Voting in itself is one of the biggest and silliest memes there is. That is, the idea that the vote is sacred and doing so is "doing your duty as a citizen." It really is not nearly that special and not something that you should feel like is an obligation if you do not have a strong enough interest or investment in the outcomes or if you see it as pointless.

Yet, we are told time and time again with "get out the vote" campaigns how special and important it is to do so.

This is not say that other forms of government that do not have voting are really better. Rather, I am saying that voting currently is not really solving problems that it claims it should do. Too often we have judges overturn the votes of the people (see: all the states that voted against gay marriage as amendments, California going from Red to Blue because a judge overturned a vote from the people).

And we cannot even trust that our votes are even being counted properly either.

Even when voting is counted fairly and all that, in most cases one vote means very little with the vast number of votes. Though this is more of a size of population issue rather than democracy/republicanism itself.

Also, getting the most votes for a candidate/issue does not mean that the outcome is actually the best. Rather, it is just the outcome that is most popular.

Whenever I hear "if you have a problem with it, you need to vote," they fail to understand that many of the problems cannot be voted away. Along with that, they never should have been problems that would have been brought to a vote in the first place. That is, government should have remained less of a factor in our lives, thus making the vote "less critical."

And in some cases, there are people who are simply apathetic to politics. When I first talked to these people who simply chose to write in Mickey Mouse or any other fictional character for President, I used to get upset because "their vote could have made a difference." But now, I realize that they are by no means any problem. Especially not compared to those who are the low-information type that keep voting for more freebees from the government.

@houseoftolstoy Any Right that doesn't come with responsibilities is meaningless. Why should anyone care about something that was feely given to them?

The problem with voting is everyone can do it. You're right that the popular outcome isn't always the best outcome. If you want to increase that correlation, you have to reduce the voting population to those whose interests align with the country's (pay taxes, are drafted, aren't parasites, etc.)

As is, voting is 100% useless, fraud aside.