10 ms·

The biggest reason people in the US don't vote is because they don't have enough options so they never get to choose people they really care about. Plus, no ind

The biggest reason people in the US don't vote is because they don't have enough options so they never get to choose people they really care about. Plus, no individual vote matters. This all has to do with our winner-take-all elections. Countries with proportional representation have much higher voter turnout rates (often in the 80-90% range). That's because you get to vote for the person or party you want, and they'll at least still get a seat in government even if they're just in the opposition. But you still have an incentive to get out and vote and make their position stronger. There are no lost causes or strategic voting.

JacobJans 10y ago
One of the worst lies perpetuated by the media is that the presidential election is the only one that really matters. There are so many elections that have a direct impact on your life that you can participate in – state, city, and county election. These are not generally very partisan. Sadly, local elections often don't have enough options simply because there aren't enough politicians standing for election.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > One of the worst lies perpetuated by the media is that the presidential election is the only one that really matters. The problems with the electoral system effect all offices which are elected by either plurality or majority/runoff, not just those for Presidential electors. This includes all members of Congress, most Governors and statewide elected officials, most state legislators, most mayors and other elected local executive officers, and the many city and county legislative officers (city council, county supervisors, etc.) that are elected in single-member districts. There's some of the latter that are elected in vote for N and the top N win elections, which tend to provide slightly more choice, but still less choice (and less effective democratic representation of the choices made) than proportional election.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > One of the worst lies perpetuated by the media is that the presidential election is the only one that really matters. I haven't seen this suggested in the media.
  - akio 10y ago
    It may not be intentional, but it is implied by the widely unbalanced attention given to the presidential election.
    - untog 10y ago
      There's a tail wagging the dog argument here - in the US, the media are still a profit generating industry, so they're driven by what people want to watch/read. And that means the Presidential candidates. And, in 2016, Trump.
  - yompers888 10y ago
    Parent might be saying the media supports this fallacy by the amount of coverage given. With the huge number of resources available online for information, I would suggest that the perception of media as only covering presidential elections means that you need to work a little harder and find news sources that give you more valuable content. And if your desired news source doesn't exist, think about making it. For example, my hometown is a town of 20,000 people in a beautiful part of the country, but it suffers from being, at best, a bedroom community for nearby hospitals and colleges since 2008 finally ended the industrial presence. There's a guy there who has decided that he's going to give the town news, and he does fantastically well. He has a facebook page with 10000 followers (remember, the town is only 20000) and summarized positions of all the candidates for the recent city council and school board elections. All his posts have substantial discussions in the comments. In recent months I've had great discussions with high school classmates about where the town is headed, which wouldn't have happened before this facebook page (because we didn't have the information.) We also take a pretty active interest in the town, despite the fact that we all live 500-3000 miles away these days. That turned into a bit of show and tell. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are people interested in local coverage if it's substantial.
    - avivo 10y ago
      That's a really great story. I'm curious if this guy gets paid at all for this, if he just does it in addition to a day job, and perhaps family, etc. Can you share the link to his page? I'm also also curious if there (ever) was a town newspaper.
- samstave 10y ago
  We need a TV channel/website that simply states the facts of the positions each politician holds, where they are from, when their elections are coming up and their voting record based on their supposed stance. There are SO many things that we can do. We invest supposedly in physical and technical infra, but never in political.... THAT is the revolution I want to see.
  - dublinben 10y ago
    Every campaign website I have ever seen clearly explains the candidates position on all relevant issues. If you are looking for third party sources, you can also see the information compiled be VoteSmart.org and OnTheIssues.org. Your state's Secretary of State office will list upcoming elections, and BallotPedia.org collects many of these. The resources are already out there and available. It says something that you didn't even know that though.
    - samstave 10y ago
      Thank you, let me amend my statement and we just need to better educate people on where to find this info.
