You guys refer to "voting" based on an implicit definition which I don't think you can support empirically. Do you mean "interacting with the machine in such a way that text indicating your choice shows up on the screen"? Or do you mean "actually influencing the outcome to the extent of 1/x where x is the number of voters in the election"?
In other words, you go thru the motions at the polling place, then some official announces some numbers as the result. What assurance do you have that the numbers announced have any definite relation to what people did in the voting booths?
If you can't show, or the government officials can't prove that deterministic relation to the public, then the talk about how voting affects political outcomes is fallacious. The last vestige of democracy was abolished when computers replaced paper ballots in an electorally significant fraction of districts.
In other words, you go thru the motions at the polling place, then some official announces some numbers as the result. What assurance do you have that the numbers announced have any definite relation to what people did in the voting booths?
If you can't show, or the government officials can't prove that deterministic relation to the public, then the talk about how voting affects political outcomes is fallacious. The last vestige of democracy was abolished when computers replaced paper ballots in an electorally significant fraction of districts.