If things aren't close they don't need to be counted.
It's a fact of voting that most folks can vote in every election they can for their entire lives and never make any difference whatsoever, as in, change zero outcomes.
We have social pressure and propaganda otherwise to get people to do it, because if too many people rationally stay home then the system works poorly (in aggregate, that does change outcomes). It'd be much better to just mandate voting, because it is individually irrational and it's not great to base a system on tricking everyone into behaving irrationally.
This feels different because they're not bothering to even count them, but it's not materially different from any voting.
(barring the "sometimes not even counted then" part, of course)
I do understand that, in principle. But having a mathematical reason to let some 'difficult' votes go uncounted gives ammunition to those who would put political pressure on vote counting for their advantage, while also making people in general feel disenfranchised. (We have a huge problem with turnout in the US in general, and the message you're presenting only adds fuel to that!) This is why I wrote "sometimes not even counted then", because we do have a kind of apathy towards these small and easily disenfranchisable groups, and once you open it a crack, it becomes easier for some partisan to drive a wedge into it (see Bush v Gore 2000).
Also, it's a mistake to think that the only result of voting is to produce the winner of the election. The margin matters also. A politician winning by a large margin (or even a majority) can claim a 'mandate'; one who only wins by a plurality will have more spirited opposition.
We've seen this in the most recent US election; imagine if small percentage of those who didn't vote in the solid blue states because their vote didn't matter (a refrain I've heard from many people) actually voted, and Trump swept the swing states but lost the popular vote. The entire political landscape would be different, and we might even have momentum in the coming years to abolish the Electoral College.
So if we are fans of liberal democracy, we should be doing everything in our power to structure the system to make people feel as though their voice and vote matters.
It's a fact of voting that most folks can vote in every election they can for their entire lives and never make any difference whatsoever, as in, change zero outcomes.
We have social pressure and propaganda otherwise to get people to do it, because if too many people rationally stay home then the system works poorly (in aggregate, that does change outcomes). It'd be much better to just mandate voting, because it is individually irrational and it's not great to base a system on tricking everyone into behaving irrationally.
This feels different because they're not bothering to even count them, but it's not materially different from any voting.
(barring the "sometimes not even counted then" part, of course)