      - specialist 10y ago
        Some of the struggle is due to silly arcana. For example, the local deadline for submitting candidate statements is immediately after filing week, but before endorsements can be known. So crucial signals voters rely on are often missing. The only fix is to keep pushing for improvements. Explain the problems to the gatekeepers, lobby for change.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > We need a TV channel/website that simply states the facts of the positions each politician holds Even the politicians themselves don't portray this consistently, so the "facts" of that are often subject to doubt.
- luizlopes 10y ago
  I couldn't agree more. Local elections matter a lot. Especially when local elections in places like Seattle, WA are generating insane amounts of campaign money.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    Local elections matter, but the direction of the country is determined at the federal level. That's why there's so much media coverage of it. That, and the Supremacy Clause. Whatever local laws you vote for are superseded by federal law. By definition, this means federal elections matter a lot more than local elections (even though local elections have a more immediate short-term impact on the populace).
    - maxwelljoslyn 10y ago
      I don't know much about law. If that's the case, how does legal marijuana work in Oregon, Colorado, Washington, and other legal states? Is it federally illegal but the feds just don't interfere?
      - turkeysandwich 10y ago
        Yes, that's exactly the situation. Hopefully the federal government deschedules marijuana soonish.
- r00fus 10y ago
  Presidential elections have what are called coattails [1], ie, the act like major marketing campaigns that drag voters into the booths so smaller-electorate candidates get votes due to that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coattail_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coattail_effect
- TylerE 10y ago
  Douglas Adams got this so right so long ago. Paraphrasing: "The job of the galactic president is not to wield power, but to draw attention away from it."
  - nathancahill 10y ago
    A tired old bumper sticker quote that I wholeheartedly agree with. Right along with Mark Twain's "If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it."
  - ilanco 10y ago
    Also spot on from Douglas Adams. Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
WalterBright 10y ago
Elections where the polls indicate the race is close, and the candidates have starkly different patterns, have high voter turnout. Where one candidate has a big lead, or the platforms are more or less indistinguishable, there's low turnout. Voters are doing a simple cost/benefit analysis weighing the cost of taking the time to vote vs the impact their vote will have.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  The problem is, its extremely rare that all of the elections taking place that day are like that.
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
Relatively newly-minted American here. A unified election calendar and ballot database would be helpful. The number of local (especially community budgeting, judicial and special district) elections I've missed out of ignorance, despite checking New York City's Board of Elections website, is nuts. Furthermore, there seems to be an expectation that voters blindly vote along party lines. Almost every election there will be a list of uncompetitive judicial runs I've never heard of, and so had no time to do any research on. The result, for those line items, is me leaving them blank.
- dta5003 10y ago
  Ballotpedia helps: https://ballotpedia.org/Main_Page https://ballotpedia.org/Main_Page
  - debracleaver 10y ago
    plus 1 to ballotpedia. also +1 to the need for an easy to read calendar. honestly, if someone builds something we can use, we'll put it up at vote.org and promote the heck out of it.
- Redoubts 10y ago
  Judicial elections are one of my least favorite things about American democracy. I always feel chronically underinformed, and feel weird about voting in line with what the one local newspaper has to say on the matter.
- cauterized 10y ago
  NYC elections are the worst. In congressional, state representative, or city council election years, there are so many candidates running in so many districts within the single media market that a TV station could cover nothing else 24/7 and still only spend a few minutes on each candidate per week. You could have an entire edition of one of the tabloids devoted to nothing but a couple paragraphs about each candidate for each race. And that's for a general election, let alone a primary. That is, if the races were contested. Which they aren't because nobody pays attention to them. Which is in part because there's no information to be had on them even if you look for it. Stupid vicious cycle. So people vote for those offices along party lines or leave the ballots blank. I've been thinking about trying to build something that would help solve the problem, but it's really a social problem more than a technical problem, and who has the time to go chasing down bios and position statements from hundreds of candidates every spring and fall?
danieltillett 10y ago
Countries with compulsory voting [1] mange to get this even higher without having proportional representation. 1. At least in Australia we have compulsory registration and compulsory visiting the polling station on the Election Day - if you don't want to vote you don't really have to.
