Is refusing to vote a viable political position?
Ive recently become disillusioned with political action in general, voting in particular. The state has become so sour to my tastes that I feel I must do what I can to refuse participating in its aggrandizement, and refusing to vote seems a viable position in this regard. But there is little philosophy on the subject and very little writing I can find comfort in. So I seek help from the forum in formulating any arguments for refusing to vote. Any challenges, refinements, and of course mockery is appreciated.
To explain, my disillusion began when a friend of mine from Australia boasted to me that she was quite proud of the compulsory voting in her country. I had to scoff because living in a state where performing compulsory political rituals is not much to be proud of, or at least it ought not to be. The right to vote is not much of a right if the right not to vote doesnt come with it; if youve traded your right to vote for a duty to vote, suffrage for state servitude, it might be proper to show some humility.
One can understand why a state might make voting compulsory, though. Without the vote, and thus without the necessary concessions of power from the people to the state, state power would appear less legitimate. After all, despite what indoctrination teaches us, a concession of power is all a vote amounts to. This becomes clear whenever we use our votes in its most obsequious function: in order to elect which mammal should be given power over the rest. So it could be said that refusing to vote is tantamount to refusing to sign over our lives to other men.
Though its true that a right to vote should be universal, and lords and landowners ought not to be the only ones able to elect who has the power and who makes the rules, the representative system, the relationship between a representative and his constituents, differs only in degree to the lords and land owners representing the landless tenantry in the decision making processes. That we get to vote for who should rule us seems more a consolation prize than any tangible enfranchisement.
In effect, though, refusing to vote as a matter of conscience is no different than refusing to vote because I have better shit to do. Others would vote; people would be afforded power; very little would change. Not until no one voted could anything revolutionary occur, and any political movement in this direction appears outlandish, even if not impossible.
So the question remains, is refusing to vote a viable political position?
To explain, my disillusion began when a friend of mine from Australia boasted to me that she was quite proud of the compulsory voting in her country. I had to scoff because living in a state where performing compulsory political rituals is not much to be proud of, or at least it ought not to be. The right to vote is not much of a right if the right not to vote doesnt come with it; if youve traded your right to vote for a duty to vote, suffrage for state servitude, it might be proper to show some humility.
One can understand why a state might make voting compulsory, though. Without the vote, and thus without the necessary concessions of power from the people to the state, state power would appear less legitimate. After all, despite what indoctrination teaches us, a concession of power is all a vote amounts to. This becomes clear whenever we use our votes in its most obsequious function: in order to elect which mammal should be given power over the rest. So it could be said that refusing to vote is tantamount to refusing to sign over our lives to other men.
Though its true that a right to vote should be universal, and lords and landowners ought not to be the only ones able to elect who has the power and who makes the rules, the representative system, the relationship between a representative and his constituents, differs only in degree to the lords and land owners representing the landless tenantry in the decision making processes. That we get to vote for who should rule us seems more a consolation prize than any tangible enfranchisement.
In effect, though, refusing to vote as a matter of conscience is no different than refusing to vote because I have better shit to do. Others would vote; people would be afforded power; very little would change. Not until no one voted could anything revolutionary occur, and any political movement in this direction appears outlandish, even if not impossible.
So the question remains, is refusing to vote a viable political position?
Comments (200)
If that is what is said, it is a very private statement. Other men will gladly accept your silence as submission.
If everybody withdraws from the selection of representatives and agents of the state, how is that an opportunity for change? Or do you wish for a war of all against all? That condition would guarantee a change but not much choice.
Its not a desire for change that motivates me but a conscientious effort to refuse participating in what I view as an evil arraignment. F?at j?stitia ruat cælum.
Im not sure how that is the case, so Ill say no.
Then how do you see the withdrawal from the legal right to vote as making change more possible?
Very important OP. Let me tell you that I fully agree with you because of the following arguments:
1. Since the moment politicians don't seem to respect voters in general, it looks like it is not worth at all to go and vote for them. Whenever a politician gains his seat he is no longer operative. I mean he stands there in the parliament doing weird stuff and plotting. They only rule for a few so (for example) 800.000 votes go to the rubbish ban if 10 or 20 still winning their benefit. Clearly, they do not govern for the mass but a few persons with money and power. Then, if a seat gives such power to a politician, we have to do the opposite: Not voting. Simple. At least he no longer will survive thanks to our taxes.
2. About honour and loyalty to the nation. But again, it seems politicians do not respect these basic principles of a wealthy nation either. These politicians think they have the power to rule over my life but they are wrong because I know how to die with honour at least. As Yukio Mishima once wrote in one of his essays:
His name was Kozaburo Eto. This young student killed himself on February 11th, Constitutions day. He did it lonely in the darkness of his job staying apart from television or looks. It was a solemn and respectful act. This was the main critical action against politics I have ever seen in my life.
And now this private decision is being given public notice. That is a political message.
What about voting for none of the options? Don't you have that option in your country?
The US does not have a 'none of the above' option in their slates. Some states are trying forms of ranked voting to alter how run-off elections work.
What is the formula? How is that not a vote for fascism?
For someone like the OP author who openly wants fascism and corporatocracy, and defends the likes of Donald Trump to the bitter end -- all why pretending to denounce the state -- should most certainly not vote. Their non-voting is a deliverance.
I get that. A big part of the success of the Republican Party has been getting people out to vote no matter what is on the ballot. I don't know how that relates to what the OP proposes.
Why dick doodles on the ballot paper are their own election statement
:100:
I would not want to see a withdrawal from the legal right to vote, only to retain the legal right not to vote.
In a way the vote, at least in elections, is to afford someone the privilege to govern over you. It is also to afford someone the right to represent you, as if such a feat was possible. It seems to me that the refusal to bestow these rights and privileges is the first step to unlinking oneself from their deeds.
Protest voting is still voting. I dont want to stand in their lines and go along with their charade.
More lies. I openly oppose fascism every time I oppose your political activity.
So move? It sounds like you want to opt out of the system. Whats the dilemma exactly?
Is refusing to vote a viable political position? No. Its a position, a moral one perhaps, but its not a political one since it necessarily entails not being political, not participating in the politics.
Youre right that it entails little more than avoiding the polls, except for wherever compulsory voting is in order. But voting isnt the same as politics, so I would not say refusing to vote entails not being political.
True voting isnt synonymous with politics, but I would say its a necessary part of the political system in Canada or the US. Arent you opting out of a system based on votes when you refuse to vote? I would compare it to playing baseball but refusing to take the field. Not really playing baseball then. (And likewise the baseball field is not synonymous with baseball).
Yes, refusing to participate would be opting out of the system, in a way. But its more like refusing to play baseball but having to remain in the dugout.
Ok. So why remain in the dugout? Are you holding out hope that the political system will change? Also, what forces other than voting would result in the changes you want?
I often think about modern times and how its just the wrong time to be born for people who want to live outside the control of governments and corporations. In yesteryears there were places you could go that werent owned by either, a place where you could do your own thing. In the future when we expand to the stars you grab your people and set off for some distant star to do your own thing.
Today, where do you go that isnt owned by some country or corporation?
People call it 'compulsory voting' as a shorthand. But, like many shorthands, the label misleads significantly.
Your refusal to waste your vote on the P-O-S who was 'highly favored' to win your state was as patriotic a statement as it was prudential. A greatful nation turns it's fat, dumb & lonely eyes to you, sir! :victory: :mask:
In the UN general assembly and security council, abstention is a valid stance to adopt. What am I missing?
It is compulsory by law for all eligible Australian citizens to enrol and vote in federal elections, by-elections and referendums.
https://www.aec.gov.au/enrol/
Seems clear cut to me.
