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On November 06 2012 11:08 itsjustatank wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 11:04 FinalForm wrote:On November 06 2012 10:57 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 10:55 FinalForm wrote:
Even if we had a 100% increase in voter turnout the election result would be the same: 53% to 46% plus or minus 3 pts. You begin your arguement with the assumption that more voting creates a better government. Also if you are so intent on increasing voter turnout did it occur to you that telling ppl to get out to vote is probably one of the least effective ways of achieving your goal. Ppl don't vote cause they'd rather do smth mote important, like make dinner. System is good enough as it is, voter turnout not a big deal. You assume the votes of people who currently don't vote will follow the data created by polling people who likely will in the status quo. That doesn't follow. More voting does not directly correspond to better government, it just gives more legitimacy to it. Edit: Also you assume those polls aren't made up or doctored with 'house effects' to push the editorial concerns of the organization doing the polling. Yes I am assuming that. How do you think they will vote, will some magic discovery happen? The data required to create those polls cannot be legitimate;y articulated to apply to people who aren't measured at all, that's just laughable. That's like me saying polling the preferences of people in a city in California will allow me to make inferences about the preferences of people living in a city in Zimbabwe. And ideally, yes, some sort of magic discovery will happen. At the least I hope this blog convinces some nerd reading it to go out and vote.
believe in your magic then. you need to take a statistics class and go over random sampling. any statistics class will make your last sentence sound like third grader logic - "i need to see everything on the table to believe it"
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On November 06 2012 11:28 itsjustatank wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 11:23 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 11:20 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 11:19 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 11:10 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 11:07 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 11:05 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 10:59 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 10:49 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 10:39 sc2superfan101 wrote:
[quote]
filling out the ballot early wastes time, just not a lot of it. it also wastes effort becoming informed on political issues. one could argue that an uninformed vote counts as much as an informed one, but then I would counter with the assertion that uninformed votes are the enemy of democracy, not the friend. further, I am not interested in the slightest in driving turnout. in fact, I think a depressed turnout is probably the best that we can hope for (for a variety of reasons).
whether or not the leaders that have been selected are effective is irrelevant to the fact that political representation is meaningless when it becomes the end in of itself. a democracy is not inherently better than a dictatorship. further, there is nothing stopping the majority from voting other than themselves, so your point about the fairness of our system is a straw-man. any system which guarantees the right to vote to the adult populace, regardless of race, religion, sexual preference, economic status, gender, or political persuasion has already passed the standard of being "fair".
and as a response to your third point, I will again ask why a greater number of voters would somehow lead to better leaders and officials on any level: local, state, or federal? unless you think that the mere fact of a vote being cast freely for one side is the primary goal of the democracy, then the turnout is largely irrelevant. As you seem to think totalitarian systems are acceptable in the modern era, there won't be any space for middle ground here. you misread my comment, I am not advocating totalitarianism or dictatorship. I am merely pointing out the fact that one's rights are no more inherently protected by democracy than dictatorship. democracy only guarantees a majority rule. of course, there are a great many democracies that are very free, arguably freer than a dictatorship can be, and therefore would be an objectively better system of governance. however, there are plenty of democracies (both historically and extant) that, in some respects, are less free than the dictatorship that they replaced. my main argument, as it should be understood, is that a high voter turnout does not lead to better leaders, and therefore is not necessarily desirable. William F. Buckley Jr put it best in his book Up From Liberalism, when he compared the situations in Mexico (a "democracy") and in Venezuela (a dictatorship). in Mexico, they observe the forms of democracy, and yet, the minority party routinely received less than 10% of the popular vote in a Presidential election (a statistical impossibility). the standards of living for the citizens were largely the same in Mexico and in Venezuela at the time, and the effective political power that could be exercised by the citizens was basically the same. however, one was seen as acceptable and the other was seen as unacceptable on the mere grounds that one used a vote to establish it's totalitarian regime and the other dispensed with the niceties. when one puts more value on the mere fact of a person being able to cast a ballot than on that same person being safe and secure in his government and