as the cost is not 
too large. So the real question is whether the voting itself has a too 
small effect or is to cumbersome.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University