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Most people aren't voting, period. The U.S. just had federal elections a couple of weeks ago, and two-thirds of the country stayed home: http://www.nytimes.co

Most people aren't voting, period. The U.S. just had federal elections a couple of weeks ago, and two-thirds of the country stayed home: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/opinion/the-worst-voter-turnout-in-72-years.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/opinion/the-worst-voter-tu... I get it. The system is broken, and there are no good choices to vote for (when a race is even contested at all), so why bother? Except that the reason why the system is broken in the first place is that no one shows up at any stage of the game. * We don't show up in local and state elections, where the politicians are elected who draw the maps and gerrymander the congressional districts. * We don't show up for the primaries, where the candidate who is going to win that gerrymandered district is selected. * Then we don't show up for the general election. Admittedly, most races are a foregone conclusion by this stage, and there aren't good candidates to choose from. However, even at this stage there is always at least a "lesser of two evils". With only 35% turnout, the outcome could be flipped in even the most gerrymandered of districts if people were simply engaged and showed up. Money drives the system, but only because the public is so disengaged, and votes for whoever has the funds to shout at us the loudest. I don't know how you break the cycle of cynicism and instill some civic responsibility in the average Joe, but there's never going to be some external savior who swoops in from the outside and magically makes things less corrupt. Is has to come from us.

rayiner 12y ago
As someone who doesn't vote, let me explain why. It's not because I'm cynical. It's because I'm fine with whoever wins. Both parties are pretty close to each other on the issues I care about. Neither party will dismantle either our military or the welfare state. Taxes are not going to fluctuate more than +/- 5%. Nobody is going to dismantle Obamacare. Abortion is here to stay, legalization of same sex marriage is inevitable, etc. And I think these are all good things and I have no pressing incentive to vote to change the status quo. I understand that other people don't have the same views and want to see fundamental change. But I think most people really don't want fundamental change. They maybe want to move the needle a bit one way or another, but they're basically okay with how things have evolved to be. There was a great graphic on reddit the other day showing voter preferences by party. There is little difference between peoples' priorities with the exception of the military. Everyone cares about jobs and social security. Nobody cares about the environment or infrastructure. I find it difficult to look at the US and think anything other than that it closely reflects what your typical voter wants, or at least represents the inevitable compromise between what subsets of typical voters want.
- tptacek 12y ago
  That's not really true at all, is it? Read Reihan Salam's piece in Slate about conservative objections to the ACA. The ACA didn't pass because it was close enough to conservatively acceptable to limp through as a "moderate" reform. Conservatives hate the ACA and see it as a radical reorientation of entitlement spending back to big-budget redistributive federal spending. So Obama and Pelosi got lucky (thank god) and got a guaranteed issue health reform bill passed. That was a huge change, and it just happened a few years ago. Bush and Hastert could have gotten lucky transforming social security into a giant subsidized IRA scheme --- which was their stated goal. The social safety net could have been radically transformed into a government block grant to New York financial firms. Not to mention: the whole disastrous Iraq war. I think you should probably vote.
  - euroclydon 12y ago
    The affordable care act barely got out of the Senate with only 60 of the 60 needed votes to stop debate. Al Franken won his election to the Senate by 317 votes.
- baddox 12y ago
  > As someone who doesn't vote, let me explain why. It's not because I'm cynical. It's because I'm fine with whoever wins. Both parties are pretty close to each other on the issues I care about. And don't forget that it's comically unlikely that the chance of your vote affecting the outcome of an election (especially a presidential election) is worth the difference in value to you between potential election outcomes.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    That's not it. It's unlikely that my individual actions are going to destroy the environment, but I don't litter or run the water while brushing my teeth, because it's important that people as a collective not do those things. With politics, I don't vote not because I doubt that collectively we could have an impact, but because I'm quite happy with the trajectory of things as it is.
baddox 12y ago