You have no choice in the matter, you havta a choose! :snicker: A contradictio in terminis.
Good point. Maybe the problem is more with representative democracy than voting itself. In America, at least, some constituencies are massive. The conceit that one person can represent the will of that many voters is pure humbug.
Exactly. Representative democracy is no longer effective because they do not "represent" us. It is a filthy lie to get a seat in the congress and start plotting to rule the state.
The problem here is how to get rid of all of those politicians who do not represent us. It looks like impossible because they approve laws to reinforce their seats.
Conclusion: it is a trap the act of voting itself. So, as you well proposed, I also think that not voting is the only defence we still have against them
But haven't you overlooked the philosophy of Anarchism? States are - in themselves and regardless of form - unjust and oppressive. Voting colludes with injustice.
[quote=Bakunin]If there is a State, there must be domination of one class by another and, as a result, slavery; the State without slavery is unthinkableand this is why we are the enemies of the State.[/quote]
The slogan of the 1970's - 1980's was 'If voting changed anything, it would be illegal.' For all I know, it's still current but I don't tend to meet anarchists now so I can't say.
The Anarchist Library has plenty of papers with titles such as 'Anarchists Do Not Vote, They Fight' and 'The Case Against Voting', 'Angry, Not Apathetic' etc. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/topic/anti-voting.
The Stanford entry on Anarchism is sound but unsympathetic.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/690369
Thats what I was looking for. Thanks. I dont follow too much anarchist literature. Theres often too much collectivism in it for my tastes.
[quote=Stanford on Max Stirner]The Ego and Its Own had a destructive impact on Stirners left-Hegelian contemporaries, and played a related and significant role in the evolution of the thought of Karl Marx. Concerning its longer term historical influence, Stirners best-known work has become a founding text in the political tradition of individualist anarchism.[/quote]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/max-stirner/
I will hazard a guess why collectivist anarchism prevails, which is that people see what some individuals get up to outside state control and wonder how the interests of the weaker can be protected. But collectivism, if prescribed, re-invents the state. It's a problem, for which rejection of anarchy itself may be the only solution.
It seems to be a worthy cause against the classical system of representatives...
A sort of side note: you ask if it is a valid political position. I think this can easily be conflated with: do you think it is ok/good/right that I do this? Which are very, very different categories. I think it indisputable that it can be a valid political position. Doesn't mean it is right. But given that we are dealing with values and incredibly complex phenomena, I think a rational case can be made for it.
Probably for most people to strengthen the position you do not merely avoid voting but also take some kind of public stand.
It reminds me a little of the way third party candidates are treated and their potential voters. This is the US I am thinking of. The moment someone announces a third party candidate, pundits and large numbers of the citizens who would vote for the candidate who will likely lose votes to the third party candidate scream that it is sabotage, wasted votes, problematically romantic and unrealistic spoiling of the election.
Which 1) makes it even less likely the third candidate could win. If they all just shut up, who knows where it would lead. In other words it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy; 2) assumes that what is just around the bend is the only issue. What if third party candidates slowly got more and more votes? What if the two parties had to deal with a broader range of issues and lost their hegemony over time?
Basically they are damning us to lesser evil elections of the very rich and people that the incredibly rich approve of. We survived the two devils (which is a devil depends on your politics) Obama and Trump - that should cover most people's idea of the Devil, if not the Bushes and Clinton also). This short game thinking might just be a problem.
So it can be with not voting.
I understand your point that we cannot live outside law. We need an order and control to our actions and responsibilities.
Nevertheless, I think it should be important to do something against this insufficient establishment of representative. For now, the act of not voting in the right path to follow.
Most PM are puppets of a few wich really holds the power. It could be interesting to see how effective would be not voting at all. What would happen to those puppets.
Everything is a lie and they made up a system to get seats and earn money without responsibilities. What a shame.
The problem is this. Everybody wins inside politics. The government and the opposition. Pur votes give them power to always win in whatever issues.
But that's not the same as consenting to the policies of those who get in. Simply consenting that whomever got in is the legal holder of the that office. I don't see anything in that which mitigates the political message of not voting.
Quoting Cuthbert
How do either of these positions differ in the case of voting? It is also impossible to tell the difference between enthusiastic support and reluctant consent just from a vote.
If I vote Labour am I supporting all of their policies, some of them (which ones), none of them (but want the Tories out)? You can't tell. So it seems irrelevant.
And I don't understand why voting then provides the right to complain. If anything, it's the opposite, you actually provided your written consent for the person to run the country for you.
Your emotional opinion has nothing to do with the outcome of voting. Voting is electing that a group of people that you are involved in should do something, or not do something. Your refusal to participate in the process simply means you don't get any say on what goes on around you. Its like being a child.
Quoting Isaac
Voting does not provide written consent that the country gets to run you. That's consented the day you enter the countries borders. Its consented on every day you decide to continue to live there. Voting is the ability to have a say in how they get to run you, and others around you.
Imagine a person who complains they can't lose weight, but doesn't exercise and eats junk food all day. If they complain, they will simply be viewed as lazy by people around them. The person who is exercising daily and working on their diet gets to complain and will likely receive some respect from the people around them.
That's just repeating the assertion, not explaining why.
Quoting Philosophim
Probably.
That's because it's provably true that dieting and exercise has a very high probability of causing you to lose weight. Hence if you don't do it you're not trying.
Voting does not have a provably high probability of causing the country to be run in a way you wouldn't complain about. In fact, when it has been tested, it's shown quite the opposite.
So what's the link between voting and complaint?
If I said an overweight person had no right to complain about their weight if they can't even be bothered to listen to heavy metal, you'd consider that unjustified. Why? Because there's no demonstrable link between listening to heavy metal and losing weight.
There's no demonstrable link between voting and getting the country run the way you want it. So why does doing so confer a right to complain denied to those who don't?
In what way does my voting anti-car change that situation?
An election is just a snapshot of how things stand with people's political persuasions. I don't change anything by making that snapshot more or less accurate.
My apologies then, I did not understand the question.
Quoting Isaac
And yet many people who exercise and attempt to diet do not lose weight. It is no guarantee. Of course voting does not mean you'll get what you want. But its one of the few viable processes of expressing what you want. You're also viewing yourself as an island. People vote. That means you can convince people in your community to vote as well. You can advertise. You can run for office yourself.
Take the opposite, that you can't vote at all. That you can't congregate with others to discuss what you're going to vote on. You have absolutely no choice to be run by a few others who have all the power. Do you want that? Is that somehow more favorable?
The reason why you don't get everything you want when you vote, is because others vote too. Which means some voters in any vote, will win. Sometimes that can be you, but only if you vote too. Either you're at the table, and will receive some modicum of respect and consideration, or you're at the kids table while the adults make decisions about your life.
Quoting Isaac
To re-emphasize in my reply to your first post, voting is done by people. You could start a campaign to be anti-car. You can be the first vote. Then go explain to people why. Many people may hear your explanations and think, "Yeah, anti-car is the way to go!" Even if you don't win the vote, if you start getting a sizable amount of anti-car people, the car people have to start considering you. Maybe they'll compromise on cars a bit.
Let me give you an example of some real life statistics. Generally people in their early 20's don't vote very much. As such, candidates don't court them. Each time you don't vote, your demographic is not considered in policies, as those who vote are. And so you sit around thinking, "Politicians won't care about my vote anyway", thus perpetuating the cycle.
If you don't want to vote, don't vote. A lot of people worked very hard and died so you could. But it is not noble, efficient, or beating the system. It is surrender without a fight. You have that choice of course. But if you choose not to fight, don't expect people to be sympathetic when you complain about the outcome.
