7 ms·

In the US at least, I think it’s naive to believe that greater voter turnout would have much impact on the result of something like a presidential election, whi

by mlthoughts2018 8y ago

In the US at least, I think it’s naive to believe that greater voter turnout would have much impact on the result of something like a presidential election, which is a first-past-the-post vote affected by millions of dollars in campaign spending to drive particular voting rates and turnout behavior. Comments like this one naively assume the choice you make in the poll is an exercise of free will, but it’s obviously not. Distrust of politicians could be driven by this. Even more basic electioneering, like engineering a nationwide two-party system to ensure no meaningful challenge to the status quo, might also cause political disenfranchisement, especially among demographics that believe they are systematically the target of that entrenched system (and are usually correct to believe so). For many voters, they ought to admit their personal choice is manipulated by ad spending and a priori generally based in ignorance and their vote, especially if it’s for a non-mainstream candidate, has no effect. Abstaining from the vote would be a reasonable choice for these people. And if they do vote, then a good strategy might be to find someone they believe is smarter than they are yet represents the values they want to communicate in the vote, and just copy that person’s vote. But “more people at the polls” is not automatically going to change much from whatever was engineered in the first place (including engineering voter turnout itself). However, the part I couldn’t understand is why anyone would think business leaders are trustworthy in any sense. Both politicians and business leaders generally ought to be assumed to be entirely untrustworthy unless there’s exceptional evidence in special cases.

maimeowmeow 8y ago
Most people who tend to vote liberal are concentrated in select areas, where its a liberal landslide every time. Now you factor in hackers, politicians getting bought, and it seems very pointless if you live in major city.
- gowld 8y ago
  State and federal executive elections do not turn at the district level.
sweettea 8y ago
And it's a short journey from copying someone else's vote because you trust they are smarter than you and have your values, to questing for that person to be a monarch and appoint subsidiary positions. Millenials seem in my experience more likely to be or to be open to monarchists than any previous generations, seemingly from disillusionment with the practicalities of politicians/demogagues.
mikeash 8y ago
Abstaining from voting is never a reasonable choice unless you want elected officials who don’t give a damn about you. Vote for Mickey Mouse if you can’t stand an actual human, but you need to get on the record as having shown up if you want any sort of voice.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  You seem to think voting is about electing people you like, as opposed to correctly predicting a candidate that will cause the policy changes you favor. If you think of voting as a selfish act, like “expressing yourself” regardless of whether your point of view is factually wrong, then I agree with you. Projecting your (possibly ignorant, possibly harmful) opinion would be unilaterally preferred. But if you view voting as a civic responsibility, where you have an implicit duty to fellow citizens, then it’s different. For whichever subjective policy beliefs and values you have, there would be a social responsibility to use your vote as a signal of a highly confident prediction that the indicated candidate will bring about the policy reform you target. If you are not knowledgeable about those policy topics, how they work, or how they relate to the candidate in question, then your uncertainty in your prediction about the candidate might be so high that you cannot reliably distinguish between candidates, and your vote signal drags down the overall chance for informed people to coordinate. One problem though is that the least informed people are also often the most likely to coordinate into a singular voting bloc, and the most likely to be manipulated by ad spending or populism. People who are smart enough to know that they are ignorant about a given election might therefore abstain, leaving a small population of voting experts vs. a large population of idiots who refuse to acknowledge that their opinion is ignorant.
  - gowld 8y ago
    There's nothing wrong with finding someone whose judgment you trust and voting for their favored candidate. If the majority of the population is to dumb to make good choices, the problem isn't that the voters are bad voters, the problem is that the state is a failed state.
    - 8y ago

maimeowmeow 8y ago

Most people who tend to vote liberal are concentrated in select areas, where its a liberal landslide every time. Now you factor in hackers, politicians getting bought, and it seems very pointless if you live in major city.

gowld 8y ago
State and federal executive elections do not turn at the district level.

sweettea 8y ago

And it's a short journey from copying someone else's vote because you trust they are smarter than you and have your values, to questing for that person to be a monarch and appoint subsidiary positions. Millenials seem in my experience more likely to be or to be open to monarchists than any previous generations, seemingly from disillusionment with the practicalities of politicians/demogagues.

mikeash 8y ago

Abstaining from voting is never a reasonable choice unless you want elected officials who don’t give a damn about you. Vote for Mickey Mouse if you can’t stand an actual human, but you need to get on the record as having shown up if you want any sort of voice.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
You seem to think voting is about electing people you like, as opposed to correctly predicting a candidate that will cause the policy changes you favor. If you think of voting as a selfish act, like “expressing yourself” regardless of whether your point of view is factually wrong, then I agree with you. Projecting your (possibly ignorant, possibly harmful) opinion would be unilaterally preferred. But if you view voting as a civic responsibility, where you have an implicit duty to fellow citizens, then it’s different. For whichever subjective policy beliefs and values you have, there would be a social responsibility to use your vote as a signal of a highly confident prediction that the indicated candidate will bring about the policy reform you target. If you are not knowledgeable about those policy topics, how they work, or how they relate to the candidate in question, then your uncertainty in your prediction about the candidate might be so high that you cannot reliably distinguish between candidates, and your vote signal drags down the overall chance for informed people to coordinate. One problem though is that the least informed people are also often the most likely to coordinate into a singular voting bloc, and the most likely to be manipulated by ad spending or populism. People who are smart enough to know that they are ignorant about a given election might therefore abstain, leaving a small population of voting experts vs. a large population of idiots who refuse to acknowledge that their opinion is ignorant.
- gowld 8y ago
  There's nothing wrong with finding someone whose judgment you trust and voting for their favored candidate. If the majority of the population is to dumb to make good choices, the problem isn't that the voters are bad voters, the problem is that the state is a failed state.
  - 8y ago