Promoted from a Comment Elsewhere

For those who can't be arsed to exercise franchise, or who write in nonsense candidates, because they think individual votes "don't count," a few parables:

No single snowflake feels responsible for the avalanche. Yet avalanches happen. No individual train commuter queuing perpendicular to the tracks feels responsible for blocking the platform, yet every day the queue extends right across the platform, making it difficult or impossible for others to pass.

An old woman went out into the woods to gather fuel for her fire. She was frail and weak, so she test-lifted each stick, before adding it to her basket, and muttered to herself as she added each twig, “Well, if I can manage that one, then I can manage this one too…” but when she went to lift her basket, she couldn’t budge it. So she turned to her basket and began to take sticks out, “Well, if that one was too much, then so is this one too much…” until her basket was empty, and she went home without any fuel for her fire.

In poker, three 2′s beats two aces, and a 2-3-4-5-6 straight flush beats four aces, despite the fact that as individual cards, they’re the lowest in the deck.

The power of aggregates lies in the act of aggregation. The fact that individual members of the aggregate do no have the same effect as the aggregate as a whole demonstrates that aggregation has more power than individual action, not that the individual members of the aggregate don’t matter. If most people decide their votes don’t count anyway, the people who vote anyway get to decide. The people who vote anyway tend to be white, better educated, older, and wealthier. If you’re okay with them getting to decide, don’t vote.