> I get it. The system is broken, and there are no good choices to vote for (when a race is even contested at all), so why bother? Except that the reason why the system is broken in the first place is that no one shows up at any stage of the game. The system is broken, but I think it's broken in a different way than what you're suggesting. It's not broken because people don't show up to vote. On the contrary, people don't show up to vote because the system is broken, and it's not just broken because there are only two relevant parties and corporations exert a lot of influence. It's broken because many people correctly calculate that the impact of their individual vote has less value than the cost of physically voting, and even less so than the cost of educating themselves about the candidates and issues. The democracy in the US is especially broken for more specific reasons (like the two-party dominance and gerrymandering), but democracy in general is a bad way to aggregate the preferences of a large and diverse group of people.
- jervisfm 12y ago
  > It's broken because many people correctly calculate that the impact of their individual vote has less value than the cost of physically voting, and even less so than the cost of educating themselves about the candidates and issues. Agreed but that becomes an issue if everyone thinks and behaves like that. That is, if individually everyone goes through the same thought process concluding that voting is not worthwhile for them on an individual basis what happens is that no one votes. There is an inflection point below which votes do actually matter. > democracy in general is a bad way to aggregate the preferences of a large and diverse group of people. That may be true. The question then becomes what is a better way to "aggregate the preferences of a large and diverse group of people" ? Perhaps, such an aggregation is not practically possible.
  - baddox 12y ago
    > There is an inflection point below which votes do actually matter. Yes, that's true. In theory, as fewer people vote, the value of each vote goes up, and presumably there could be some equilibrium reached. Of course, I doubt that experiment would be allowed to complete without the government making significant fundamental changes. But there's another closely related issue, which might explain why lots of people still vote despite my claim that it's irrational. My claim only considered the costs and benefits of the impact of a vote on the outcome of the election. But there are other benefits that many people receive from voting, namely, the feeling of doing one's civic duty (which many people are instructed to do from a young age) and the feeling of being part of rooting for a group (like a political party). The trouble with this class of benefits is that they are enjoyed by the voter whether or not the voter invests the time to research the candidates and issues (which is much more costly than the physical act of voting, but is ostensibly required according to the traditional civics class explanation of democracy). This theory predicts that voter education on the candidates and issues would be low, which is certainly the case in a few relevant polls I've seen. > The question then becomes what is a better way to "aggregate the preferences of a large and diverse group of people" ? Perhaps, such an aggregation is not practically possible. Plenty of suggestions are out there, but they're all obviously considered very radical in mainstream Western political philosophy. Most radical political philosophies you've heard of probably either aren't fundamentally democratic (like propertarian/market anarchism, anarcho-capitalism) or are democratic in a different sense (like direct action or direct democracy in left-libertarianism). For an alternative that is slightly less radical, though still politically unfeasible for any major government in the foreseeable future, take a look at futarchy, which combines democratic voting with (money-based) prediction markets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futarchy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futarchy
Omniusaspirer 12y ago
>I don't know how you break the cycle of cynicism and instill some civic responsibility in the average Joe You can't. >There's never going to be some external savior who swoops in from the outside and magically makes things less corrupt That doesn't mean people aren't going to keep clinging to that joke of a hope. Look at Google Fiber! It's people getting excited that one huge corporation is going to save them from the other massive corporations. We read articles about how the tech giants are going to save us from the NSA (oh the hilarity of Google and Facebook being on that list). We all love Tesla because we cling to a hope Elon will save us from dealerships and "Big Auto". Lots of people buy organic in the hope it will save us from "Big Agro" and be healthier. We like reading about battery and alternative energy companies because it's gonna save us from "Big Oil". We like reading about the miracle cancer cure that "Big Pharma" has allegedly chosen to ignore for evil reasons. All of our media outlets have realized this trend and shifted to printing puff pieces about our favorite "saviors". At this point the average American has zero hope for real citizen motivated change, so we'll keep hoping for a savior that's never going to come right up until the second this ship crashes into the iceberg.