It is literally the same issue but we don't waste our time to go a poll and vote for politicians. China is a good example to consider of. They do not "vote" there. They just elect their general secretary of Chinese Communist Party. They decide what is convenient to Chinese citizens instead of calling to emptiness elections. We all can be agree here that China is a dictatorship but you have to accept that they are the power ruling the world right now, so they are not doing the things that bad...
Examples as China show us that we are just overrated democracy and the system of representatives. Simple.
How can I (as a citizen) join the adult's table? Anyone knows the formula? Because it seems to be so opaque inside politics and who are the ones making and ruling the decisions
No, we do not. No, China has a lot of its own problems as well. We're talking about places where your vote is actually free and counted, not a fake democracy. And no, America is not a fake Democracy.
Quoting javi2541997
Did you read the rest of what I wrote? You are not an island. Join a group. Make one. Also consider where your vote matters more. Local politics often times only take a few individuals to make major changes. Start there.
Ive read Stirner and Proudhon and reject both egoism and socialism. I gravitate more towards people like Herbert Spencer, Albert Jay Nock, HD Thoreau, HL Mencken, who are probably more literary than philosophical.
Thats an interesting point about eventually rejecting anarchism, though. I myself havent taken the plunge because Im not quite sure man can govern himself just yet.
... what?
Quoting Philosophim
The problem we are discussing in this thread is that our votes do not matter or count at all. It doesn't matter if we speak about local or national politics. Everything ends up with same issue: ineffectiveness. Whenever they catch their seat they forget why we voted them. It is a system where only a few wins. There are not changes. The issue only changes when those in the power start seeing the problems so close. They do not care about us and I do not want pay them with my taxes
That's right. If someone describes themselves as an 'enthusiastic supporter' on the strength of voting, they are over-stating the case. If someone describes themselves as a 'protester' on the strength of not voting, it's another overstatement.
No. I said it was highly probable. Getting what you want by voting isn't. It's quite literally only going to achieve that if yours happens to be the casting vote. In all other situations the world will carry on exactly the same regardless.
Quoting Philosophim
I don't see how. As I said, if I vote for Labour that could mean I agree with anything from all of their policies to none of them. It barely reveals anything about what I want and a well conducted survey would reveal far more.
Quoting Philosophim
I can. None of which are voting. In fact, if I successfully managed to convince 60% of the population of my ideas, I still wouldn't need to vote.
Quoting Philosophim
Why? You're assuming voting is the only response to power.
Quoting Philosophim
Nonsense. I don't need to vote to find out if others have similar principles to me. I only need look out of the window. If I were to vote I might vote Green, or Communist Party. I don't need to eagerly await the election to discover neither of those candidates are going to win. So my vote did what, exactly?
Quoting Philosophim
This is just patronising bullshit. Voting is not a 'table' in any sense whatsoever. There's no discussion, no interaction. We're presented with choices and we decide which one we least hate. that's it.
Quoting Philosophim
All of which can be done without voting too. My actual vote is irrelevant.
Quoting Philosophim
Why? If 60% love cars and 40% hate them, you go with pro-car policies and win. You don't water them down. Why would you?
Quoting Philosophim
Which would only make any difference at all if my demographic wanted the same things as me. Otherwise why would I care if my demographic gets considered. My demographic tend to be heavily conservative so I'd prefer they were considered less.
Quoting Philosophim
Voting is not a fight. Not even in the slightest bit. It's an exercise in statistical bureaucracy to find out who people want to hold that office. There's not even the tiniest element of 'fight' in it. It's like filling in a census.
Maybe, but the question was about it's being a political position, not a protest. IF voting Labour is a political position (despite the fact that it might be only strategic, or habit, or defeatist), then so is not voting (despite the fact that it might be apathy, laziness or stupidity).
That's your belief then. I'll keep voting and have some victories while you can sit home and let people like me decide your future without opposition.
Voting (or not) does not decide my future. It's not a belief, it's a fact.
If 60% of the electorate want candidate A, then candidate A will be elected, and so determine (that element of) my future.
This is true before the election even takes place.
This is true whether I vote or not.
The matter of what a majority of people in my constituency feel politically is what determines who wins an election. Voting is simply the bureaucratic exercise of officially informing the returning officer of that position.
If I vote, I give the returning officer a more accurate dataset. I do absolutely nothing to change the population from which that dataset is drawn. My vote changes nothing. It adds to data accuracy. The situation the data is recording is not made any more or less the case by my improving the accuracy of the record.
One suggestion has been to count the spoilt ballots, and if the spoilt ballots 'win' all the candidates are barred and a new election with new candidates is held. Politicians invariably reject this idea, and that makes me think it a good idea. It has the merit at least of distinguishing protest from apathy.
Anarchist slogans I have known and loved:
Don't vote, it only encourages them.
It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.
But in practice, I usually find someone to vote for, or at least someone to vote against.
Your vote doesn't matter. It won't change anything unless you vote in a small enough election where it's possible for one vote to matter. You aren't deciding anything for anyone by voting. The belief that our vote matters is only important on the scale of many voters. Or if you're able to convince enough people to vote a certain way.
Although I understand the sentiment behind, I do not agree that voting should be made compulsory. It should be something people would want to do.
That's only if everyone votes. And for everyone to vote, you must vote. Meaning your vote matters.
I think this a problem for any sphere in which individual actions count for little or nothing but group actions determine the result. Reducing your carbon footprint by 90% or increasing it by 200% will do practically nothing to save or to harm the planet. Having just one cigarette in a pub is not going to give anyone emphysema. Etc.
No, it's not like those things at all.
If I reduce my carbon footprint then I have done some very small amount of good. It may not be enough on my own, but it is good, there's less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
If vote (in a situation where I know I'm in a minority) I haven't done some small amount of good. I've done no good at all. The opposition party have won and get to enact their policies in exactly the same way they would have if I hadn't voted. Exactly the same. Not a small but insignificant difference (such as with reducing one's carbon footprint), absolutely no difference at all.
Doesn't that lead to a paradox? If your vote carries no weight and your vote carries the same weight as everyone else's, then nobody's vote carries any weight. The sum of a finite number of zero weights is zero. And yet the number of votes determines who gets elected.
We seem to have reached a point in this discussion where one side is arguing that voting is utterly pointless and the other side is arguing that it's not utterly pointless, only almost utterly.
If I came here hoping to take up a career in promoting democratic engagement then I certainly won't quote this thread on my CV.
That's right. Nobody's vote carries weight in the matter of affecting the way we are governed. Votes are a statistical exercise.
It's like claiming that filling in a census actually changes the demographic make up of the population. It clearly doesn't, it just records it more accurately, the actual demographic make up of the population is what it is regardless of whether you fill in the census or not.
If I ask you what you think of Shakespeare, you might tell me, or you might remain silent, or you might lie - none of which changes what you actually think about Shakespeare.
If the returning officer asks the electorate which candidate they most want in that office they might tell him, or they might remain silent, or they might lie - none of which changes the fact of which candidate they actually want in that office.
That one got a chuckle out of me.
Nailed it.
This is not true. Political movements inevitably start small and have to grow. One way they are seen to grow is by increasing their support in an election. Thus If I vote Green and the Green candidate does not win, still I have demonstrated some support for Green policies.
For another example, the Brexit party never made much of an impression in winning elections, but they managed to 'get Brexit done', by influencing other parties who became frightened of having 'their' voters poached. Showing support influences others.
Absolutely. I don't see how that contradicts anything I've said.
Quoting Isaac
Voting gives a slightly more accurate impression of how people feel politically than would be given if you didn't vote.
A well constructed survey would do a considerably better job of the same task.
