The problem with that reasoning is that you're not just voting for the next president, but usually on a local ballot as well which is OFTEN very close. Government really is a local thing, although we often miss that, so I think every election is an important one.

My individual vote does not change anything, but gives the mainstream-parties money for their campaigns. As I firmly do not believe in their agenda, I try not to compensate them.

I was once a party member, and having seen their inner workings disgusted me and robbed me of everything, I believed to be true in an democracy. So giving money to them by voting is something, I cannot square with my conscience.

But we have a different political system here. And there are some interesting ideas on the theoretical ROI of voting in different US-States. So the situation might be very different for you.

From a German, totally subjective, perspective, I really hope, that Obama wins. But either way, I do not believe, that the outcome of the ballot really changes a lot (on a global scale).

Lobbyists will push legislation, firms will try to make money and the world will turn to another day tomorrow. War will be the way to secure some national agendas and poor or middle class people will try to make a living.

BTW, i'm not american, i'm greek so i know what a broken democracy looks like. I 'm split on the US election; was disappointed by obama so far to be honest.

I wanted to debunk the popular argument, that the one who does not vote, votes for the extreme parties.

How so?

Incidentally, even if we treat voting as some weird "wisdom of crowds, all of our uninformed opinions put together is better than any of the individual ones" thing, we can also conclude that your vote doesn't matter much. Suppose the election is close, in which case your vote might actually matter.

We can then conclude the "wisdom of crowds" declared Romney and Obama to be nearly equally good, in which case the gain from choosing the better candidate is very small.

Indeed, the fact that the vote is close actually validates the candidates as capable. Do you mean that we already know the outcome, so why bother? Eh, in that case, maybe it would be wise to allow email voting for everyone. Surely that's would rule out the "why bother" factor cause it's not much of a bother.

The counterfactual is not communist and crony-driven unstable dictatorships (e.g., China, Venezuela, Iraq), but non-democracies with policies similar to Democracies, or democracies with stolen elections.

(This group would include nations such as South Korea, which were weakly democratic until relatively recently, Singapore, and various others.)

Do you mean that we already know the outcome, so why bother?

No, I mean that if the election is split 50/50 (+1 on either side), then the "wisdom of crowds" suggests the difference between Obama and Romney is irrelevant. So why waste time pushing the election one way or the other?

Anyway, i don't undestand why your voting has to be "the one vote that mattered". I see it like a gamble, you trust your vote on someone, even if you will be disappointed later. If you don't you lose your chance to be disappointed (and possibly learn a lesson)