- _asummers 10y ago
  Voting has to be a federal holiday before we can make it compulsory, I feel. Or we just mail everyone ballots like Oregon does.
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    Or you do like we do in Australia and hold the elections on a weekend :)
    - RijilV 10y ago
      You've never been to a bar/coffee house/grocery store/etc on a weekend? Lots of people work the weekend, often it is those who are paid less and have more rigid schedules. Also you run into religious days where some are not able to perform work. Honestly it is a hard one to mandate as a single few hour window on a single day. Someone has to be working at hospitals for example. Maybe it should be election week
      - NathanOsullivan 10y ago
        In Australia you are permitted to either vote early in person, or submit your vote by post if you are unable to vote on polling day due to work.
      - vacri 10y ago
        It already is 'election week' in Australia. You can vote early, and you can postal-vote. The weekend vote is much easier to get the masses out voting, because most people don't have work (or school) to deal with on the weekend. At the last federal election I voted on the Wednesday beforehand, simply because I was passing by an early voting station. And the queues at Australian voting stations on The Day aren't anywhere near as long as in the US. I've heard some horror stories where some people have had to wait 4+ hours (on a Tuesday) to vote in the US.
eanzenberg 10y ago
I believe the stronger reason is your presidential election vote won't matter in most states where the contest is already decided. So a candidate winning 70-30 vs. 60-40 doesn't make a difference.
- manachar 10y ago
  Voter turnout is higher in our presidential elections when a person's vote is generally worth less. People SHOULD be voting at the local level where their votes still matter quite a bit, but generally don't through an interesting combination of apathy and ignorance (e.g. few people actually know who their rep on the city council is and what their basic platform is).
  - slavik81 10y ago
    Unfortunately, limited information is an inherent consequence of scale. There's much better media coverage of national issues. If I read The Economist, they may provide insight into the presidential candidates. They do not have news about my candidates for city council.
    - manachar 10y ago
      Which is really odd to think about. Super local newspapers used to be the norm, but as the conglomerates got bigger the number of papers fell so they no longer had the space to cover the truly local news. A variety of web sites have tried to fill the need, but the money needed for local news far exceeds the revenue they're able to generate.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      Theres much more media coverage of national issues, but better may not be a warranted conclusion.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > I believe the stronger reason is your presidential election vote won't matter in most states where the contest is already decided. So a candidate winning 70-30 vs. 60-40 doesn't make a difference. Your vote, win or lose, also communicates very important messages: 1) 'I vote, and people in my community vote'. If you don't vote then why the hell should the politician care what you want? Does McDonalds care about the opinions of people who don't eat fast food? You think they should put more healthy options on their menu? 'So what? Who are you? Stop wasting my time.' The same goes for your community: If your community doesn't vote, then why would anyone address its concerns? In a world of 50% turnout, imagine the attention a community would get if 95% voted - on every issue, they'd be wondering, 'what does neighborhood X think? how does it affect them?' 2) It expresses a political outlook. A politician who sees their constituents vote 80-20 for Clinton over Trump is going to behave much differently than one who sees a 55-45 vote.
hackuser 10y ago
> The biggest reason people in the US don't vote ... It seems plausible, but is there some data to back up this theory?
- baron816 10y ago
  https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=proportional%20representation%20voter%20turnout https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... There have been a number of studies on the relationship and they all seem to point to a positive correlation between PR and voter turnout.
  - harryh 10y ago
    positive correlation != biggest reason
DrScump 10y ago
Even if an individual doesn't see distinctions between prominent candidates, there are usually "downballot" offices, local measures, and local tax measures to vote on. A ballot isn't an exam -- you don't get penalized for not filling out every element. Voters should be encouraged to vote only on the elements they understand.
e40 10y ago
The biggest reason people in the US don't vote is because they don't have enough options so they never get to choose people they really care about. Sorry, this is complete malarky. The calculus of voting is: vote for the least of two evils. If we had 100% voting and everyone did this, the politicians would get better over time, because they would learn that being a certain way would result in failure. The general pool of would-be politicians would learn that maybe it would be OK to run since more normal people are winning. It's that damn simple. Everything else is an excuse to service some BS idea.