daily life, than one has effectively given implicit consent to any totalitarian system which is supported by 50.1% of the populace. in the end, it is not I who supports dictatorship, but you. I would prefer that 'majority rule' actually constitutes a majority. When you see that the number of people who could have voted but did not dwarfs the popular vote totals of the two main party contenders consistently, it isn't actually majority rule. but for what purpose, other than to satisfy the rather vague principle of "majority should mean majority", would we actually encourage voter turnout? if it does not lead to objectively better results than why should it be called the objectively better system? If your preferences are served by continuing with the status quo, your argument is rational on a personal advocacy level. The problem is that for many people in this majority of non-voters, the current political order does not suit them, but they do nothing to change it. If we are going to call this a democracy, more votes and more turnout make it more legitimate. If that isn't a respectable goal to you, then we once again are at a point of departure. Rule by a minority elite is not true democracy. how does higher turnout make it more legitimate? is the systems legitimacy not based on the actual benefit of the system to the citizen? why would it's legitimacy be based on how many people decide to take part in the voting, and not on how free and prosperous those people are? "true democracy" is a very strange term, again much discussed in Buckley's work, Up From Liberalism (I highly suggest you read it). one should assume that democracy, in truth, is a system by which one votes for ones government. a populace of three thousand where only two people choose to vote is as much a "true democracy" as any other in that sense. Not everyone in this country is 'free and prosperous.' Especially not the second part of that slogan. of course not, but how would increasing the turnout of the vote alleviate this problem? also, I would argue that the majority of the country are free and prosperous enough to grant the system a great degree of legitimacy. one cannot simply point to the exception and call it the rule. generally, the US population is free and prosperous by any standard which maintains historical relevance. Because of the majoritarian voting systems in the United States, and the construction of its institutions in the Constitution, low turnout is simply unacceptable. A voting system that relies on 50% +1 winner takes all with a poor turnout rate isn't legitimate. It may work, and the results might be pretty (to you, or the minority who benefit), but calling it democracy is insidious.
but you've yet to show me why low turnout is unacceptable when higher turnout has no foreseeable benefit to the populace as a whole. if the higher turnout led to more prosperity or could be shown to have a positive effect upon the citizen or society as a whole, than perhaps it could justify itself. however, without some benefit, there is nothing to justify a higher turnout. one cannot say that the justification for a higher turnout is the fact of a higher turnout.
democracy has almost never been universal (or never?) and we should resist any effort to redefine the word so as to mean something which it has never meant before. democracy is simply a system by which the majority opinion of the voting populace is followed. whether the majority of the populace is actually voting or not is irrelevant. Greece was a more pure democracy than almost any we have now, and even they excluded the vast majority of their populace from voting.
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Hong Kong9154 Posts
On November 06 2012 11:39 FinalForm wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 11:08 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 11:04 FinalForm wrote:On November 06 2012 10:57 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 10:55 FinalForm wrote:
Even if we had a 100% increase in voter turnout the election result would be the same: 53% to 46% plus or minus 3 pts. You begin your arguement with the assumption that more voting creates a better government. Also if you are so intent on increasing voter turnout did it occur to you that telling ppl to get out to vote is probably one of the least effective ways of achieving your goal. Ppl don't vote cause they'd rather do smth mote important, like make dinner. System is good enough as it is, voter turnout not a big deal. You assume the votes of people who currently don't vote will follow the data created by polling people who likely will in the status quo. That doesn't follow. More voting does not directly correspond to better government, it just gives more legitimacy to it. Edit: Also you assume those polls aren't made up or doctored with 'house effects' to push the editorial concerns of the organization doing the polling. Yes I am assuming that. How do you think they will vote, will some magic discovery happen? The data required to create those polls cannot be legitimate;y articulated to apply to people who aren't measured at all, that's just laughable. That's like me saying polling the preferences of people in a city in California will allow me to make inferences about the preferences of people living in a city in Zimbabwe. And ideally, yes, some sort of magic discovery will happen. At the least I hope this blog convinces some nerd reading it to go out and vote. believe in your magic then. you need to take a statistics class and go over random sampling.
rofl, they create random samples from the population of people who have expressed willingness to vote aka not the people this OP talks about, and aka data you cant use to infer about a population you dont measure.
