The biggest reason people in the US don't vote is because they don't have enough options so they never get to choose people they really care about. Plus, no individual vote matters. This all has to do with our winner-take-all elections. Countries with proportional representation have much higher voter turnout rates (often in the 80-90% range). That's because you get to vote for the person or party you want, and they'll at least still get a seat in government even if they're just in the opposition. But you still have an incentive to get out and vote and make their position stronger. There are no lost causes or strategic voting.
One of the worst lies perpetuated by the media is that the presidential election is the only one that really matters. There are so many elections that have a direct impact on your life that you can participate in – state, city, and county election. These are not generally very partisan. Sadly, local elections often don't have enough options simply because there aren't enough politicians standing for election.
> One of the worst lies perpetuated by the media is that the presidential election is the only one that really matters.
The problems with the electoral system effect all offices which are elected by either plurality or majority/runoff, not just those for Presidential electors. This includes all members of Congress, most Governors and statewide elected officials, most state legislators, most mayors and other elected local executive officers, and the many city and county legislative officers (city council, county supervisors, etc.) that are elected in single-member districts.
There's some of the latter that are elected in vote for N and the top N win elections, which tend to provide slightly more choice, but still less choice (and less effective democratic representation of the choices made) than proportional election.
A tired old bumper sticker quote that I wholeheartedly agree with. Right along with Mark Twain's "If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it."
Parent might be saying the media supports this fallacy by the amount of coverage given.
With the huge number of resources available online for information, I would suggest that the perception of media as only covering presidential elections means that you need to work a little harder and find news sources that give you more valuable content. And if your desired news source doesn't exist, think about making it. For example, my hometown is a town of 20,000 people in a beautiful part of the country, but it suffers from being, at best, a bedroom community for nearby hospitals and colleges since 2008 finally ended the industrial presence. There's a guy there who has decided that he's going to give the town news, and he does fantastically well. He has a facebook page with 10000 followers (remember, the town is only 20000) and summarized positions of all the candidates for the recent city council and school board elections. All his posts have substantial discussions in the comments. In recent months I've had great discussions with high school classmates about where the town is headed, which wouldn't have happened before this facebook page (because we didn't have the information.) We also take a pretty active interest in the town, despite the fact that we all live 500-3000 miles away these days.
That turned into a bit of show and tell. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are people interested in local coverage if it's substantial.
That's a really great story. I'm curious if this guy gets paid at all for this, if he just does it in addition to a day job, and perhaps family, etc. Can you share the link to his page?
I'm also also curious if there (ever) was a town newspaper.
Actually, there still is a town newspaper! I used to read it through every morning, which took very little time considering its size. I feel that this guy covers local politics much better than the local paper ever did. He also shares some interesting events, and does so quickly. Plus, with his updates, you really feel like there's stuff going on, despite it being a small, pretty sleepy town.
I haven't contacted the guy, but I believe he does it on the side. I've been meaning to get in touch with him to learn about him and maybe coordinate with him. The town is looking very seriously at building a new high school on the outskirts of town, losing the current strong location and sending the town deep into debt in the process, which they justify because the current school has some leaks in the roof and, as a 1930s building, doesn't have any flashy new technology built into the classrooms. I've talked with some friends at length about this, and we all had pretty much the same feelings. The last thing you want to do is encourage teachers to spend less time at the board, and more showing PowerPoint; centuries-old buildings are perfectly good places for class, as each of us experienced in college; and they're desperately looking for a cure-all, when the reality is that you have a major demographics shift when you no longer have the huge DuPont plant keeping a herd of engineers in town.
On the other hand, it's a beautiful location, it's incredibly cheap to live and buy a home, and the town has been shifting its development patterns in the last ten or so years. The long lost downtown area is coming back to life, streets are being built with bike space, and narrower so cars are less encouraged to speed, and they're starting to emphasize the great parks, river, and proximity to the mountains.
Finally, when you go there, you're struck by how much a single person could really turn the whole place around and onto an incredible trajectory.
Never thought I'd run into another person from Waynesboro on Hacker News of all places. But, I guess I'm here so there's at least two of us. Small world after all.
There's a tail wagging the dog argument here - in the US, the media are still a profit generating industry, so they're driven by what people want to watch/read. And that means the Presidential candidates. And, in 2016, Trump.
I couldn't agree more. Local elections matter a lot. Especially when local elections in places like Seattle, WA are generating insane amounts of campaign money.
Local elections matter, but the direction of the country is determined at the federal level. That's why there's so much media coverage of it.
That, and the Supremacy Clause. Whatever local laws you vote for are superseded by federal law. By definition, this means federal elections matter a lot more than local elections (even though local elections have a more immediate short-term impact on the populace).