- beambot 10y ago
  Abstaining is a form of voting, regardless of whether you consider it "some BS idea."
  - Thrymr 10y ago
    A representative present for a roll call and explicitly abstaining is a form of voting. A citizen staying home on election day is indistinguishable from apathy.
    - marxmarv 10y ago
      Sounds like you've made the choice to see it as apathy.
    - LionessLover 10y ago
      I vote that your opinion is not one iota more valuable than that of any non-voter. People like you really should be forced to look into a mirror an hour each day.
      - vacri 10y ago
        How are you going to force Thrymyr to look in the mirror for an hour per day, if you can't even get someone out to vote? Who would be motivated enough to apply that penalty?
xtreme 10y ago
Coming from a country like India, I have a different opinion. We have FPTP but the voter turnout is somewhat higher (60-85% depending on the state) compared to the US. There are a large number of political parties but only three or four of them can be considered national (have representatives in more than one states). Most of the parties are local to a state or a relatively small community (often a caste) and tries to appease their voter base as much as possible. This system definitely allows smaller communities to be heard on the national stage, but it also frequently leads to situations where no single party or pre-election coalitions have enough representatives to form a government (they need at least 50% seats). As a result, coalitions are often formed between unlikely partners who are ideologically worlds apart. Parties forming a coalition at a state level while disparaging their partner at the federal level is quite common, and the number of hoops the politicians jumps through to justify their positions is hilariously sad. Due to this coalition politics, often important legislation can't be passed as it is difficult to make any progress while satisfying all the partners. The government is also prone to "blackmail" from coalition partners who often threaten to withdraw support unless their demands are met. In a two-party system, at least things move. In a multi-party scenario, there is always a risk of a complete deadlock.
- baron816 10y ago
  Congress is as deadlocked as can be. We have a system in which the President, the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader in the Senate, the Supreme Court, the Majority in the House, the Majority in the Senate, the Majority of the Majority in the House, the Majority of the Majority in the Senate, and 41% of the Senate can stop a bill from becoming law or nullify it. Add that the districts are drawn by elected officials and easily and regularly manipulated to give parties disproportionate power and we end up with a situation where very few people in a very big country are able to completely disrupt the political system and hold the sovereign debt (and the economic stability of the world for that matter) hostage in order to try to take health care away from poor people. I can't speak much about the political system of India, but I think it's quite evident that with the rise of politicians like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, people are very dissatisfied with the politicians we've been electing. And by virtue of that, the way we've been electing them.
Apofis 10y ago
Absolutely, honestly, I would turn out to vote for Bernie Sanders, but that is seeming to be less likely as time progresses. So, I won't be voting at all, since I could care less if either Clinton or Trump get elected. Clinton gets elected and the status quo doesn't change very much, Trump gets elected, and maybe---just maybe some people will begin to sit up and take action.
- danenania 10y ago
  In the case of Trump getting elected, you're assuming that we'd still have anything that resembles a democracy four years later and that the people who'd supposedly be ready to take action wouldn't be thrown in jail or disappeared or suppressed via collective violence. Resigning oneself to naked fascism with the idea that it could somehow lead to more progress down the line is quite the gamble. Perhaps it could work out, but you're playing with some serious fire.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - vintermann 10y ago
    Trump isn't Mussolini. He's more Berlusconi, if you want to stay in Italy. It's anyone's guess how Trump would actually rule, but throwing dissenters in jail would be admitting defeat on his only real core value, which is that he's so great that he always gets his way on charisma and "negotiation skill". Other than that, I do agree that "it must get worse before it can get better" is bad policy, since the former is usually a lot more reliable than the latter.
  - LionessLover 10y ago
    Wow, you would make a great fiction author!
- shifter 10y ago
  Perhaps you don't care about social issues but there is a world of difference between the presumptive candidates' positions. Do you care about the fate of women and minorities?
alexnewman 10y ago
my vote doesnt count
dp107 10y ago
This is entirely true. PR is the reason democratic movements in countries like Spain and Greece are able to achieve power -- because positive feedback loops manifest between activism and electoral politics -- in ways that simply can't happen here.