Neither change the way things actually are, which is what determines who gets into power.
I can see a case for voting making a difference in the very specific circumstance where it is unclear what people's political views are (it's usually blindingly obvious), but in such cases a survey would be a better method.
Quoting unenlightened
Does it? Does showing support for United at a football match influence City supporters? Are football fans constantly changing ends?
Are the wealthy surprised by opposition, or do they merely expect it?
Tories are not necessarily persuaded to be less bigoted by an increasing Labour vote. They may even be persuaded to be more bigoted to pick up the EDL vote to compensate.
Besides which, again, there are way more effective ways of showing support. Protests, consumer choices, strikes... Which render mere voting trivial by comparison. Very few people strategically go on an anti-racism march. Strategic voting is so commonplace as to render the tally almost meaningless in terms of support.
It is a strategy that is highly unlikely to work. Yes, if you hate all possible candidates equally, perhaps it makes sense not to vote (or really if you like them all equally). However, if you hate all the candidates, you generally have other options such as as submitting a write in or a spoiled ballot. This registers disapproval or disaffection in a way not voting at all does not.
Research on low turn out has generally concluded that it is the result of people not caring that much about election outcomes, rather than them disliking their options. The slump in US turnout in the 20th century has receded, and turn out is way up, even as people's unhappiness with the government has spiked. You see this is fledgling democracies too. People were very unhappy with their governments in Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. but turn out was huge despite serious safety risks for voters. Not voting is generally more a sign of comfort than disapproval.
Low turn out could sap the legitimacy of the government, but historically this is not the case. You would probably need absolutely abysmal turn out to really challenge the legitimacy of the process if access to the polls was relatively open. The collective action problem of getting 80-90% of eligible voters not to vote is going to almost always be harder than just running a candidate people actually like, making it a bad strategy.
Plus, people are generally not actually indifferent between candidates. They are either not informed enough to know which candidate best represents their preferences, uninterested in voting because of the low likelihood that their preferred candidate will win, or trying to make some sort of morale statement about not picking any of the candidates, despite actually liking one more than the other. In general, this isn't a good strategy. You're better off at least voting for the candidate you dislike less, unless voting takes a long time and your opportunity cost is high.
Some partisans don't vote because they want their least preferred candidate to win. The idea is that "things will get bad enough that we'll get real change." This view is sort of common in the US with the far left. "Let Trump overturn an election and have the Court strip more freedoms, this will finally provoke a true reaction and move us forward." Historically, this is a bad strategy. The group with institutional power tends to do better, and even if your preferred group wins, if a struggle turns violent, the outcome can still be worse than having the group you dislike keep power. Violent struggle can also transform your preferred group into one you hate (e.g., communists who ended up hating what the Russian Communist Party became under Stalin).
The weightlessness of someone's vote is going to vary by voting system. In an instant run off or ranked choice voting system, your vote is almost always going to have some weight. Even if your preferences are far from the median voters', your vote will still move the needle towards your preferences and away from the ones you most dislike.
Voting strategies become more fraught when you have things like closed primaries, a strong two party system, and first past the post, winner take all voting. There, your vote can appear meaningless if your candidate didn't win. But voting for the candidate you least dislike is still an option.
Your vote isn't weightless though, that's not how the mathematics works out. Votes aren't weightless in this system, but instead what you have is a tipping point. If you are balancing weights on a fulcrum, and you have more weight on one side than the other, and so you get a tip to one side, it isn't that the mass on the other side is reduced to zero, it just isn't enough to stop the tipping.
And as one sided as the US system can get, you still get surprises. Massachusetts has had two long term Republican governors recently who were quite popular. Kentucky currently has a Democratic governor. Parties with dominating leads in average voter preference can still manage to muck things up for themselves.
Winning on slim margins may also signal to election winners that they may need to moderate their views if they want to win re-election. This isn't always how it works, but it sometimes does. Charlie Baker was the most popular politician out of all Congressmen and governors despite being a Republican in a deeply Democratic state because he knew he had to moderate his positions. This doesn't always happen. Donald Trump didn't moderate his positions after an extremely narrow win, but then again he also went on to lose almost all the year's swing states and garner 7.5 million fewer votes, so it's not like that was a smart strategy.
Indeed. Life is complicated. One can influence different people in different ways with the same small act. Nevertheless, Brexit got done despite the Brexit party never winning significantly, because the movement became a bandwagon and the bigots climbed aboard. So losing votes matter.
Its certainly not a winning strategy, and wouldnt change the results of any election. I think thats largely the point of refusing to vote.
Its more a conscientious objection. But it has the potential to effect serious change. In some cases non-voters are a large enough constituency to make moves outside of elections and with other means than the vote, so its not a complete waste. The problem is probably organizing other non-voters.
Quoting NOS4A2
No, I don't consider it a viable position. Here's why:
At least in my country, abstention helps the stronger party. (E.g. if a party wins the elections with 45% against 43% of the runner-up and 20% percent have abstained from voting --usually it's more-- if a significant part of them had voted any party, and esp. for the runner-up, but even for smaller parties, then the second could achieve a larger percentage than the now declared first one.)
Unfortunately, in my country, blank ballots (showing no preference) are considered invalid, and as such they are ignored! It's as if you didn't vote at all! As if you weren't present in the election center/station! I once did that, casting a blank ballot as a disagreement/protest against both the strongest parties. It was then that I found that it didn't count as a vote!! In my opinion, it is a legitimate vote. Well, next time that I wanted my vote to have the same effect, I voted for an unimportant party.
So, in essence, by not voting, one supports the strongest party, whether this is known beforehand or not.
Its an irresponsible political position, or in a word: libertarian.
And that does what?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't think anyone is denying it's an option.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This would only be the case if voting were random. It isn't. Someone's voting behaviour is determined by their political preferences, which exist prior to the act of voting. So voting cannot tip the balance. The balance is already tipped (or not) by a slight change in political preferences. The vote merely records this change, it cannot cause it.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Did the communists get in somewhere? Was there a surprise landslide toward the radical eco-anarchists in Alabama? Somewhere we expect to be Republican turning Democrat is not a 'surprise' they're basically the same party anyway and to the extent they're different the changes will be undone/smothered completely by next election.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Not of the slightest interest to someone who dislikes both the leading party and the second though. You're just assuming a binomial political system and considering the effect of voting for the runners up. Not all of us fall into one of two camps.
I'm not following your line of thinking. The brexit movement promoted brexit sufficiently to get it done. What's that got to do with the votes they got? If anything they made progress despite low votes, not because of them. I guess I'm just not seeing the link you're seeing between their votes and their success. Do you not think their success is far more likely to be down to their (Cambridge Analytica) campaign strategy, rather than people seeing a few measly votes and thinking 'sod it, let's leave Europe, I'm sold"?
No. I think their success was down to frightening the Tories into adopting their policy, which they did by "splitting the vote." Without those losing votes, there would have been no referendum.
I'm assuming a binary because the way the US runs most state elections and all federal ones produces a binary. Different systems have different contexts.
With ranked choice voting, pulling the leadership towards your preferences results in policies you prefer more. It doesn't mean you're going to be happy, you'll just be less unhappy.
Preferences exist before elections, votes do not. Elections are decided by votes and the structure of the election system, not by preferences. If preferences = outcomes than the Republican party would be extinct at the national level because it fares worse with median preferences continually.
It is viable in part because of election mechanics (e.g., the electoral college, partisan districting, capping the House of Reps early in the 20th century, the arbitrary representation of the Senate), but it's also viable in statewide elections where it has a disadvantage on preferences because turn out determines elections, not preferences. Having less support, but supporters who are much more likely to vote is the thing that keeps the GOP competitive, none of the other stuff would save them without that edge. For all the talk of voter suppression or theoretically illegal expansion of mail in ballots, the fact is that the parties have always fought over these issues and the variances have always been marginal numerically, although they can be enough to decide the election.