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Hong Kong9154 Posts
On November 06 2012 11:41 sc2superfan101 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 11:28 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 11:23 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 11:20 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 11:19 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 11:10 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 11:07 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 11:05 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 10:59 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 10:49 itsjustatank wrote:
[quote]
As you seem to think totalitarian systems are acceptable in the modern era, there won't be any space for middle ground here. you misread my comment, I am not advocating totalitarianism or dictatorship. I am merely pointing out the fact that one's rights are no more inherently protected by democracy than dictatorship. democracy only guarantees a majority rule. of course, there are a great many democracies that are very free, arguably freer than a dictatorship can be, and therefore would be an objectively better system of governance. however, there are plenty of democracies (both historically and extant) that, in some respects, are less free than the dictatorship that they replaced. my main argument, as it should be understood, is that a high voter turnout does not lead to better leaders, and therefore is not necessarily desirable. William F. Buckley Jr put it best in his book Up From Liberalism, when he compared the situations in Mexico (a "democracy") and in Venezuela (a dictatorship). in Mexico, they observe the forms of democracy, and yet, the minority party routinely received less than 10% of the popular vote in a Presidential election (a statistical impossibility). the standards of living for the citizens were largely the same in Mexico and in Venezuela at the time, and the effective political power that could be exercised by the citizens was basically the same. however, one was seen as acceptable and the other was seen as unacceptable on the mere grounds that one used a vote to establish it's totalitarian regime and the other dispensed with the niceties. when one puts more value on the mere fact of a person being able to cast a ballot than on that same person being safe and secure in his government and daily life, than one has effectively given implicit consent to any totalitarian system which is supported by 50.1% of the populace. in the end, it is not I who supports dictatorship, but you. I would prefer that 'majority rule' actually constitutes a majority. When you see that the number of people who could have voted but did not dwarfs the popular vote totals of the two main party contenders consistently, it isn't actually majority rule. but for what purpose, other than to satisfy the rather vague principle of "majority should mean majority", would we actually encourage voter turnout? if it does not lead to objectively better results than why should it be called the objectively better system? If your preferences are served by continuing with the status quo, your argument is rational on a personal advocacy level. The problem is that for many people in this majority of non-voters, the current political order does not suit them, but they do nothing to change it. If we are going to call this a democracy, more votes and more turnout make it more legitimate. If that isn't a respectable goal to you, then we once again are at a point of departure. Rule by a minority elite is not true democracy. how does higher turnout make it more legitimate? is the systems legitimacy not based on the actual benefit of the system to the citizen? why would it's legitimacy be based on how many people decide to take part in the voting, and not on how free and prosperous those people are? "true democracy" is a very strange term, again much discussed in Buckley's work, Up From Liberalism (I highly suggest you read it). one should assume that democracy, in truth, is a system by which one votes for ones government. a populace of three thousand where only two people choose to vote is as much a "true democracy" as any other in that sense. Not everyone in this country is 'free and prosperous.' Especially not the second part of that slogan. of course not, but how would increasing the turnout of the vote alleviate this problem? also, I would argue that the majority of the country are free and prosperous enough to grant the system a great degree of legitimacy. one cannot simply point to the exception and call it the rule. generally, the US population is free and prosperous by any standard which maintains historical relevance. Because of the majoritarian voting systems in the United States, and the construction of its institutions in the Constitution, low turnout is simply unacceptable. A voting system that relies on 50% +1 winner takes all with a poor turnout rate isn't legitimate. It may work, and the results might be pretty (to you, or the minority who benefit), but calling it democracy is insidious. but you've yet to show me why low turnout is unacceptable when higher turnout has no foreseeable benefit to the populace as a whole. if the higher turnout led to more prosperity or could be shown to have a positive effect upon the citizen or society as a whole, than perhaps it could justify itself. however, without some benefit, there is nothing to justify a higher turnout. one cannot say that the justification for a higher turnout is the fact of a higher turnout. democracy has almost never been universal (or never?) and we should resist any effort to redefine the word so as to mean something which it has never meant before. democracy is simply a system by which the majority opinion of the voting populace is followed. whether the majority of the populace is actually voting or not is irrelevant. Greece was a more pure democracy than almost any we have now, and even they excluded the vast majority of their populace from voting.