JacobJans 10y ago

One of the worst lies perpetuated by the media is that the presidential election is the only one that really matters. There are so many elections that have a direct impact on your life that you can participate in – state, city, and county election. These are not generally very partisan. Sadly, local elections often don't have enough options simply because there aren't enough politicians standing for election.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> One of the worst lies perpetuated by the media is that the presidential election is the only one that really matters. The problems with the electoral system effect all offices which are elected by either plurality or majority/runoff, not just those for Presidential electors. This includes all members of Congress, most Governors and statewide elected officials, most state legislators, most mayors and other elected local executive officers, and the many city and county legislative officers (city council, county supervisors, etc.) that are elected in single-member districts. There's some of the latter that are elected in vote for N and the top N win elections, which tend to provide slightly more choice, but still less choice (and less effective democratic representation of the choices made) than proportional election.
hackuser 10y ago
> One of the worst lies perpetuated by the media is that the presidential election is the only one that really matters. I haven't seen this suggested in the media.
- akio 10y ago
  It may not be intentional, but it is implied by the widely unbalanced attention given to the presidential election.
  - untog 10y ago
    There's a tail wagging the dog argument here - in the US, the media are still a profit generating industry, so they're driven by what people want to watch/read. And that means the Presidential candidates. And, in 2016, Trump.
- yompers888 10y ago
  Parent might be saying the media supports this fallacy by the amount of coverage given. With the huge number of resources available online for information, I would suggest that the perception of media as only covering presidential elections means that you need to work a little harder and find news sources that give you more valuable content. And if your desired news source doesn't exist, think about making it. For example, my hometown is a town of 20,000 people in a beautiful part of the country, but it suffers from being, at best, a bedroom community for nearby hospitals and colleges since 2008 finally ended the industrial presence. There's a guy there who has decided that he's going to give the town news, and he does fantastically well. He has a facebook page with 10000 followers (remember, the town is only 20000) and summarized positions of all the candidates for the recent city council and school board elections. All his posts have substantial discussions in the comments. In recent months I've had great discussions with high school classmates about where the town is headed, which wouldn't have happened before this facebook page (because we didn't have the information.) We also take a pretty active interest in the town, despite the fact that we all live 500-3000 miles away these days. That turned into a bit of show and tell. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are people interested in local coverage if it's substantial.
  - avivo 10y ago
    That's a really great story. I'm curious if this guy gets paid at all for this, if he just does it in addition to a day job, and perhaps family, etc. Can you share the link to his page? I'm also also curious if there (ever) was a town newspaper.
samstave 10y ago
We need a TV channel/website that simply states the facts of the positions each politician holds, where they are from, when their elections are coming up and their voting record based on their supposed stance. There are SO many things that we can do. We invest supposedly in physical and technical infra, but never in political.... THAT is the revolution I want to see.
- dublinben 10y ago
  Every campaign website I have ever seen clearly explains the candidates position on all relevant issues. If you are looking for third party sources, you can also see the information compiled be VoteSmart.org and OnTheIssues.org. Your state's Secretary of State office will list upcoming elections, and BallotPedia.org collects many of these. The resources are already out there and available. It says something that you didn't even know that though.
  - samstave 10y ago
    Thank you, let me amend my statement and we just need to better educate people on where to find this info.
    - specialist 10y ago
      Some of the struggle is due to silly arcana. For example, the local deadline for submitting candidate statements is immediately after filing week, but before endorsements can be known. So crucial signals voters rely on are often missing. The only fix is to keep pushing for improvements. Explain the problems to the gatekeepers, lobby for change.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > We need a TV channel/website that simply states the facts of the positions each politician holds Even the politicians themselves don't portray this consistently, so the "facts" of that are often subject to doubt.
luizlopes 10y ago
I couldn't agree more. Local elections matter a lot. Especially when local elections in places like Seattle, WA are generating insane amounts of campaign money.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  Local elections matter, but the direction of the country is determined at the federal level. That's why there's so much media coverage of it. That, and the Supremacy Clause. Whatever local laws you vote for are superseded by federal law. By definition, this means federal elections matter a lot more than local elections (even though local elections have a more immediate short-term impact on the populace).
  - maxwelljoslyn 10y ago
    I don't know much about law. If that's the case, how does legal marijuana work in Oregon, Colorado, Washington, and other legal states? Is it federally illegal but the feds just don't interfere?
    - turkeysandwich 10y ago
      Yes, that's exactly the situation. Hopefully the federal government deschedules marijuana soonish.
r00fus 10y ago
Presidential elections have what are called coattails [1], ie, the act like major marketing campaigns that drag voters into the booths so smaller-electorate candidates get votes due to that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coattail_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coattail_effect
TylerE 10y ago
Douglas Adams got this so right so long ago. Paraphrasing: "The job of the galactic president is not to wield power, but to draw attention away from it."
- nathancahill 10y ago
  A tired old bumper sticker quote that I wholeheartedly agree with. Right along with Mark Twain's "If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it."
- ilanco 10y ago
  Also spot on from Douglas Adams. Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

