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I'd argue that if increasing turnout to be more representative of the population as a whole hurts your party then there's something fundamentally flawed with wh
by twalla 6y ago
I'd argue that if increasing turnout to be more representative of the population as a whole hurts your party then there's something fundamentally flawed with what your party is offering to the populace.
- dehrmann 6y agoSomething to think about: the electoral college is halfway more representative of people who can't vote (minors, non-citizens) because, in a sense, the elector represents them, and their neighbors who did vote probably have similar political views.
- mattnewton 6y agoHow nice of my neighbors to vote for others. Increased voter turnout removes the “probably” though by directly sampling. And then you don’t need anachronisms like the electoral college.
- dehrmann 6y agoMy point was about representing people who can't vote. Direct sampling ignores them entirely.
- kmonsen 6y agoBut we don’t want elections to be decided by people who are not allowed to vote. If we wanted those people to vote we would simply let them instead of some weird indirect system.
- millstone 6y agoThe electors are completely irrelevant. They 100% vote for whatever candidate they are bound to. The result is indistinguishable from a direct vote. The only relevant fact about the electoral college is the number of electors assigned to each state.
- dehrmann 6y ago> They 100% vote for whatever candidate they are bound to. You haven't been following the news. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_electors_in_the_2016_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_electors_in_the_2016... Colin Powell finished third in the election, and Mike Pence got more votes for VP than Trump got for president.
- corporateslave5 6y agoThe political party that is for giving away free stuff is more preferred by people too lazy to vote.
- basementcat 6y agoNot necessarily. There are many historical examples of political parties founded on the principle that members of the opposition were of unsound mind or perhaps weren't even considered to be people. If one accepts these premises as sound then it is quite reasonable to restrict voting rights only to those who support the party.
- alkonaut 6y ago> If one accepts these premises as sound I'd argue that accepting that as sound still means what he said: "then there's something fundamentally flawed with what your party is offering" A party in a democracy must have as a core value that it wants the majority to govern, that that majority is as representive as possible of the population, and that this majority should govern even if the political outcome is the opposite of what your party wants.
- xwdv 6y agoFor some people, it’s all about the money: Low taxes, more benefits, cheaper stuff, free stuff. Whichever candidate will give them the most, that’s what they want. Lazy people will fall into this category by default because they can’t be bothered to do any more rigorous analysis and don’t really have any strong values one way or another. Plus it’s hard to beat free stuff. And then there’s other people, who don’t care so much about money, but rather the values. They will vote for a candidate that will actually make them worse off as long as they feel that candidate represents their values. And they will do it over and over again.