As for radicals getting elected, it does happen. It's just that in the US system they run as members of a major party most of the time. It just happens rarely because radicals are, pretty much by definition, far from median preferences, and so are unlikely to win in any electoral system. But even if you're a radical you probably have competitive candidates that are closer to your ideal than others.
For a sports analogy, complaining about losing an election despite getting more votes, when the system isn't based on absolute vote totals, is like saying the Mets should have won the 2015 World Series because they led for 92% of the innings. It misses that having a flaming dumpster fire for a bullpen can still make you lose games because games are decided by runs, not who is winning the longest. Same for Tom Brady's perfect season run that ended with a close loss to a mediocre Giants team in the Superbowl.
On the other hand, preferences <> votes is like saying "why play the games, the Nets have all the megastars they will win," and then they crash when you play the actual games. You could have written off the Mets as a clown show because they were pinch hitting their pitchers, because their lineup was such trash last year, but the games still get played, and this year it turns out they're amazing.
I see what you mean. I think maybe the misunderstanding here is in the sort of movement I'm imagining. Brexit was popular (despite people not actually wanting that party in power) and we could see how popular it was just by looking out of the window. I don't think Tory policy really waited for the actual election results before designing the strategy. They knew which way the wind was blowing. It goes back to what I said earlier. If you want to know what people are thinking politically, there's better ways to do that than elections.
I think the mistake here is conflating campaigning (which might be associated with an election), data-harvesting (which might be via an election, but need not be), and actually voting.
Only if people vote randomly. If people's votes reflect their political preferences then clearly their political preferences determine the outcome. Otherwise you might as well say that the returning officer determines the outcome and the actual votes merely cause him to decide to call it that way.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yeah, true. Not votes either though is it? In fact I don't see how this does anything but undermine your position. Voting matters even less if the system is rigged.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
As I said earlier, I don't consider the Democratic party to be any different from the Republicans so the fact that there's a set of non-voters who could get Democrats elected in some areas is irrelevant. If there were a set on non-voters who could get a socialist party elected I'd be more interested, but I already know there isn't. I don't need an election to tell me that. I can look out of my window.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Making voting for them pointless.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes probably. And if they're going to lose, they're going to lose. If, and only if, a moderately preferable party was a few votes behind a less preferable one I might be persuaded to vote, if it wasn't raining, and I had nothing else to do that day. Slightly increasing the chances of getting a slightly less awful party elected for a brief period where they will probably achieve none of their promises anyway, is not high on my list of priorities.
Not voting is quite the opposite. Zero support is given. Besides, the effect of not voting is nil, and one doesnt violate his morality by refraining from participating.
Ill accept that. Statist responsibilities are little different than the slaves, in my opinion.
After your endless displays of Trump boot-licking you would have us believe that youre some sort of anarchist? I suppose its good that you recognize your lack of responsibility though, very Trumpian.
Someone is sour and couldnt come up with anything better to say. Very praxisian of you.
What can I say, irresponsibility rubs me the wrong way.
But you wont say why it is irresponsible. The only one doing the rubbing are your emotions.
What does that even mean?
Your endless support of a politician, namely Trump, belies the sentiments expressed in the OP. Apparently, you enjoy the thought of having you neck under his [s]boot[/s] golf shoe.
We were talking about not voting and you said it was an irresponsible political position. Why?
If a foreign country would invade my country and then hold a theatre of "free" elections, I would definitely not want to give them the legitimacy of a vote. Or if there would be a true dictatorship.
In my view that the choices are lousy isn't a reason why not to vote.
Has my example been wasted? And imagine, I thought of deleting it, because the math is so simple and the reason too evident!
The word "support" I mention is meant NUMBER-WISE, indirectly and unintentionally, not directly, as when voting intentionally in favor of someone!
OK, leave math aside.
If I don't go to a football match in which my favorite team competes with another one, I will indirectly and unintentionally support the other team, because I will not be among the fans who support my team, by wearing hats, t-shirts, etc. and cheering. And we know that such a support influences a lot the outcome in all kinds of matches.
Not supporting directly one side in a confrontation, you are indiretly supporting the other.
OK, that's it for me. I can't help more. I already did too much.
I think that is a clever point but I have to disagree.
Two politicians, Alice and Bob, are running for city mayor. I refuse to vote. Which one am I indirectly supporting, Alice or Bob?
It isnt a reason to vote, either.
This is no less true of voting for any party other than the second strongest. So is your argument that we should all vote for either the strongest or the second strongest party, and no others?
Why?
If you pick the least lousy candidate or pick a candidate from a party that isn't going to go through, it's still a vote which the winners didn't get.
Its still a vote. If a vote is a concession of power to the state, it makes little sense to concede power while at the same time wasting a vote.
Suppose Alice is ahead of Bob by one vote. If I don't vote, and nothing changes until the end of the electoral race, Alice will win. Now, if I decide to vote at this point, even at random, there are 50% chances that I vote for Bob, and this would result in a tie. And I can always make this tie certainly happen if I vote for Bob, of course.
You could answer that yourself if you had tested your example by asking "What could happen if I vote and what if I don't?" and taking different cases and all possibilities into consideration.
I wonder what am I still doing here! :grin:
Elections are almost always a confronation between the two strongest parties. Yet, I have mentioned about the effect of voting for smaller (lesst strong) parties has, in my first example at https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/723152.
As for the confrontation between the two stronger parties, I gave another example in may recent post at https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/723152.
Those both seem to reference the post I responded to.
Your argument seems to be that abstaining makes it more likely the dominant party gets in because the second most dominant party gains fewer votes.
It's also true that the second most dominant party gains fewer votes if you vote for a minor party.
So yours seems to be an argument against voting for anyone other than the second most dominant party.
Now that I put more thought into it, about three minutes, it occurs to me that I may consider it responsible if the non-voter is against democracy. Are you against democracy? If so, what would be a better option?
No.
Hey, why don't you ask a political analyst? He/she will know better than me!
You're not against democracy but you argue against participation in democracy. Are you sure that you're not a Russian troll? I know that I've asked you that before.
Grasping for straws. Its so stoic I love it.
Im grasping for an answer. How can someone who is not against democracy honestly argue against participation in democracy?
I do understand that this may be a difficult question for you so please, if its too much just ignore or blow past it once more.
Democracy doesn't require everyone's participation in voting.
What a strange policy.
Voting lends legitimacy to a system, so essentially they're forcing their citizens to acknowledge the system as legitimate. An odd flirtation with tyranny.
If one doesn't vote because they do not wish to acknowledge the legitimacy of a system, that seems to me like a perfectly viable position to take.
It's pseudo-democracy. Even North Korea is called The Democratic People's Republic of Korea. And it's citizen's are required to vote every four-to-five years for who will be elected as Supreme Leader.
Imagine we are having this same discussion as North Koreans. Would you accuse those who don't vote (assuming they could get away with not voting) as opposing democracy?
I made the point in the original post that representative democracy isnt rule by the people.
I question how much democracy is valued by someone who argues against participation in democracy, simply. I assume that a pseudo-democracy may be valued by the ruling class and should probably not be valued by the ruled, but they may value it even if it doesnt serve them well, due to ignorance.
On a related note, Trump appears to be intent on weakening the institutions that support American democracy, given the chance. Clearly he would love a pseudo-democracy and his ignorant base would love to hand it to him on a silver plate.
I value the national health service, but I don't think unqualified people ought to participate in it.
