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Serious question: How does increasing voter turnout make anything better? Doesn't that just increase the likelihood of politicians using unscrupulous techniqu

Serious question: How does increasing voter turnout make anything better? Doesn't that just increase the likelihood of politicians using unscrupulous techniques to fool voters? A huge problem is actively ignorant voters in my opinion, this would make the problem worse.

pdelbarba 9y ago
The current system appears to vastly under represent the young and poor and over represent the elderly. The politicians exist to represent everyone's interests so any statistical disconnect undermines the system.
- sixQuarks 9y ago
  Did Net neutrality not teach you anything? Open your eyes, politicians exist to represent special interests - if they're doing that with net neutrality, think of what they're doing in areas where people don't pay much attention.
shmageggy 9y ago
The group of people that don't vote because of work obligations do not come from a homogenous social class. Hint: it's not the executives that have this problem. The motivation for increasing voter turnout is to make the vote more of a representative sample.
neaden 9y ago
It's about making sure voters are picking the politicians, not politicians picking their voters. What you see in a lot of situations in the US right now is the use of tools like Gerrymandering, challenging voter rolls, voter ID etc, are used in areas where the political party in charge knows they would lose if everyone voted.
fishcolorbrick 9y ago
The argument I've heard to counter this is the idea that economic markets are efficient even when many participants are irrational because the irrational participants cancel each other out, amounting to random noise. A market can find efficiency even when there are a significant number of irrational participants because the rational minority are in agreement, and the irrational minority step on each other's toes. Similarly, if 44% of a democracy has an irrational preference to always vote for Team Blue, and 44% of a democracy has an irrational preference to always votes for Team Red, then the remaining 12% actually decide which team wins.

pdelbarba 9y ago

The current system appears to vastly under represent the young and poor and over represent the elderly. The politicians exist to represent everyone's interests so any statistical disconnect undermines the system.

sixQuarks 9y ago
Did Net neutrality not teach you anything? Open your eyes, politicians exist to represent special interests - if they're doing that with net neutrality, think of what they're doing in areas where people don't pay much attention.

shmageggy 9y ago

The group of people that don't vote because of work obligations do not come from a homogenous social class. Hint: it's not the executives that have this problem. The motivation for increasing voter turnout is to make the vote more of a representative sample.

neaden 9y ago

It's about making sure voters are picking the politicians, not politicians picking their voters. What you see in a lot of situations in the US right now is the use of tools like Gerrymandering, challenging voter rolls, voter ID etc, are used in areas where the political party in charge knows they would lose if everyone voted.

fishcolorbrick 9y ago

The argument I've heard to counter this is the idea that economic markets are efficient even when many participants are irrational because the irrational participants cancel each other out, amounting to random noise. A market can find efficiency even when there are a significant number of irrational participants because the rational minority are in agreement, and the irrational minority step on each other's toes. Similarly, if 44% of a democracy has an irrational preference to always vote for Team Blue, and 44% of a democracy has an irrational preference to always votes for Team Red, then the remaining 12% actually decide which team wins.