Your arguments are rooted in the belief that things are fine now and they work for you. This may or may not be necessarily true for the people underrepresented in the current voting system. The foreseeable benefit to the populace as a whole is the fact that more of the populace as a whole has a say in how they are governed.
I am not satisfied with something we term democracy but is actually rule by a minority, when the only barrier to achieving higher turnout is education. It is pure laziness on the part of society to accept the way things are now.
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On November 06 2012 11:47 itsjustatank wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 11:41 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 11:28 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 11:23 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 11:20 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 11:19 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 11:10 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 11:07 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 11:05 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 10:59 sc2superfan101 wrote:
[quote]
you misread my comment, I am not advocating totalitarianism or dictatorship. I am merely pointing out the fact that one's rights are no more inherently protected by democracy than dictatorship. democracy only guarantees a majority rule. of course, there are a great many democracies that are very free, arguably freer than a dictatorship can be, and therefore would be an objectively better system of governance. however, there are plenty of democracies (both historically and extant) that, in some respects, are less free than the dictatorship that they replaced.
my main argument, as it should be understood, is that a high voter turnout does not lead to better leaders, and therefore is not necessarily desirable. William F. Buckley Jr put it best in his book Up From Liberalism, when he compared the situations in Mexico (a "democracy") and in Venezuela (a dictatorship). in Mexico, they observe the forms of democracy, and yet, the minority party routinely received less than 10% of the popular vote in a Presidential election (a statistical impossibility). the standards of living for the citizens were largely the same in Mexico and in Venezuela at the time, and the effective political power that could be exercised by the citizens was basically the same. however, one was seen as acceptable and the other was seen as unacceptable on the mere grounds that one used a vote to establish it's totalitarian regime and the other dispensed with the niceties.
when one puts more value on the mere fact of a person being able to cast a ballot than on that same person being safe and secure in his government and daily life, than one has effectively given implicit consent to any totalitarian system which is supported by 50.1% of the populace. in the end, it is not I who supports dictatorship, but you.
I would prefer that 'majority rule' actually constitutes a majority. When you see that the number of people who could have voted but did not dwarfs the popular vote totals of the two main party contenders consistently, it isn't actually majority rule. but for what purpose, other than to satisfy the rather vague principle of "majority should mean majority", would we actually encourage voter turnout? if it does not lead to objectively better results than why should it be called the objectively better system? If your preferences are served by continuing with the status quo, your argument is rational on a personal advocacy level. The problem is that for many people in this majority of non-voters, the current political order does not suit them, but they do nothing to change it. If we are going to call this a democracy, more votes and more turnout make it more legitimate. If that isn't a respectable goal to you, then we once again are at a point of departure. Rule by a minority elite is not true democracy. how does higher turnout make it more legitimate? is the systems legitimacy not based on the actual benefit of the system to the citizen? why would it's legitimacy be based on how many people decide to take part in the voting, and not on how free and prosperous those people are? "true democracy" is a very strange term, again much discussed in Buckley's work, Up From Liberalism (I highly suggest you read it). one should assume that democracy, in truth, is a system by which one votes for ones government. a populace of three thousand where only two people choose to vote is as much a "true democracy" as any other in that sense. Not everyone in this country is 'free and prosperous.' Especially not the second part of that slogan. of course not, but how would increasing the turnout of the vote alleviate this problem? also, I would argue that the majority of the country are free and prosperous enough to grant the system a great degree of legitimacy. one cannot simply point to the exception and call it the rule. generally, the US population is free and prosperous by any standard which maintains historical relevance. Because of the majoritarian voting systems in the United States, and the construction of its institutions in the Constitution, low turnout is simply unacceptable. A voting system that relies on 50% +1 winner takes all with a poor turnout rate isn't legitimate. It may work, and the results might be pretty (to you, or the minority who benefit), but calling it democracy is insidious. but you've yet to show me why low turnout is unacceptable when higher turnout has no foreseeable benefit to the populace as a whole. if the higher turnout led to more prosperity or could be shown to have a positive effect upon the citizen or society as a whole, than perhaps it could justify itself. however, without some benefit, there is nothing to justify a higher turnout. one cannot say that the justification for a higher turnout is the fact of a higher turnout. democracy has almost never been universal (or never?) and we should resist any effort to redefine the word so as to mean something which it has never meant before. democracy is simply a system by which the majority opinion of the voting populace is followed. whether the majority of the populace is actually voting or not is irrelevant. Greece was a more pure democracy than almost any we have now, and even they excluded the vast majority of their populace from voting. Your arguments are rooted in the belief that things are fine now and they work for you. This may or may not be necessarily true for the people underrepresented in the current voting system. The foreseeable benefit to the populace as a whole is the fact that more of the populace as a whole has a say in how they are governed. I am not satisfied with something we term democracy but is actually rule by a minority, when the only barrier to achieving higher turnout is education. It is pure laziness on the part of society to accept the way things are now.