To get closer to the OP, I might value education, but not participate in any teaching establishment because I disagree with their methods.
I can't see why this is at all controversial. One need not participate in everything one values. That seems pretty straightforward.
That means that dead people indirectly support sides in a confrontation. At least if they would have chosen sides had they been alive.
Edit:
Additionally, this "You either support the good or support the bad. There is no neutrality" mentality can be applied in a different way.
You either support corrupt politicians by voting for them, or you oppose them by not voting for them.
I'm certain that you can think better than that. Even if I don't know you. So, think better about this invalid argument --maybe also check, if needed, what I said about those who don't vote (examples, etc.)-- and tell me yourself why it is invalid.
Probably because, being alive, I have something dead people do not have: a responsibility and duty, which I can either fulfill or shirk. The dead can neither fulfill nor shirk their non-existent duty.
So, you think the living have a duty to participate in politics? Why?
There is good and bad in every field.
There is good and bad art. Good and bad education. Good and bad philosophy.
Do I have to participate in every one of these, and if I don't, it means I am shirking duty and supporting the bad sides?
No! It's much much simpler than that. A living, eligible to vote, person has the option to vote or not. A dead person has no option at all.
Regarding your remaining comments-questions, they seem to belong to the ethical aspect of non-voting, which is another fish to fry.
So even if I don't vote for either candidate, I never the less support one of the candidates by choosing not to vote?
You could also say that that if I choose to vote for a third candidate, that I am indirectly supporting the most popular candidate by not supporting his closer competition. Right?
What about all my free time that I didn't use to support the close candidate? By not using it on the close candidate, did I indirectly use it to support the more popular candidate? How about my spare money. Since I didn't donate it to the close candidate, did I somehow support the popular candidate by not making a donation?
One need not participate in their childs upbringing, particularly if there are no laws restricking irresponsible neglect of that kind.
If a libertarian truely values freedom they will take responsibility themselves, otherwise they prove themselves to be paracites.
So your argument is that because some things require involvement, democracy does?
Please, please never consider the raising of your children and the instructions on an oven-ready chicken at the same time. "Hang on, chicken needs baking in the oven for 2 hours, so that means..."
You are chasing your tail.
Depends on the electoral system. Some countries have a quorum requirement even for parliamentary and presidential elections where it is the general population that votes. I couldn't find an English reference as to which, though. IIRC, it is, for example, some former Yugoslav republics that have this system. If not enough people show up for the elections, the elections are repeated until enough do. In such a system, not voting does make some difference (provided enough people don't vote).
Quoting NOS4A2
In that case, you need to start a civil initiative, start your own party, start collecting signatures for a referendum for a change of constitution etc.
Democracies generally do have legal means of action for those people who are not content with the current system. Many people who are in one way or another critical of the system don't seem to be aware of those means. Or they think making use of those means is too tedious, expensive, or ineffective. In that case, it's those people who are at fault, though, for having unrealistic expectations.
Different deliberative assemblies or electoral bodies operate by different rules. They have diffferent rules as to what constitutes a quorum, the exact role of abstention, the value of the vote against the proposition, etc.
Some deliberative assemblies require, for example, a simple majority of votes to be in favor of a proposition in order for the proposition to pass. Others require absolute unanimity for passing. Etc.
Because of this, it's difficult to make generalizations about voting.
Unlike professional politicians, you underestimate your role as a citizen of a democratic country and you're not willing to put in anywhere near the effort they did.
Quoting Isaac
If you don't like the current parties available, start your own. Of you don't like the constitutional system, take action. Nobody is stopping you from that.
Not at all. My argument is essentially that we generally dont neglect what we value. Of course we may take things for granted, not consciously realizing how much we value something until neglect reaches a point of crises. If we dont value something, like democracy or the fruitcake that you were gifted five years ago but remains in your pantry, then its hardly neglectful to let it rot.
You can escape teaching, practicing medicine, a hundred things. But you cannot escape being a citizen.
Being a citizen brings with it rights and responsibilities.
Such is democracy.
Quoting Isaac
Which is what happens when people don't believe in democracy, even though they nominally live in one.
Quoting NOS4A2
And whose problem and fault is that?
This whole topic is about people who don't understand their role, their rights and their responsibilities as citizens of democractic countries. They are citizens of democractic countries, but they have the mentality of people living in a monarchy (or a cynical dystopia).
Do you value your fire service?
Do you take part in your fire service?
Quoting baker
I could.
Neither of which are voting.
But perhaps your point is that you don't actually want to live in a democracy?
Arigato gozaimus for the warning!
[quote=G.W. Bush]Either you're with us or you're against us.[/quote]
The fallacy of the false dichotomy.
No. I'm fairly certain I'd rather live in a democracy than any of the other available options.
If your point is that voters should require qualification in order to vote, thats beside the point. Though if thats at all a viable idea it expresses a concern for democracy in that theres the intent to improve it.
If a leader makes decisions that the majority of people are against, which they do all the time, then by definition, their decisions are not democratic. Simply calling it "representative democracy" doesn't actually make it democracy.
Then what exactly is your objection to the democratic system of political parties and the process of electing them via popular vote?
Which is why a democracy has the legal means to remove such a political leader from office.
The power imbalance in so-called democratic countries is obscene. Weve seen it in full action during the most recent pandemic, where most of these states seized the economy, ruled by dictate, and froze our precious human rights at their whim and fancy. I have no responsibility to any official in any of these states. I conceded no power and blended no knee.
Yet such is democracy.
It seems that what you really want is that your political stance should prevail with ease.
Heh. I blended no knee either, but I still have a limp.
That doesn't answer the larger question. How does a president represent the will of millions of strangers? You can't represent someone's will unless you know their will. Just getting elected by the strangers doesn't grant you some magical ability to know their will once elected.
Further, how likely is it that the majority poor (poor by comparison) actually want a rich lawyer (half the US presidents have been lawyers, and almost all of them rich) to represent them? And how likely is it that a rich lawyer isn't going to prefer to represent the will of the rich minority over the poor majority?
When democracy is indistinguishable from tyranny weve lost the plot.
Nope. The point is simply that you value your local fire service but you do not take part in it. You're glad it's there, but you don't feel the need to train as a fireman and join in.
One can value the fact that democracy is there without needing to join in.
Nothing.
I wanted to be a fireman when I was a kid, if that counts.
But seriously, if fire service was structured more like democratic elections where there was an expectation of public participation, something like all able adults in a particular age range train and make themselves able to serve for brief periods or whatever, then the curtain of responsibility would fall over a wider swath of the community and not just career firefighters. If it were not compulsory or incentivized in some way, the decision to serve or not would express ones values though not necessarily the value of fire service in this particular case because an individual may actually want the town they live in to burn. On the other hand, if that were the case the fire station may also burn.
This just seems tautologous. You appear to be saying that because there's an expectation we take part, we have s responsibility to take part.
The question the OP asks bid ought there be such an expectation in the first place.
Again, my essential argument is that we generally dont neglect what we value. If we value life, for instance, then we ought to not neglect it. If we are indifferent to life then there would be no basis or inclination for neglect or support. If we hate life then we ought to neglect or destroy it.
If an individual doesn't value their society and feels that it doesn't benefit them in any way then they may justifiably feel no responsibility to support it. If they benefit but choose not to support then they're basically a freeloader, a parasite to some small or large degree.
What's any of that got to do with voting?
Even though an individual is able and has the time they choose not to participate in a cooperative group effort that they value and benefit from.
Definition of freeload
intransitive verb
: to impose upon another's generosity or hospitality without sharing in the cost or responsibility involved
So you're assuming I value and benefit from voting? On what grounds?