WalterBright 10y ago

Elections where the polls indicate the race is close, and the candidates have starkly different patterns, have high voter turnout. Where one candidate has a big lead, or the platforms are more or less indistinguishable, there's low turnout. Voters are doing a simple cost/benefit analysis weighing the cost of taking the time to vote vs the impact their vote will have.

st3v3r 10y ago
The problem is, its extremely rare that all of the elections taking place that day are like that.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

Relatively newly-minted American here. A unified election calendar and ballot database would be helpful. The number of local (especially community budgeting, judicial and special district) elections I've missed out of ignorance, despite checking New York City's Board of Elections website, is nuts. Furthermore, there seems to be an expectation that voters blindly vote along party lines. Almost every election there will be a list of uncompetitive judicial runs I've never heard of, and so had no time to do any research on. The result, for those line items, is me leaving them blank.

dta5003 10y ago
Ballotpedia helps: https://ballotpedia.org/Main_Page https://ballotpedia.org/Main_Page
- debracleaver 10y ago
  plus 1 to ballotpedia. also +1 to the need for an easy to read calendar. honestly, if someone builds something we can use, we'll put it up at vote.org and promote the heck out of it.
Redoubts 10y ago
Judicial elections are one of my least favorite things about American democracy. I always feel chronically underinformed, and feel weird about voting in line with what the one local newspaper has to say on the matter.
cauterized 10y ago
NYC elections are the worst. In congressional, state representative, or city council election years, there are so many candidates running in so many districts within the single media market that a TV station could cover nothing else 24/7 and still only spend a few minutes on each candidate per week. You could have an entire edition of one of the tabloids devoted to nothing but a couple paragraphs about each candidate for each race. And that's for a general election, let alone a primary. That is, if the races were contested. Which they aren't because nobody pays attention to them. Which is in part because there's no information to be had on them even if you look for it. Stupid vicious cycle. So people vote for those offices along party lines or leave the ballots blank. I've been thinking about trying to build something that would help solve the problem, but it's really a social problem more than a technical problem, and who has the time to go chasing down bios and position statements from hundreds of candidates every spring and fall?

danieltillett 10y ago

Countries with compulsory voting [1] mange to get this even higher without having proportional representation. 1. At least in Australia we have compulsory registration and compulsory visiting the polling station on the Election Day - if you don't want to vote you don't really have to.

