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> When the crowd is large enough to show up at the polls and get more votes for the candidate of their choice than anybody else. This is a democracy. This is a
by jMyles 9y ago
> When the crowd is large enough to show up at the polls and get more votes for the candidate of their choice than anybody else. This is a democracy.
This is a strong indictment of political science education in this country.
First of all, you need to understand that the policy preferences of the voting constituency in any given national election are not strongly correlated to policy results. This is shown convincingly in Benjamin Ginsberg's book, "Do Elections Matter?" I strongly recommend this book - after reading it, you will never again try to explain away an act of government with the same tired logic of, "we get the government we vote for."
It is a difficult-to-deny fact that, in the USA, the government frequently and quietly advances policies which do not appear to be derived from any kind electoral mandate, nor are favored by a substantial portion of the electorate.
But there's a much stronger argument here, and it's about this completely incorrect assertion of yours:
> This is a democracy.
While it's true that, in the modern international parlance, the USA is a democratic state, it is not a democracy in the way that you have used that word here - and our founding documents (and the federalist papers) go out of their way to distinguish our form of government from a democracy as such.
The difference is this: Even if 100% of the voting public votes for a measure that abolishes the freedom to assemble, the government has no authority and no legal standing to trample any individual's rights. This is the essence of a republic: the powers of the government are limited and enumerated and do not change by dint of a given election.
The police presence and tactics at any large assembly in the country since about 1970 has unambiguously been an affront to this right, and the refusal of the courts to recognize this represents one of the most visible abdications of legal reason in modern constitutional law (not the most, but one of the most).
If the government wants to bring sonic cannons and rubber bullets and kettling to protests, it needs to first go through the legal process of amending the constitution to remove the freedom to assemble from the 1st amendment.
Polls and votes and candidates are entirely orthogonal to this matter.
- djsumdog 9y agoI really agree with this. Specifically, American politics, although technically democratic, is not representational. The US elections are first past the post, where as Australia's is order of preference with instant runoff (you literally cannot throw your vote away) and New Zealand's is MMP (where 50% of Parliament gets equal representation based on party preference and the other 50% get the majority vote). Also, American preferences don't reflect policy. I did a video on a paper/publication that goes over this: http://fightthefuture.org/videos/does-voting-make-a-difference/ http://fightthefuture.org/videos/does-voting-make-a-differen... Maine recently voted for ranked voting, and there are groups like Represent.us that are working to enact anti-corruption legislation at the local and state levels; knowing that anything at the Federal level simply won't pass today. We need new officials elected at the lower echelons under anti-corruption rules and for those rules to then propagate up. It's a very uphill battle considering the amount of power and money to prevent it from happening.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago> where as Australia's is order of preference with instant runoff (you literally cannot throw your vote away) This is a tangent, but IRV is horribly broken: it throws your vote away for you, by ignoring all your preferences other than the top choice until it decides that your top choice no longer matters. If you vote A > B > C, IRC ignores that you prefer B over C until it eliminates A. That can cause C to win. That is not a theoretical concern; it's something that you would expect to happen when third parties become more popular.
- robbiep 9y agoIt is also a powerful force for forcing cooperation between political parties, which trade preference deals. This is a powerful force for centrism, an important feature of stable democracies - compare australia’s Relatively centrist governmnents and political parties (despite what the stagnation we see at present) VS the vast and expanding gulf between us parties
- JoshTriplett 9y agoSo is a better rank-based system. I can't think of a single reason to prefer IRV over better rank-based voting systems, and plenty of reasons not to. I absolutely agree that our voting systems are part of the problem; first-past-the-post is broken.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- SamReidHughes 9y agoYou don't get to create a mob and send it wherever you want. If you want to change the police, you can either vote or start a civil war.