Ana the Ist
Aggressively serene!
- Feb 21, 2012
- 39,990
- 12,573
- Country
- United States
- Gender
- Male
- Faith
- Atheist
- Marital Status
- Married
Upvote
0
Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
Would it be that bad?
It legitimizes a system which may be entirely illegitimate.
In a U.S. presidential election, if you do not live in a swing state your participation is symbolic at best. If you live in Texas you already know that the Republican is going to win. If you live in New York or Massachusetts you already know that the Democrat is going to win. If you are a Democrat voting in Texas or a Republican voting in New York or Massachusetts your vote is probably symbolic at the most. The only practical outcome from the latter participation would be things like the winner winning the Electoral vote but losing the popular vote; parties and campaigns having data from the polls to incorporate into future strategy; etc., but I doubt that even half of a percent of participants in an election vote with such things in mind.
And if you live in the Pacific time zone the election could already be decided and reported by the media before the polls in your state have closed.
If you live in a swing state like Ohio or Colorado you are at least voting in a place that is contested. But even then most people do not believe that their vote influences practical outcomes such as what laws are made, what Supreme Court decisions are made, etc.
That barely scratches the surface of the good, rational reasons why nobody should be surprised that voter turnout is low in the U.S.
Okay, but that is still coercive.
You "take your responsibilities seriously"... when compelled to do so. How deep is that sense of responsibility when it doesn't happen when people are free to vote or not?
eudaimonia,
Mark
Could I not turn that argument around? Might not the citizens of your country take their responsibilities more seriously if your nation decided that elections of their representatives are so important that it should be compulsory for all citizens?
You've neglected the point I made in making my claim. The vast majority of our voters (>95%) submit valid ballot papers in our elections. If we really objected to the compulsory nature of our process, surely there would be a much higher proportion of informal votes?
Surely there would be a significant number who would prefer to pay the $50 fine?
Compulsory voting sounds aweful, what about people that live in semi remote areas and dont have the means to get to a poling place for something that is statisticly insignificant. What about people that are busy doing important things and know that the odds of their vote mattering is so vanishingly small as to not matter but if they spend an hour engaged in what is equivalent to the power ball they will get behind on their work.
This is the problem with everyone and their mom being allowed to vote, is now no ones vote matters. So the politicians just do what ever they want. This is why the founders made land owning a pre-requisite, that way you had some skin in the game. OR whoever pays the most taxes, etc.
Could I not turn that argument around? Might not the citizens of your country take their responsibilities more seriously if your nation decided that elections of their representatives are so important that it should be compulsory for all citizens?
Distractify | 20 Ideas The US Needs To Steal From The Rest Of The World
I thought many of these were good, or at least interesting.
Free stuff for everybody, ex nihilo! Woo hoo!
That what most of them sound like. "Liberal" Democrats in the US must be wetting their pants.
A few of the suggestions are good ideas (e.g., the speeding ticket lottery). However, compulsory voting is downright evil. No one should be compelled to express an opinion about who to support for public office when their opinion is that there is no one worth voting for or that they disapprove of voting altogether. I'm not talking about the results of the elections, but about the integrity of voters. And, no, write-in votes don't really solve the problem.
It's isn't great that so few vote in a democracy though.
I think uneducated voting doesn't really serve democracy either, because it makes it all too easy for pretendous politicians to deceive voters. Which in turn means that people don't get what they voted for, which isn't the idea of democracy.
True measure of election success should be % of educated votes, not votes generally. By "educated" I mean for example that voter should at least know how his candidate has voted in the past while in parliament etc. That kind of information is usually available for person who is willing to do a bit of digging. Most voters don't seem to know even that.
I don't really see how blindly voting some celebrity-turned-politician because she/he has said one or two nice phrases publicly is going to serve democracy in long run anymore than not voting at all.
I think uneducated voting doesn't really serve democracy either, because it makes it all too easy for pretendous politicians to deceive voters. Which in turn means that people don't get what they voted for, which isn't the idea of democracy.
True measure of election success should be % of educated votes, not votes generally. By "educated" I mean for example that voter should at least know how his candidate has voted in the past while in parliament etc. That kind of information is usually available for person who is willing to do a bit of digging. Most voters don't seem to know even that.
I don't really see how blindly voting some celebrity-turned-politician because she/he has said one or two nice phrases publicly is going to serve democracy in long run anymore than not voting at all.
I don't know what my potential candidate has voted for. I vote for the party, not the individual.
You make a rather unfounded premise here: that those who currently don't vote are uneducated and, by extension, those who do vote currently are the educated ones. You have no basis upon which to make that claim.
Distractify | 20 Ideas The US Needs To Steal From The Rest Of The World
I thought many of these were good, or at least interesting.
A common theme that I see in many of these is that it is something that is given to everyone for free. But there is no free lunch. All of these things need to be paid for or produced by someone. For those who say wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone got this thing or that thing for free, I ask, at who's expense?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?