[Aachen]

That makes no sense to me. They didn't know the outcome beforehand; had odds fallen the other way, your argument would have stated that they voted no. Were they in a superposition before the results came in, voting both yes and no simultaneously?!

We can't know what they want if they don't or can't vote. Putting "they voted yes" in their mouth sounds insulting to me, but I'm an outsider to the UK so maybe it's wrong for me to say that

[ryandrake]

If you choose not to vote, then you are implicitly voting for "whatever ends up winning."

[Marsymars]

It's conceptually pretty weird to have a mental model where the single vote that brings one side to 50%+1 implicitly flips millions of other votes.

[array_key_first]

It makes sense when you consider those millions of other voters are apathetic by definition. They can be implicitly flipped like that because they, supposedly, don't care at all. If they did care then they would vote and then wouldn't be subject to that. And that is why it is vital to be extremely careful with apathy, in all aspects of life. Because apathy is a choice.

[Aachen]

You leave it to others if you choose not to vote, yes, but you didn't vote, neither implicitly nor explicitly. It doesn't allow one to add you to the tally of voters for yes or no as the person above did

[u_fucking_dork]

> They didn't know the outcome beforehand; had odds fallen the other way, your argument would have stated that they voted no. Were they in a superposition before the results came in, voting both yes and no simultaneously?!

Yes, of course, they didn’t give a shit. They couldn’t be bothered. Outcome was whatever for them.

[Aachen]

Or they couldn't vote (besides work and caretaking, Wikipedia mentions that a few thousand's ballots were invalid before the vote even started due to an accounting error), or they thought "don't give our neighbors the finger" was a foregone conclusion. I should also hope that such a vote in my country, where it's economic suicide much more than in the UK, goes to an easy "no", but since Brexit I've learned that I need to always encourage everyone to make time and vote anyway no matter how dumb it seems. They didn't have that example and I'm not so sure if a confirming vote would habe turned out the same way for example

You can say a lot of things about the majority of this group but not that it was necessarily irrelevant to the whole group

[BadBadJellyBean]

You summed up my point. If someone doesn't vote if they can they support what ever the majority of the votes wanted. They were fine with it. So in they end they wanted what the majority wanted because that is the result. Everything else is fudging the numbers to feel better.

You could also just say they didn't exist if it makes you feel better. But calculating the percentage from the eligible voters gets you no where. They didn't vote. It just makes the number smaller. Whatever. It doesn't change anything. It's not first to 50% of eligible votes. It's the majority of voters.

But I am angry at everyone who doesn't vote if they can. Especially if they complain that this isn't what they wanted.

[Aachen]

If someone asks me about macroeconomic decisions and I don't feel like I can make a choice that sufficiently oversees the consequences and so I vote blank, I don't necessarily want to be thought of as having supported whatever ended up happening though

But I can see what you mean here. Just that I'd phrase it as "you will just have to live with the outcome" and not "you voted for this outcome" or "52% of the population wanted this" as it was phrased above. That is what I'd call fudging numbers to sound better than they were :p

[BadBadJellyBean]

Maybe I have to clarify this a bit. When I say "they wanted it" I mean that functionally. The ultimate outcome of not voting if you can is that you accept the decisions of others without giving your own input. Therefore you functionally condone the decision of others because you didn't put your voice against that.

There might be a situation where you have decide between two equally bad things. In that case not voting would be okay. But that's rarely the case.

Sometimes it's okay to just vote against the worse of the choices. That's still better than doing nothing. You WILL get one of the choices (unless there is a revolution or something). It's not like you will get none of these if you don't vote. Therefore apathy and not voting is a bad thing.

Example Brexit: You could vote remain or leave. There was no third option. Everyone who didn't vote because none of the options were what they wanted, still got leave. It didn't matter if their stance was "remain but maybe work on the terms" or anything else. The result was "leave". Functionally they accepted that. Functionally they sad "leave" because the majority of the voters said "leave". It didn't matter what they wanted. Only what they got. Just because they didn't vote.

Same goes for US elections. "I don't want either of them" translates to you get what the others want if you don't vote. Always. This can happen when you vote as well but then you at least made your voice heard. Your vote was recorded. There were more people with another opinion. That's democracy. Anything else is apathy and in my eyes you lost all right to complain.

Disclaimer: I am assuming a working voting system and the ability to vote.