_asummers 10y ago
Voting has to be a federal holiday before we can make it compulsory, I feel. Or we just mail everyone ballots like Oregon does.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Or you do like we do in Australia and hold the elections on a weekend :)
  - RijilV 10y ago
    You've never been to a bar/coffee house/grocery store/etc on a weekend? Lots of people work the weekend, often it is those who are paid less and have more rigid schedules. Also you run into religious days where some are not able to perform work. Honestly it is a hard one to mandate as a single few hour window on a single day. Someone has to be working at hospitals for example. Maybe it should be election week
    - NathanOsullivan 10y ago
      In Australia you are permitted to either vote early in person, or submit your vote by post if you are unable to vote on polling day due to work.
    - vacri 10y ago
      It already is 'election week' in Australia. You can vote early, and you can postal-vote. The weekend vote is much easier to get the masses out voting, because most people don't have work (or school) to deal with on the weekend. At the last federal election I voted on the Wednesday beforehand, simply because I was passing by an early voting station. And the queues at Australian voting stations on The Day aren't anywhere near as long as in the US. I've heard some horror stories where some people have had to wait 4+ hours (on a Tuesday) to vote in the US.

eanzenberg 10y ago

I believe the stronger reason is your presidential election vote won't matter in most states where the contest is already decided. So a candidate winning 70-30 vs. 60-40 doesn't make a difference.

manachar 10y ago
Voter turnout is higher in our presidential elections when a person's vote is generally worth less. People SHOULD be voting at the local level where their votes still matter quite a bit, but generally don't through an interesting combination of apathy and ignorance (e.g. few people actually know who their rep on the city council is and what their basic platform is).
- slavik81 10y ago
  Unfortunately, limited information is an inherent consequence of scale. There's much better media coverage of national issues. If I read The Economist, they may provide insight into the presidential candidates. They do not have news about my candidates for city council.
  - manachar 10y ago
    Which is really odd to think about. Super local newspapers used to be the norm, but as the conglomerates got bigger the number of papers fell so they no longer had the space to cover the truly local news. A variety of web sites have tried to fill the need, but the money needed for local news far exceeds the revenue they're able to generate.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    Theres much more media coverage of national issues, but better may not be a warranted conclusion.
hackuser 10y ago
> I believe the stronger reason is your presidential election vote won't matter in most states where the contest is already decided. So a candidate winning 70-30 vs. 60-40 doesn't make a difference. Your vote, win or lose, also communicates very important messages: 1) 'I vote, and people in my community vote'. If you don't vote then why the hell should the politician care what you want? Does McDonalds care about the opinions of people who don't eat fast food? You think they should put more healthy options on their menu? 'So what? Who are you? Stop wasting my time.' The same goes for your community: If your community doesn't vote, then why would anyone address its concerns? In a world of 50% turnout, imagine the attention a community would get if 95% voted - on every issue, they'd be wondering, 'what does neighborhood X think? how does it affect them?' 2) It expresses a political outlook. A politician who sees their constituents vote 80-20 for Clinton over Trump is going to behave much differently than one who sees a 55-45 vote.

hackuser 10y ago

> The biggest reason people in the US don't vote ... It seems plausible, but is there some data to back up this theory?

baron816 10y ago
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=proportional%20representation%20voter%20turnout https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... There have been a number of studies on the relationship and they all seem to point to a positive correlation between PR and voter turnout.
- harryh 10y ago
  positive correlation != biggest reason

DrScump 10y ago

Even if an individual doesn't see distinctions between prominent candidates, there are usually "downballot" offices, local measures, and local tax measures to vote on. A ballot isn't an exam -- you don't get penalized for not filling out every element. Voters should be encouraged to vote only on the elements they understand.

e40 10y ago

The biggest reason people in the US don't vote is because they don't have enough options so they never get to choose people they really care about. Sorry, this is complete malarky. The calculus of voting is: vote for the least of two evils. If we had 100% voting and everyone did this, the politicians would get better over time, because they would learn that being a certain way would result in failure. The general pool of would-be politicians would learn that maybe it would be OK to run since more normal people are winning. It's that damn simple. Everything else is an excuse to service some BS idea.