you are neglecting the fact that the only reason those people are "underrepresented" is because they choose to be underrepresented.
once again you have used the fact of higher turnout as justification for higher turnout. if it has no foreseeable benefit other than itself than I don't think it can be described as very necessary.
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Hong Kong9154 Posts
On November 06 2012 11:55 sc2superfan101 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 11:47 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 11:41 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 11:28 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 11:23 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 11:20 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 11:19 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 11:10 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 11:07 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 11:05 itsjustatank wrote:
[quote]
I would prefer that 'majority rule' actually constitutes a majority. When you see that the number of people who could have voted but did not dwarfs the popular vote totals of the two main party contenders consistently, it isn't actually majority rule. but for what purpose, other than to satisfy the rather vague principle of "majority should mean majority", would we actually encourage voter turnout? if it does not lead to objectively better results than why should it be called the objectively better system? If your preferences are served by continuing with the status quo, your argument is rational on a personal advocacy level. The problem is that for many people in this majority of non-voters, the current political order does not suit them, but they do nothing to change it. If we are going to call this a democracy, more votes and more turnout make it more legitimate. If that isn't a respectable goal to you, then we once again are at a point of departure. Rule by a minority elite is not true democracy. how does higher turnout make it more legitimate? is the systems legitimacy not based on the actual benefit of the system to the citizen? why would it's legitimacy be based on how many people decide to take part in the voting, and not on how free and prosperous those people are? "true democracy" is a very strange term, again much discussed in Buckley's work, Up From Liberalism (I highly suggest you read it). one should assume that democracy, in truth, is a system by which one votes for ones government. a populace of three thousand where only two people choose to vote is as much a "true democracy" as any other in that sense. Not everyone in this country is 'free and prosperous.' Especially not the second part of that slogan. of course not, but how would increasing the turnout of the vote alleviate this problem? also, I would argue that the majority of the country are free and prosperous enough to grant the system a great degree of legitimacy. one cannot simply point to the exception and call it the rule. generally, the US population is free and prosperous by any standard which maintains historical relevance. Because of the majoritarian voting systems in the United States, and the construction of its institutions in the Constitution, low turnout is simply unacceptable. A voting system that relies on 50% +1 winner takes all with a poor turnout rate isn't legitimate. It may work, and the results might be pretty (to you, or the minority who benefit), but calling it democracy is insidious. but you've yet to show me why low turnout is unacceptable when higher turnout has no foreseeable benefit to the populace as a whole. if the higher turnout led to more prosperity or could be shown to have a positive effect upon the citizen or society as a whole, than perhaps it could justify itself. however, without some benefit, there is nothing to justify a higher turnout. one cannot say that the justification for a higher turnout is the fact of a higher turnout. democracy has almost never been universal (or never?) and we should resist any effort to redefine the word so as to mean something which it has never meant before. democracy is simply a system by which the majority opinion of the voting populace is followed. whether the majority of the populace is actually voting or not is irrelevant. Greece was a more pure democracy than almost any we have now, and even they excluded the vast majority of their populace from voting. Your arguments are rooted in the belief that things are fine now and they work for you. This may or may not be necessarily true for the people underrepresented in the current voting system. The foreseeable benefit to the populace as a whole is the fact that more of the populace as a whole has a say in how they are governed. I am not satisfied with something we term democracy but is actually rule by a minority, when the only barrier to achieving higher turnout is education. It is pure laziness on the part of society to accept the way things are now. you are neglecting the fact that the only reason those people are "underrepresented" is because they choose to be underrepresented. once again you have used the fact of higher turnout as justification for higher turnout. if it has no foreseeable benefit other than itself than I don't think it can be described as very necessary.