rayiner 12y ago

As someone who doesn't vote, let me explain why. It's not because I'm cynical. It's because I'm fine with whoever wins. Both parties are pretty close to each other on the issues I care about. Neither party will dismantle either our military or the welfare state. Taxes are not going to fluctuate more than +/- 5%. Nobody is going to dismantle Obamacare. Abortion is here to stay, legalization of same sex marriage is inevitable, etc. And I think these are all good things and I have no pressing incentive to vote to change the status quo. I understand that other people don't have the same views and want to see fundamental change. But I think most people really don't want fundamental change. They maybe want to move the needle a bit one way or another, but they're basically okay with how things have evolved to be. There was a great graphic on reddit the other day showing voter preferences by party. There is little difference between peoples' priorities with the exception of the military. Everyone cares about jobs and social security. Nobody cares about the environment or infrastructure. I find it difficult to look at the US and think anything other than that it closely reflects what your typical voter wants, or at least represents the inevitable compromise between what subsets of typical voters want.

tptacek 12y ago
That's not really true at all, is it? Read Reihan Salam's piece in Slate about conservative objections to the ACA. The ACA didn't pass because it was close enough to conservatively acceptable to limp through as a "moderate" reform. Conservatives hate the ACA and see it as a radical reorientation of entitlement spending back to big-budget redistributive federal spending. So Obama and Pelosi got lucky (thank god) and got a guaranteed issue health reform bill passed. That was a huge change, and it just happened a few years ago. Bush and Hastert could have gotten lucky transforming social security into a giant subsidized IRA scheme --- which was their stated goal. The social safety net could have been radically transformed into a government block grant to New York financial firms. Not to mention: the whole disastrous Iraq war. I think you should probably vote.
- euroclydon 12y ago
  The affordable care act barely got out of the Senate with only 60 of the 60 needed votes to stop debate. Al Franken won his election to the Senate by 317 votes.
baddox 12y ago
> As someone who doesn't vote, let me explain why. It's not because I'm cynical. It's because I'm fine with whoever wins. Both parties are pretty close to each other on the issues I care about. And don't forget that it's comically unlikely that the chance of your vote affecting the outcome of an election (especially a presidential election) is worth the difference in value to you between potential election outcomes.
- rayiner 12y ago
  That's not it. It's unlikely that my individual actions are going to destroy the environment, but I don't litter or run the water while brushing my teeth, because it's important that people as a collective not do those things. With politics, I don't vote not because I doubt that collectively we could have an impact, but because I'm quite happy with the trajectory of things as it is.

baddox 12y ago

> I get it. The system is broken, and there are no good choices to vote for (when a race is even contested at all), so why bother? Except that the reason why the system is broken in the first place is that no one shows up at any stage of the game. The system is broken, but I think it's broken in a different way than what you're suggesting. It's not broken because people don't show up to vote. On the contrary, people don't show up to vote because the system is broken, and it's not just broken because there are only two relevant parties and corporations exert a lot of influence. It's broken because many people correctly calculate that the impact of their individual vote has less value than the cost of physically voting, and even less so than the cost of educating themselves about the candidates and issues. The democracy in the US is especially broken for more specific reasons (like the two-party dominance and gerrymandering), but democracy in general is a bad way to aggregate the preferences of a large and diverse group of people.

jervisfm 12y ago
> It's broken because many people correctly calculate that the impact of their individual vote has less value than the cost of physically voting, and even less so than the cost of educating themselves about the candidates and issues. Agreed but that becomes an issue if everyone thinks and behaves like that. That is, if individually everyone goes through the same thought process concluding that voting is not worthwhile for them on an individual basis what happens is that no one votes. There is an inflection point below which votes do actually matter. > democracy in general is a bad way to aggregate the preferences of a large and diverse group of people. That may be true. The question then becomes what is a better way to "aggregate the preferences of a large and diverse group of people" ? Perhaps, such an aggregation is not practically possible.
- baddox 12y ago
  > There is an inflection point below which votes do actually matter. Yes, that's true. In theory, as fewer people vote, the value of each vote goes up, and presumably there could be some equilibrium reached. Of course, I doubt that experiment would be allowed to complete without the government making significant fundamental changes. But there's another closely related issue, which might explain why lots of people still vote despite my claim that it's irrational. My claim only considered the costs and benefits of the impact of a vote on the outcome of the election. But there are other benefits that many people receive from voting, namely, the feeling of doing one's civic duty (which many people are instructed to do from a young age) and the feeling of being part of rooting for a group (like a political party). The trouble with this class of benefits is that they are enjoyed by the voter whether or not the voter invests the time to research the candidates and issues (which is much more costly than the physical act of voting, but is ostensibly required according to the traditional civics class explanation of democracy). This theory predicts that voter education on the candidates and issues would be low, which is certainly the case in a few relevant polls I've seen. > The question then becomes what is a better way to "aggregate the preferences of a large and diverse group of people" ? Perhaps, such an aggregation is not practically possible. Plenty of suggestions are out there, but they're all obviously considered very radical in mainstream Western political philosophy. Most radical political philosophies you've heard of probably either aren't fundamentally democratic (like propertarian/market anarchism, anarcho-capitalism) or are democratic in a different sense (like direct action or direct democracy in left-libertarianism). For an alternative that is slightly less radical, though still politically unfeasible for any major government in the foreseeable future, take a look at futarchy, which combines democratic voting with (money-based) prediction markets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futarchy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futarchy

Omniusaspirer 12y ago

>I don't know how you break the cycle of cynicism and instill some civic responsibility in the average Joe You can't. >There's never going to be some external savior who swoops in from the outside and magically makes things less corrupt That doesn't mean people aren't going to keep clinging to that joke of a hope. Look at Google Fiber! It's people getting excited that one huge corporation is going to save them from the other massive corporations. We read articles about how the tech giants are going to save us from the NSA (oh the hilarity of Google and Facebook being on that list). We all love Tesla because we cling to a hope Elon will save us from dealerships and "Big Auto". Lots of people buy organic in the hope it will save us from "Big Agro" and be healthier. We like reading about battery and alternative energy companies because it's gonna save us from "Big Oil". We like reading about the miracle cancer cure that "Big Pharma" has allegedly chosen to ignore for evil reasons. All of our media outlets have realized this trend and shifted to printing puff pieces about our favorite "saviors". At this point the average American has zero hope for real citizen motivated change, so we'll keep hoping for a savior that's never going to come right up until the second this ship crashes into the iceberg.