beambot 10y ago
Abstaining is a form of voting, regardless of whether you consider it "some BS idea."
- Thrymr 10y ago
  A representative present for a roll call and explicitly abstaining is a form of voting. A citizen staying home on election day is indistinguishable from apathy.
  - marxmarv 10y ago
    Sounds like you've made the choice to see it as apathy.
  - LionessLover 10y ago
    I vote that your opinion is not one iota more valuable than that of any non-voter. People like you really should be forced to look into a mirror an hour each day.
    - vacri 10y ago
      How are you going to force Thrymyr to look in the mirror for an hour per day, if you can't even get someone out to vote? Who would be motivated enough to apply that penalty?

xtreme 10y ago

Coming from a country like India, I have a different opinion. We have FPTP but the voter turnout is somewhat higher (60-85% depending on the state) compared to the US. There are a large number of political parties but only three or four of them can be considered national (have representatives in more than one states). Most of the parties are local to a state or a relatively small community (often a caste) and tries to appease their voter base as much as possible. This system definitely allows smaller communities to be heard on the national stage, but it also frequently leads to situations where no single party or pre-election coalitions have enough representatives to form a government (they need at least 50% seats). As a result, coalitions are often formed between unlikely partners who are ideologically worlds apart. Parties forming a coalition at a state level while disparaging their partner at the federal level is quite common, and the number of hoops the politicians jumps through to justify their positions is hilariously sad. Due to this coalition politics, often important legislation can't be passed as it is difficult to make any progress while satisfying all the partners. The government is also prone to "blackmail" from coalition partners who often threaten to withdraw support unless their demands are met. In a two-party system, at least things move. In a multi-party scenario, there is always a risk of a complete deadlock.

baron816 10y ago
Congress is as deadlocked as can be. We have a system in which the President, the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader in the Senate, the Supreme Court, the Majority in the House, the Majority in the Senate, the Majority of the Majority in the House, the Majority of the Majority in the Senate, and 41% of the Senate can stop a bill from becoming law or nullify it. Add that the districts are drawn by elected officials and easily and regularly manipulated to give parties disproportionate power and we end up with a situation where very few people in a very big country are able to completely disrupt the political system and hold the sovereign debt (and the economic stability of the world for that matter) hostage in order to try to take health care away from poor people. I can't speak much about the political system of India, but I think it's quite evident that with the rise of politicians like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, people are very dissatisfied with the politicians we've been electing. And by virtue of that, the way we've been electing them.

Apofis 10y ago

Absolutely, honestly, I would turn out to vote for Bernie Sanders, but that is seeming to be less likely as time progresses. So, I won't be voting at all, since I could care less if either Clinton or Trump get elected. Clinton gets elected and the status quo doesn't change very much, Trump gets elected, and maybe---just maybe some people will begin to sit up and take action.

danenania 10y ago
In the case of Trump getting elected, you're assuming that we'd still have anything that resembles a democracy four years later and that the people who'd supposedly be ready to take action wouldn't be thrown in jail or disappeared or suppressed via collective violence. Resigning oneself to naked fascism with the idea that it could somehow lead to more progress down the line is quite the gamble. Perhaps it could work out, but you're playing with some serious fire.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- vintermann 10y ago
  Trump isn't Mussolini. He's more Berlusconi, if you want to stay in Italy. It's anyone's guess how Trump would actually rule, but throwing dissenters in jail would be admitting defeat on his only real core value, which is that he's so great that he always gets his way on charisma and "negotiation skill". Other than that, I do agree that "it must get worse before it can get better" is bad policy, since the former is usually a lot more reliable than the latter.
- LionessLover 10y ago
  Wow, you would make a great fiction author!
shifter 10y ago
Perhaps you don't care about social issues but there is a world of difference between the presumptive candidates' positions. Do you care about the fate of women and minorities?

alexnewman 10y ago

my vote doesnt count

dp107 10y ago

This is entirely true. PR is the reason democratic movements in countries like Spain and Greece are able to achieve power -- because positive feedback loops manifest between activism and electoral politics -- in ways that simply can't happen here.