Do folks ever look back on their votes, and think, “boy that was a mistake.”
And if so, do they change how they vote in the future?
Do they compensate for their error?
Or become disaffected?
Or chalk it up to bad luck?
Or what?
To be clear, I’ve never regretted my votes.
But that itself is luck, since I was “raised” liberal, and nationally, the liberals have had easy hands to play for 20+ years.
(And locally I haven’t stayed in one place enough to know if my votes backfired. 
)
Yes. I don’t know why you wouldn’t every now and then. Imperfect information on the future and what not. Plenty of people also shift political parties throughout their life. I think national races are easier to justify than local ballot measures / local officials as well since “my team” plays a larger role at the federal level than at the local level.
One specific example I can think of was my parents telling me how they voted for Perot and realized after that that 3rd party voting was a mistake since it led to Clinton winning and they will never vote 3rd party again.
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no, I don’t regret any decision I’ve made in life. What’s the point?
Given the same information and same you at the time, you would’ve made the same decision a thousand times over.
Retrospective regret is dumb.
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I voted libertarian for pres in 2016. I shouldn’t have done that.
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I regret things all the time.
What’s the point of anything?
Were you in a swing state?
I regret not switching to the Republican Party, in order to vote Rubio. Though I think that was more about laziness than foolishness.
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ayahuasca
So, no free will?
I’m with you, by the way.
From the third person perspective, no. From the first person view, yes.
I did as well, but I was in a pretty blue state at the time.
I voted mostly third party when I was 18. Full regret.
Since then, can’t say I’ve regretted a vote. Though I don’t follow every school commissioner through their career, I just do historical research and wait for the next election.
I have good news for you. Your vote didn’t matter.
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I do not regret my choices from my past. I attempt to make the best decision with any choice. Almost every choice from my past that I could regret was what I thought (erroneously) was the best choice. I try to learn from my errors. I ask, “Why did I make that choice in the past that I know was wrong now.”
I supported Bush in 2000. Terrible choice. At that point I still believed the GOP were for small government and fiscal responsibility. It took two years of republican control to prove that horribly wrong.
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I did, too. I said I’d really prefer Gary Johnson as president and I’d rather my vote didn’t count than vote for either Clinton or Trump.
I believed the polls and thought Clinton was going to win. And, I didn’t realize how bad Trump would be.
Somewhat related – I’m a fan of ranked choice voting.
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Non-deterministic free will is pretty weird.
“I chose to vote Bush because I liked him more than Gore, but after the Iraq War, I decided to always vote libertarian.” (or whatever) is an example of deterministic free-will.
Your choices can be predicted by a super moderately-intelligent being, but they’re still choices in the mundane sense.
I have regretted giving people the benefit of the doubt and chance to redeem themselves instead of believing they were the person they were telling me they were.
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voting - no. i’m probably not informed enough to have regrets on that. i also never voted for anyone who wasn’t a democrat. i also don’t always vote.
regrets in life - yes.
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who else thought this was going to be about dead people voting?
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I, along with everyone else in Ontario, once did this. Provincial elections, in the 80’s IIRC.
Cons IIRC were elected for too long, it was turning into an old boys club. Libs were just as bad if not worse.
I vote, but refused to vote for either libs or cons. In Ontario, and various places in Canada, there’s a third party called the NDP which used to be a union/working person’s party. Now, they never get in, they’re always a distant third place.
So, I voted NDP as a clear protest vote. Can’t vote Con or Lib, vote for the party that’s not getting in anyway.
Except, they got in, with a majority IIRC. Because everyone voted for them as a protest. THe results are pretty widely regarded as a disaster, but eh, it’s only for four years.
Everyone’s reaction the next day “I voted for them, I never thought that they’d get in”.
My voting habits changed since then. I won’t vote for a different party as a protest vote, under the assumption that the party won’t get in. Generally now I just pick ‘least worst amongst reasonable alternatives’. Even when least worst is a party I’d prefer not to vote for.
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