I haven't made that assumption. I don't even know if you live in a democracy, though I think you live in the UK. Do you live in a democracy? and if so, do you value and benefit from living in that democracy?
I've already answered that. Yes, and yes. What's any of this got to do with voting?
If you live in a democracy, benefit from and value that democracy, and you're able to participate in the voting process without an unreasonable burden but choose not to, then in my opinion you're freeloading to some degree. One ought not to freeload.
Having just taken a peek, the turnout rate has been around 90% for the last few years in Australia, if I looked at it right and not too briefly. Hugely better than US elections. The quality of US voters is also rather poor considering the recent decisions weve made.
Yes, I gathered that much. I was hoping to find out why, but if you'd rather just restate your original opinion, then you crack on. Not sure you need me to help though.
I'm having trouble following you. I'd rather not repeat myself, actually.
Now I can only speculate that your interest is about freeloading, what moral sense it may be based on or something. I can only guess at this point. Oops, just repeated myself again.
It's painfully simple.
1. You kept claiming that if we value something we take part in it. I gave you counterexamples, it's evident we can value something we don't take part in.
2. You shifted ground to say we don't neglect that which we value, I agreed.
I'm now waiting for your argument that my voting is necessary, or even useful, for the maintenance of democracy (the thing I value).
This is true if voting is a duty.
Neglect of duty: bad.
Fulfillment of duty: not bad.
Doing good beyond what is required: magnificence
Someone not paying taxes you could argue is a free loader. Its considered a duty.
Political involvement, eg, voting, is doing good beyond the requirement of duty (unless you hold a political position, I guess)
So, if you believe voting is a duty, explain why.
Because I value or benefit from democracy, does that mean I have a duty to vote?
I wouldnt describe it as a duty but rather an acceptance of responsibility. Selfishly failing to contribute to a cooperative effort is freeloading. Neglecting an election is a minor instance of freeloading, in my opinion. It seems to me that its most inline with the spirit of a free country to take responsibility rather than it being dictated to you. This is what I find curious about the libertarian. They should be the first in line to take responsibility, assuming they actually value freedom.
I choose not to subject you or myself to further tedium or torturous simplicity, Isaac.
You've still failed to lay out any way at all by which voting contributes to the cooperative effort of democracy.
In situation 1, I vote. In situation 2 I don't vote.
How is the cooperative effort of democracy less well off in situation 2? What harm has it suffered, what facility or property does it now lack?
The election that you neglect in situation 2 lacks a vote, obviously. Elections require votes in order to fulfill their purpose.
Sorry for the pain this simplicity must be causing you, btw.
We have regular elections in our country. I've not voted in any of them. They don't seem to have needed my vote. They seem to be carrying on undiminished by the lack. So what am I missing? Is my lack of vote having an unseen impact that will render elections beyond saving in another 50 years?
A protest vote is still a vote. You have to go to a poll and cast a ballot.
It isnt clear that voting is the civic responsibility we are often told it is, though. And if one believes that no man is good enough to be anothers master, voting might come off as objectionable.
I think the purpose of an election is essentially to express the will of the community. Abstainers are part of the community but fail to express their will via voting and therefore the election is less successful.
A hair drier can still function, for example, with many failed parts but its performance will suffer.
Your drama is unwarranted because no one has claimed, as far as I've seen, that abstaining from an election is any great sin.
I don't see how you could reach such an odd conclusion. If that were the purpose of an election then why is it not in survey format? What are the representatives doing there, and why do they get a job in parliament at the conclusion of the process?
Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems considerably more plausible that the purpose of elections is to select a representative.
Quoting praxis
Why would it need to be a 'great sin' to warrant a counter argument. You've made the claim several times that people who don't vote are "freeloaders", "neglecting their duty"... etc. I'm just disputing that claim. I've no idea where you're reading some 'drama' into that. Talk of one risking the very existence of democracy strikes me as the more 'dramatic' stance.
In American elections, we vote for representatives but also many propositions and such. In any case, it seems to me that making a decision about who represents my interests is an act of will.
Quoting Isaac
I was referring to your rhetorical question about the potential consequences of the absence of your vote. Sorry I mentioned it though, be as dramatic as you want.
Quoting Isaac
If you're saying that I've expressed such talk would you mind pointing it out?
Voting is simply not practical. In the real world, money and connections is what gives a person worldy power.
Look around and see which class of people rule in every country. Its always the rich class.
Directly or or under the table, worldly power is plutocratic. Money rules. Not votes.
Nevertheless, from what I've read on selectorate theory, the people tend to do best in democracies. Democracies require sufficient supporting institutions (checks on power and whatever) though.
I don't deny it, but your argument requires that elections actually require my vote for their success. They may be an act of will but that doesn't prove they need my vote for their success.
Quoting praxis
That's your argument though. It's not drama. If elections don't actually suffer from my lack of vote then there's no freeloading is there? I'm not failing in any duty, since the democracy I value is completely unharmed by my failing to vote.
Quoting praxis
No need. If it's not what you mean then you only need say so.
You've mentioned both freeloading and neglect. So what did you mean by the use of those terms?
You bemoan my repeating things and then ask me to repeat things.
I leave you with the following quote:
Quoting praxis
The 'minor' is not what I'm disputing. The 'freeloading' is.
I was asking you to explain things, not repeat them.
Bullseye. The hypocrisy is astonishing.
But please, we should all be encouraging the Trump supporters not to vote. It is absolutely moral to force yourself not to vote for fascists, as much as you may love them.
Quoting NOS4A2
If someone does not turn up to the polling both, you can't know if they were protesting or lazy. In Australia we can keep tabs on protest votes by counting the informal votes.
If @NOS4A2 does not turn up, his vote is lost. Hence my suggestion that he turn up and draw a cock and balls on the ballot paper, invalidating his vote. If he can start a movement for folk to do this, there will be a clear indication of dissatisfaction.
If he doesn't turn up at all, then he will be counted as simply indifferent.
Again, @NOS4A2's ballot should look something like this:
Firstly, set up an independent body to oversee your elections. This includes the boundaries of electorates. We have the Australian Electoral Commission.
Secondly, move to proportional representation.
And finally, make your presidency apolitical, separating the head of state and the head of government, thus completing the separation of powers. Reduce the presidential powers to mere ceremony. In short, adopt the Westminster system.
This venerates voting beyond anything justified by the system. I can tell in a hundred other ways how many of my fellow citizens are lazy compared to indignant about the system. Why would an election be the only (or even a very good) way to find this out?
Quoting Banno
Again, there already is a clear indication of dissatisfaction, an election is merely one way of recording this. It's like claiming that the photograph somehow creates the landscape it is of. An election captures the mood of the electorate on the day. The more people vote, the more accurate that capture will be, but we know from our statistics classes (don't we!) that at some sample size there are diminishing returns in accuracy gained by increasing it. Elections take a very large sample of the population's views, way bigger than is necessary to be statistically sound. What it the pressing need to make it incrementally more accurate by including even more data?
None of this changes the way people are - that's done by campaigns, protests, collectivisation, grass-roots movements, helping your neighbour, being good to your kids...
Elections just record where we've got to.
Polls have been notoriously inaccurate in Australian Federal Elections.
I'm not suggesting there isn't a worse way.
Do you really go about your daily business, read the newspaper, look at the world around you and actually wonder if a majority of the population might consistently vote for an environmental, socialist government?
Maybe you live in some kind of communal Utopia (good on you if you do), but here in rural England I need only walk to the shops to gain a pretty robust notion that an environmental, socialist government is not going to get into power.
We have about a 60% turnout, that's thousands. A really, really good sample size.