You know, I've been going at this the wrong way. You fail to isolate a reason why encouraging more people to vote is uniquely a bad thing.
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On November 06 2012 11:41 itsjustatank wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 11:39 FinalForm wrote:On November 06 2012 11:08 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 11:04 FinalForm wrote:On November 06 2012 10:57 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 10:55 FinalForm wrote:
Even if we had a 100% increase in voter turnout the election result would be the same: 53% to 46% plus or minus 3 pts. You begin your arguement with the assumption that more voting creates a better government. Also if you are so intent on increasing voter turnout did it occur to you that telling ppl to get out to vote is probably one of the least effective ways of achieving your goal. Ppl don't vote cause they'd rather do smth mote important, like make dinner. System is good enough as it is, voter turnout not a big deal. You assume the votes of people who currently don't vote will follow the data created by polling people who likely will in the status quo. That doesn't follow. More voting does not directly correspond to better government, it just gives more legitimacy to it. Edit: Also you assume those polls aren't made up or doctored with 'house effects' to push the editorial concerns of the organization doing the polling. Yes I am assuming that. How do you think they will vote, will some magic discovery happen? The data required to create those polls cannot be legitimate;y articulated to apply to people who aren't measured at all, that's just laughable. That's like me saying polling the preferences of people in a city in California will allow me to make inferences about the preferences of people living in a city in Zimbabwe. And ideally, yes, some sort of magic discovery will happen. At the least I hope this blog convinces some nerd reading it to go out and vote. believe in your magic then. you need to take a statistics class and go over random sampling. rofl, they create random samples from the population of people who have expressed willingness to vote aka not the people this OP talks about, and aka data you cant use to infer about a population you dont measure.
thats true I am not aware of any polls that use data from ppl not willing to vote, that would be interesting indeed, because it would give us the ability to see who would win the election if their turnout was forced. Again thought, I'm going to venture that there isn't much exciting hidden away in these ppl.
I'm not voting in this election, if I was then i would vote obama.
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How is this an argument for me to go out and vote?
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On November 06 2012 11:59 itsjustatank wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 11:55 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 11:47 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 11:41 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 11:28 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 11:23 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 11:20 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 11:19 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 06 2012 11:10 itsjustatank wrote:On November 06 2012 11:07 sc2superfan101 wrote:
[quote]
but for what purpose, other than to satisfy the rather vague principle of "majority should mean majority", would we actually encourage voter turnout? if it does not lead to objectively better results than why should it be called the objectively better system? If your preferences are served by continuing with the status quo, your argument is rational on a personal advocacy level. The problem is that for many people in this majority of non-voters, the current political order does not suit them, but they do nothing to change it. If we are going to call this a democracy, more votes and more turnout make it more legitimate. If that isn't a respectable goal to you, then we once again are at a point of departure. Rule by a minority elite is not true democracy. how does higher turnout make it more legitimate? is the systems legitimacy not based on the actual benefit of the system to the citizen? why would it's legitimacy be based on how many people decide to take part in the voting, and not on how free and prosperous those people are? "true democracy" is a very strange term, again much discussed in Buckley's work, Up From Liberalism (I highly suggest you read it). one should assume that democracy, in truth, is a system by which one votes for ones government. a populace of three thousand where only two people choose to vote is as much a "true democracy" as any other in that sense. Not everyone in this country is 'free and prosperous.' Especially not the second part of that slogan. of course not, but how would increasing the turnout of the vote alleviate this problem? also, I would argue that the majority of the country are free and prosperous enough to grant the system a great degree of legitimacy. one cannot simply point to the exception and call it the rule. generally, the US population is free and prosperous by any standard which maintains historical relevance. Because of the majoritarian voting systems in the United States, and the construction of its institutions in the Constitution, low turnout is simply unacceptable. A voting system that relies on 50% +1 winner takes all with a poor turnout rate isn't legitimate. It may work, and the results might be pretty (to you, or the minority who benefit), but calling it democracy is insidious. but you've yet to show me why low turnout is unacceptable when higher turnout