17 thoughts on “Vote!”

1. America's obsession with the cult of personality makes me sick.

2. Think of other verbs for which it does not sound like nonsense to urge people to do it unconditionally. Then consider whether “vote” has similar properties.

   Pray

   Hope

   Believe

   Yes, it has similar properties. Other than a small placebo effect, it is often nonsense; but the culture has made it a taboo to say so.

   “Stop that crow!”

3. The verb I'm thinking of rhymes with “duck”.

4. thanks for posting. I agree with Ooe, and I would love to see a spoof of this that urged people to pray. I think that would drive the point home.

   At the end of the day being able to vote is important, but actual voting doesn't matter. I also have less faith in the Demos than I did when I was 18 and voted.

   I wonder what Harrison Ford would say to the concept of “the standard measure of the error” The discrepency between different counting rules was larger than the margin of victory in Flordia in 2000. It makes no sense then to say precisely how close the margin was. Also it is illogical to say, one vote matters because 500 votes matter — but I get what they are saying.

5. Normative issues aside…

   The word “vote,” like many others words, starts to sound kind of weird if you hear it repeated again and again.

6. F$%K!

7. Get vaccinated
   be good to your children
   Love your neighbor

   I think this video's message is not so bad:

   1) Arguably (or at least plausibly), there's a feedback effect where people who vote pay more attention, so there's a second-order salutary effect. Voting is an easy, concrete thing to do. This video is more likely to affect behavior than a video that says “read the newspaper every day!” Perhaps the real problem is a disengaged and uninformed citizenry. Though it's true there was nothing about “get informed” in this video.
   2) There is a risk if people-at-the-margin don't vote, just as there is a risk if people-at-the-margin do vote. In America, lots of evangelicals vote, and I don't want them to write restrictive federal laws governing cultural hot-button issues. I want people who agree with me to vote. Not every issue is as arcane as tax policy; some come down to a relatively simple moral question. I'm not sure if the role of an ideal democracy is really to take only the “informed” opinion on moral issues.
   3) When Leonardo DiCaprio and Stephen Spielburg are telling you to vote, they are telling liberals and young people to vote. This is *not* effectively an unconditional statement that everyone should vote, because it is booby-trapped full of Hollywood stars to repel conservatives from watching the message.
   Given this, you could think of this on balance as a more passive aggressive form of “make your liberal/young voice heard.” You may agree or disagree with more liberals or young people voting, but there is a specific aim to this video, not an unconditional “everybody votes” aim.

8. The cheesy one: love.

   The more useful one (not unconditional, but closer…): work.

9. Curiously enough, those who would be swayed to vote by the 'beautiful people' in the video are exactly the folks who will almost exclusively vote for Obama. That ad and the whole 'Rock the Vote' campaign are intended for the 'hip' segment of America – young, liberal, left-leaning. MK gets it exactly right. The many folks whose intelligence is insulted by the ad have already made up their minds on whether they will vote and who they will vote for. The unspoken truth is that those who will be swayed to vote will, by and large, vote Democrat.

10. To add onto Paul's comment, anyone who is finally convinced to register to vote, who has not already done so, by ads like this – “I mean I wasn't going to vote until I 'Youtubed' a bunch of hip celebrities saying that I should do it in a way that speaks to my hip, albeit naive temperament, and now I'm totes gonna get my ass into that polling booth … honest to blog!” – are probably just the types who should NOT be voting.

    I think it goes unmentioned that these campaigns are nothing if not gussied up versions of the ward heeling tactics of Tammany or the Daly Machine of old.

11. Is not voting one of these deep psychological issues where people don't vote so that other people (celebrities…) pay attention to them. If everyone said “hey don't bother voting if you don't want to” maybe the turnout rate would go up?

12. Sadly, I would guess that a majority of Americans would find a “pray” version of this commercial just as comforting (so long as no specific religion was invoked).

13. Steve Landsburg has apparently read Brennan and Lomasky, and so has the right stuff to say about this here:

    http://www.slate.com/id/2107240/

    Dear Uneducated Celebrities Who Don't Know What They're Talking About,

    Look–there might be good reasons to vote. But please stop telling people that the reason they should vote is because individual votes are significant. They are not. We'd be happy to explain this to you, but it will involve math, and so you won't get it.

    Sincerely,
    Educated Experts

14. To add to Cool Cal, libfree and Jason; isn't the ad just the usual, Hollywood, self-praising drivel? If 8 year olds could vote, this would be very effective. But the real message is: We're big time Hollywood celebs and we want you to know how important your vote is, and by the way, aren't we great for doing this?

15. “Buggrit!” is the only example I can think of.

    And even that might not be unconditional. But then I don't use “vote!” as an unconditional.

16. Certain groups vote less than others. For example, younger and poorer people tend to vote less. I don't think this is due to higher opportunity costs for poor people to vote. Voting is just considered a duty by the middle class. Ads aimed at low voting populations don't worry me much.

    If voting really was a burden, you could do statistical sampling based voting. Get the sample size big enough and it would be pretty accurate. A lot of people like to vote though.

17. Certain groups vote less than others. For example, younger and poorer people tend to vote less. I don't think this is due to higher opportunity costs for poor people to vote. Voting is just considered a duty by the middle class. Ads aimed at low voting populations don't worry me much.

    If voting really was a burden, you could do statistical sampling based voting. Get the sample size big enough and it would be pretty accurate. A lot of people like to vote though.