So given that I've already got a really good guess at how successful my preferred candidate will be, and I've got a very good sample already if I wanted that confirmed statistically, what would be the point of an even more accurate election snapshot to confirm this?
That 40%... who are they? If they did "turn out", how would the vote change? What is the systemic bias here?
There's also the difference introduced by proportional representation. The two main political parties here only managed to garner about a third of votes each. Because of proportional representation, a third of the Australian Senate consists of minor parties, with whom the government must make deals in order to pass legislation. They actually have to talk and negotiate.
That 40% makes a huge difference to who has the cross-bench seats.
That's what I meant by looking out of the window (metaphorically). I'm not a hermit, we don't live lives insulated from politics. If there were 40% of the local population keen environmentalists, keen socialists, it would manifest in society, in our day-to-day interactions. I don't need an election to discover the political viewpoint of the 40%. I live in the society they have a 40% stake in.
Quoting Banno
There are definitely better ways than the English system, for sure. And better systems make voting more worthwhile, I wouldn't deny that.
Quoting Banno
Maybe, but again the difference they might make is not a mystery because we inhabit the same world as that 40%. There are not large sections of the population holding seriously progressive views but not bothering to vote. If there were, society would already be the better place their votes might make it because of their consumer choices, their neighbourliness, their concern for their environment, their care for those less well off than them.
Politics is about so much more than voting and if it's not working, if communities are dysfunctional, then voting becomes irrelevant. All it's going to do is record that dysfunction for posterity. Like a photograph. Personally, I'd rather it was blurry.
Proportional representation I can totally get behind, and I think a lot more people would choose to vote if we had it.
Mandatory voting isn't something I care much about either way. I think it's completely unnecessary, but it's not much of an imposition, so I wouldn't kick up a fuss about it.
My point in this thread really has been against the lazy argument that voting is one's civic duty par excellence and to avoid it is some act of freeloading/neglect. Voting, especially in a first past the post system, is largely pointless and of all the political acts one could (ought to) do is certainly the least important. Help a neighbour with their shopping instead (metaphorically speaking).
I don't vote (and never have) mainly because of the first past the post system in the UK, I probably would if we had PR, but I still would object strongly to any deification of voting. It acts, when treated that way, like an opiate, allowing people to think they 'done' politics by ticking a box once every five years, and can then rest on their laurels for the intervening time. Rather politics is the intervening time because its in that time that it's decided who will vote for whom. Once that intervening time it up, the rest is just bureaucracy, the taking of a census. The political dye is already cast by then, and voting (as a duty) is simply increasing the accuracy of an already accurate summary of where we got to.
The latter is extremely unlikely. When non-voters are surveyed, either apathy or disillusionment are cited. A preference for dictatorship is vanishingly absent.
As I've argued, worrying that we don't know what the 40% non-voters might have voted for is quite ridiculous. We know with a great deal of certainty what they would have voted for. The problem is that most people are drawn in to the micro-scale battles between the two/three main parties and so consider uncertainty about which of those would gain the vote to be a meaningful scale of uncertainty. It isn't. The bulk of the 40%, if forced to vote, would vote for one or other of the two main parties who are virtually indistinguishable from one another in terms of long-term societal change. We know this with a very high degree of certainty and therefore we don't really need them to cast a vote in order to find out.
It's like me claiming to be uncertain about the contents of the delivery from my local bookshop on the grounds that I don't know exactly which cover this version will have.
It's just that young girls seem fascinated by so-called (Disney) princesses and are forever looking for their prince charming. This obsession with (benevolent) despots is (psychologically) most intriguing, wouldn't you agree? It appears that there's a good chance that monarchies will make a comeback. Perhaps it's just a childish fantasy, but do we ever really grow up (re neoteny)?
To a point, yes. The benevolent despot thing is just about the conflict between individual narratives and the slightly chaotic effect of peer conformity when group size is large enough.
Consider a flock of starlings (if you have such creatures where you live). Each starling is simply trying to follow the others, staying close to minimise predator risk. But in trying to copy the location of their neighbour, each will make tiny mistakes, they'll slightly overcompensate for a bank to right, pull up slightly too early. You see the same in traffic jams, for instance, if you want a more human example.
Cultures are like this too (goes the theory) we have a drive to conformity, but we make small errors in conforming, we overdo some things, under do others, not because we decide to, but just by error in our attempts at conformity.
This makes large groups slightly random in their net behaviour. They can end up behaving in a way that no individual actually wants, but is, like the starlings, the result of multiple errors piling up into strange attractors.
We know this, I think think, from experience. So part of us is wary of giving power over to the group, we still have this notion that a benevolent dictator would represent interests of each individual within the group (individuals like us) in a way that the group as a whole might not do due to this accumulated error problem.
...at least, that's one theory.
So, Starling swarming behavior is chaotic? How exactly is it so? They give me the impression of syncrhonized events/sports, the kind you see in the Olympics.
Sure.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11721-015-0103-0
https://hal-lirmm.ccsd.cnrs.fr/lirmm-01598654/
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Simulated-Flocking-Behavior-Travers/2433bc091e90ca87c5589482cce437261ae183e4
Democracy isn't a given, it isn't the default. If enough people don't vote, a minority can, through what is on principle a democratic election, establish a dictatorship and abolish democracy altogether.
By voting, you, at least on principle, benefit from voting. Even if it isn't immediately obvious, and even though you cannot single-handledly change the course of politics.
I know people who don't vote, as a matter of principle. I vote.
I suppose some people are like that. But I'm not. Perhaps it's because of the specific situation of the country I live in. Last year, there was a real danger of the then government abolishing democracy. They had gained so much power (seats in the parliament) because so many people were too apathetic to vote. But the situation here is different, than in, say, the US or UK, because we don't have a tradition of two major parties fighting for supremacy. Rather, there has usually been one major party, and a number of smaller ones which have to form a coalition in order to rule. Also, new parties spring up; many are short-lived, but they actually make it into the government. The party currently in rule (and with an overwhelming majority) was only formed earlier this year, shortly before the elections in April.
In a political situation that is this dynamic, voting does make a difference.
Representative democracy is about the elected people representing those that voted for them. Not everyone.
Again,
It seems that what you really want is that your political stance should prevail with ease.
But enough people do vote. So that's not something I have to do anything about, is it?
Quoting baker
Yeah. I don't object to voting, or with a compulsion to vote where it's necessary. What I object to is the ludicrous notion that I have no means at my disposal to check whether I'm in such a circumstance prior to any given election. It's absurd. I know the political landscape in my part of the world very well. I know almost exactly how much use my vote will or won't be. Where it won't be of any use, there's no point in doing it. It's not magic, it's just a bit of paperwork. It either needs doing or it doesn't.
That varies from country to country.
Again, that varies from country to country. I agree that in some countries, elections are an exercise in futility. In some others, not so much.
A democratically elected representative is supposed to represent the will of the democratic republic, is how I thought its supposed to work.
In either case, is it true?
Leaders used to claim to represent the will of God, and God is supposed to know what's good for the people, or nation, and so indirectly the leader who represents God's will is also representing the will of the nation. Am I right? I am going by deduction.
Assuming the presidents (at least in America) have all been believers, this is what the presidents tacitly should believe. That God is leading them, directly or indirectly, to lead the people.
Anyway, the job of a leader already should imply to be capable of assessing what's best for the group as a whole and representing the groups best interests.
So calling someone a representative leader is like calling someone a single bachelor, in a sense. Unless I'm missing something.
At any rate, I'm not convinced the Pope or any of the leaders claiming to represent God's or the people's will or best interests actually are
It does seem to me that representing the will of "the people" would require a supernatural aid, or otherwise a continual and caring conversation between the leader and who they are supposed to represent.