has no foreseeable benefit to the populace as a whole. if the higher turnout led to more prosperity or could be shown to have a positive effect upon the citizen or society as a whole, than perhaps it could justify itself. however, without some benefit, there is nothing to justify a higher turnout. one cannot say that the justification for a higher turnout is the fact of a higher turnout. democracy has almost never been universal (or never?) and we should resist any effort to redefine the word so as to mean something which it has never meant before. democracy is simply a system by which the majority opinion of the voting populace is followed. whether the majority of the populace is actually voting or not is irrelevant. Greece was a more pure democracy than almost any we have now, and even they excluded the vast majority of their populace from voting. Your arguments are rooted in the belief that things are fine now and they work for you. This may or may not be necessarily true for the people underrepresented in the current voting system. The foreseeable benefit to the populace as a whole is the fact that more of the populace as a whole has a say in how they are governed. I am not satisfied with something we term democracy but is actually rule by a minority, when the only barrier to achieving higher turnout is education. It is pure laziness on the part of society to accept the way things are now. you are neglecting the fact that the only reason those people are "underrepresented" is because they choose to be underrepresented. once again you have used the fact of higher turnout as justification for higher turnout. if it has no foreseeable benefit other than itself than I don't think it can be described as very necessary. You know, I've been going at this the wrong way. You fail to isolate a reason why encouraging more people to vote is uniquely a bad thing.
the reason it's a bad thing is because it's a waste of your time. you could be growing a garden, maybe volunteering somewhere, or perhaps working some extra shifts. you could be going to Washington to help break down ties to politics and big business, that's how you would convince me to vote.
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United States12236 Posts
Voting owns. Go vote and be a cool dude. Voting accomplishes a few very important things:
- You contribute to the outcome of important elections (to varying extents)
- You help to decide the fate of important propositions
- You get to look down upon apathetic non-voters because hey, at least you did something.
Voting also feels cool. When you walk out of the booth a sudden sensation of pride washes over you, and not just from the cute girls who will appear under both your arms purely by coincidence (note: for this reason it is advisable to shower before going to the voting booths).
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Hong Kong9154 Posts
On November 06 2012 11:54 thedeadhaji wrote:Already mailed mine in!  As a California resident, my presidential vote is basically moot, but it was important for me to vote for the propositions!
Yeah, California voters (and voters in other jurisdictions which have ballot initiative and referendum) have a lot more responsibility because of that.
Listing the things voters are responsible for in California initiative ballot:
- Sales tax rates
- Income tax rates
- Funding for education and healthcare programs
- Labeling of genetically-modified foods
- Car insurance regulation
- The ability of corporations and unions to donate to candidates in political office with funds gained through payroll reductions
- Effective repeal of the Three Strikes Law
- Repeal of the death penalty
- Increasing penalties for human traffickers (and forcing them to register as sex offenders
- The way corporation tax is handled for multistate businesses
- The way districts are drawn (who represents you in State legislature).
Low turnout for these critical decision points is simply unacceptable.
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Waste of time for those of us that don't live in swing states. I don't think Obama or Romney have even visited my state during this entire election cycle.
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I fundamentally disagree with how government is run, from the secretary of state, to the attorney generals office, to the treasury office, to the office of technology. I've worked with or for many of them of my state. And i can say, that voting for either party in any of these positions is basically pointless cause they just are not what i want out of my government. Also the amount of corruption i saw, misuse of budget from every fucking office that i was involved with(I'm in IT, lots of dumb spending that i had to sign for despite me and my peers cries against it), and incompetent people being hired for jobs that they are not even close to qualified for.
So yeah, fuck voting.
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Keep pushing for that uninformed vote.
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On November 06 2012 04:07 ninazerg wrote:
What if, say, I happened to be a Republican in a state which votes overwhelmingly Democratic, or vice-versa? Even if I was like "Romney, fuck yeah!" and totally ignorant about the electoral college, my state would be won by Barack Obama regardless.
Also, why should I be pressured into voting if, as an American, I have the personal freedom to abstain from voting if I feel that neither candidate is qualified for holding public office?
It's your duty as a citizen to vote. If you've considered each item and your choice is to abstain, that's cool. But it seems unlikely that you would examine every issue and end up neither opposed nor in favour of all of them.
