Meant to post this a while ago

So I wrote this right after the California primaries, but never got around to finishing or posting it. So read some of my unfinished thoughts on voting.

It must be pretty lame to vote in a primary, and then have your candidate drop out of the race the next day. This would especially be true if you don't completely despise all the remaining candidates, or especially hate one of the remaining and won't to vote against that person no matter what. But if you vote for somebody that doesn't even make it to the end, I'd have to wonder what the point of voting is.

I think this is part of my problem with democracy; I don't see how minorities have a voice, or more particularly, I don't see how individuals have a voice in general. This is perhaps why I've never bothered to vote in the Presidential election, because there is almost never a chance that California's electorate will go Republican. I mean, if the election result is already decided by the majority, and you know exactly what that majority is, what's the point of an individual voting? But then, if everybody thinks this, then there is no majority. It's a Catch-22, I guess.

So with a democracy, the big question is how to keep minorities and majorities (for individuals in both groups can feel redundant or useless) participating in elections, and politics in general? I think I'd be more inclined to pick a candidate and actually campaign for them, rather than vote, but if I had campaigned for a particular candidate, perhaps I'd feel a duty to vote since I was telling other people to do the same.

Perhaps a lot of people don't feel this problem because of a sufficiently instilled sense of civic pride or duty. Deontological ethics would state that as a member of a democratic state, each individual has the responsibility and moral obligation to vote, which is what people so often tell me.