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>Voting may be a duty, but it's one that carries a lot of responsibility. Getting ignorant people to cast poorly-informed votes does not help our society. I th
by aeturnum 8y ago
>Voting may be a duty, but it's one that carries a lot of responsibility. Getting ignorant people to cast poorly-informed votes does not help our society.
I think this understanding is common, but it's totally incorrect and is part of the larger project to get fewer people to vote.
Voting does represent, in some sense, a decision of import for how society functions. A vote for a tyrant, for example, would be bad for everyone. But is voting more important or influential than the many, many other ways in which people support or oppose bad things in our society?
In the same domain - political donations support or oppose the same politicians (and the relative impact of a donation and a vote is debatable - at the very least people can donate many times!), but the discourse around them has none of the concern around "poorly informed" donators. In a different domain - working for a company can have an enormous good or bad impact on the world, but we don't caution people against "ignorantly" accepting a position (there is lots of discussion around the morality of companies - but people are not called "irresponsible" or "ignorant" simply for working for bad companies).
I would ask you to consider how big an impact a vote has and compare that any other decision we make that impacts the world. The narrative you're advancing holds voting to a much higher standard than other ways in which people affect the world. I personally think this is because the originators of this argument (but not necessarily you) want people to question if they should vote. However, they would never suggest that a person their suitability to select who to buy services from, or work for, or donate money to - because those are all actions taken by higher-income people and voting is (or attempts to be) universal.
- 0x8BADF00D 8y ago> I think this understanding is common, but it's totally incorrect and is part of the larger project to get fewer people to vote. Which is what the Founding Fathers intended. The word “democracy” does not exist anywhere in the Constitution or Declaration of Independence. As Ben Franklin put it, we have a republic, if we can keep it. We have done a terrible job at that.
- aeturnum 8y agoI do think that the constitution is a fundamentally undemocratic document! But I disagree that this particular discourse is in the tradition of the founding fathers' concerns about popular opinion. Their project to prevent "the unwashed masses" from expressing themselves came in the form of limiting enfranchisement to white man with property. They would have vehemently disagreed with the idea that those propertied white men should worry a lot about being ignorant and only vote if they were sure they had properly prepared!
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Which is what the Founding Fathers intended. Even if that was true (and most generalizations about the Founding Father's aren't because they were a diverse group with often diametrically opposed intentions), “what the Founding Father's intended” (other than some role in the legal interpretation of text of laws written by them, including the Constitution) ought not have any special weight.
- 0x8BADF00D 8y agoFair enough. But you need only look to history for examples to see the ultimate outcome of populism or democracy. It leads either to tyranny or total societal collapse. So I don’t agree with the notion that everyone should vote.
- dragonwriter 8y agoIt's at least equally, if not more, accurate to say “you need only look to history for examples to see the ultimate outcome of limiting franchise, whether de jure or de facto, to a group that views themselves as the right kind of people to rule over everyone else. It leads either to tyranny or total societal collapse, and usually both in one order or the other.” So, I don't agree with the notion that only the “right people” should participate in their government.
- hcg 8y agoExcept the US was founded on the idea of a limited franchise.
- hcg 8y agoBut you should right?
- hcg 8y agoA republic which partially uses representative democracy, but mostly exists to ensure power to the landowning minority. Nowadays it's not about land of course, but it still exists to serve the wants of the powerful and only the powerful. Even the one part that was supposed to be actually representative isn't. Start over. No more senate. Elected president. Representative parliament.