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But as was said before, your vote doesn't matter. At all. Even quoting the 2000 Florida example is still not helpful, as that was decided by more than 1 vote. My one vote is completely meaningless. Why should I waste the gas to drive to the polling station (especially as I live in NY  )?
On November 06 2012 12:24 EatThePath wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 04:07 ninazerg wrote:
What if, say, I happened to be a Republican in a state which votes overwhelmingly Democratic, or vice-versa? Even if I was like "Romney, fuck yeah!" and totally ignorant about the electoral college, my state would be won by Barack Obama regardless.
Also, why should I be pressured into voting if, as an American, I have the personal freedom to abstain from voting if I feel that neither candidate is qualified for holding public office? It's your duty as a citizen to vote. If you've considered each item and your choice is to abstain, that's cool. But it seems unlikely that you would examine every issue and end up neither opposed nor in favour of all of them.
I didn't sign up for the obligation to vote. How is it my duty? Who decided that?
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On November 06 2012 13:48 soon.Cloak wrote:But as was said before, your vote doesn't matter. At all. Even quoting the 2000 Florida example is still not helpful, as that was decided by more than 1 vote. My one vote is completely meaningless. Why should I waste the gas to drive to the polling station (especially as I live in NY )? Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 12:24 EatThePath wrote:On November 06 2012 04:07 ninazerg wrote:
What if, say, I happened to be a Republican in a state which votes overwhelmingly Democratic, or vice-versa? Even if I was like "Romney, fuck yeah!" and totally ignorant about the electoral college, my state would be won by Barack Obama regardless.
Also, why should I be pressured into voting if, as an American, I have the personal freedom to abstain from voting if I feel that neither candidate is qualified for holding public office? It's your duty as a citizen to vote. If you've considered each item and your choice is to abstain, that's cool. But it seems unlikely that you would examine every issue and end up neither opposed nor in favour of all of them. I didn't sign up for the obligation to vote. How is it my duty? Who decided that?
You also didn't sign up to be born, and yet you have moral obligations as a rational being during your short time here. Nothing forces you to mind the obligation but it's there all the same. Inaction is opposition to someone, there is no such thing as "not participating" in the universe.
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On November 06 2012 13:55 EatThePath wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 13:48 soon.Cloak wrote:But as was said before, your vote doesn't matter. At all. Even quoting the 2000 Florida example is still not helpful, as that was decided by more than 1 vote. My one vote is completely meaningless. Why should I waste the gas to drive to the polling station (especially as I live in NY )? On November 06 2012 12:24 EatThePath wrote:On November 06 2012 04:07 ninazerg wrote:
What if, say, I happened to be a Republican in a state which votes overwhelmingly Democratic, or vice-versa? Even if I was like "Romney, fuck yeah!" and totally ignorant about the electoral college, my state would be won by Barack Obama regardless.
Also, why should I be pressured into voting if, as an American, I have the personal freedom to abstain from voting if I feel that neither candidate is qualified for holding public office? It's your duty as a citizen to vote. If you've considered each item and your choice is to abstain, that's cool. But it seems unlikely that you would examine every issue and end up neither opposed nor in favour of all of them. I didn't sign up for the obligation to vote. How is it my duty? Who decided that? You also didn't sign up to be born, and yet you have moral obligations as a rational being during your short time here. Nothing forces you to mind the obligation but it's there all the same. Inaction is opposition to someone, there is no such thing as "not participating" in the universe.
First of all, the comparison is weak. I didn't sign up to be born, and thus, I don't have any obligation to live- as in, I have the right to commit suicide. But once I'm born, I have certain restrictions, not obligations. That's different than saying I have an obligation to vote.
Next, you assume i have a moral obligation to vote. But if it won't make a difference, I don't hear the argument that I can be obligated to do it, as a "matter of principle"
Also, once again, you are assuming I have a moral obligation to do anything. I don't generally agree with the idea of objective morality, so I still don't hear your argument.
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Living in a firmly blue state (IL) from a firmly red state (GA). Would love to go vote tmrw, but I dunno when I'm going to have the time to stand in line (class + work + must study for midterms, etc.). Generally how long do the lines run and what's the avg. wait time, esp. for someone whose ballot application isn't preprinted?
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EPT