I don't know much about law. If that's the case, how does legal marijuana work in Oregon, Colorado, Washington, and other legal states? Is it federally illegal but the feds just don't interfere?
Presidential elections have what are called coattails [1], ie, the act like major marketing campaigns that drag voters into the booths so smaller-electorate candidates get votes due to that.
We need a TV channel/website that simply states the facts of the positions each politician holds, where they are from, when their elections are coming up and their voting record based on their supposed stance.
There are SO many things that we can do.
We invest supposedly in physical and technical infra, but never in political....
Every campaign website I have ever seen clearly explains the candidates position on all relevant issues. If you are looking for third party sources, you can also see the information compiled be VoteSmart.org and OnTheIssues.org.
Your state's Secretary of State office will list upcoming elections, and BallotPedia.org collects many of these.
The resources are already out there and available. It says something that you didn't even know that though.
Some of the struggle is due to silly arcana. For example, the local deadline for submitting candidate statements is immediately after filing week, but before endorsements can be known. So crucial signals voters rely on are often missing.
The only fix is to keep pushing for improvements. Explain the problems to the gatekeepers, lobby for change.
Oregon has this, but not on television. There's a voter information book that's mailed to anyone who has a mailbox, a couple weeks before ballots go out. It contains non-partisan descriptions of issues, candidate-provided statements, and arguments for/against with a verified source for each. IIRC anyone can pay some small amount of money to have a position/argument included.
Relatively newly-minted American here. A unified election calendar and ballot database would be helpful.
The number of local (especially community budgeting, judicial and special district) elections I've missed out of ignorance, despite checking New York City's Board of Elections website, is nuts. Furthermore, there seems to be an expectation that voters blindly vote along party lines. Almost every election there will be a list of uncompetitive judicial runs I've never heard of, and so had no time to do any research on. The result, for those line items, is me leaving them blank.
plus 1 to ballotpedia. also +1 to the need for an easy to read calendar. honestly, if someone builds something we can use, we'll put it up at vote.org and promote the heck out of it.
NYC elections are the worst. In congressional, state representative, or city council election years, there are so many candidates running in so many districts within the single media market that a TV station could cover nothing else 24/7 and still only spend a few minutes on each candidate per week. You could have an entire edition of one of the tabloids devoted to nothing but a couple paragraphs about each candidate for each race. And that's for a general election, let alone a primary.
That is, if the races were contested. Which they aren't because nobody pays attention to them. Which is in part because there's no information to be had on them even if you look for it. Stupid vicious cycle. So people vote for those offices along party lines or leave the ballots blank.
I've been thinking about trying to build something that would help solve the problem, but it's really a social problem more than a technical problem, and who has the time to go chasing down bios and position statements from hundreds of candidates every spring and fall?
Judicial elections are one of my least favorite things about American democracy. I always feel chronically underinformed, and feel weird about voting in line with what the one local newspaper has to say on the matter.
Coming from a country like India, I have a different opinion. We have FPTP but the voter turnout is somewhat higher (60-85% depending on the state) compared to the US. There are a large number of political parties but only three or four of them can be considered national (have representatives in more than one states). Most of the parties are local to a state or a relatively small community (often a caste) and tries to appease their voter base as much as possible.
This system definitely allows smaller communities to be heard on the national stage, but it also frequently leads to situations where no single party or pre-election coalitions have enough representatives to form a government (they need at least 50% seats). As a result, coalitions are often formed between unlikely partners who are ideologically worlds apart. Parties forming a coalition at a state level while disparaging their partner at the federal level is quite common, and the number of hoops the politicians jumps through to justify their positions is hilariously sad.
Due to this coalition politics, often important legislation can't be passed as it is difficult to make any progress while satisfying all the partners. The government is also prone to "blackmail" from coalition partners who often threaten to withdraw support unless their demands are met. In a two-party system, at least things move. In a multi-party scenario, there is always a risk of a complete deadlock.
Congress is as deadlocked as can be. We have a system in which the President, the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader in the Senate, the Supreme Court, the Majority in the House, the Majority in the Senate, the Majority of the Majority in the House, the Majority of the Majority in the Senate, and 41% of the Senate can stop a bill from becoming law or nullify it.
Add that the districts are drawn by elected officials and easily and regularly manipulated to give parties disproportionate power and we end up with a situation where very few people in a very big country are able to completely disrupt the political system and hold the sovereign debt (and the economic stability of the world for that matter) hostage in order to try to take health care away from poor people.
I can't speak much about the political system of India, but I think it's quite evident that with the rise of politicians like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, people are very dissatisfied with the politicians we've been electing. And by virtue of that, the way we've been electing them.
> I can't speak much about the political system of India, but I think it's quite evident that with the rise of politicians like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, people are very dissatisfied with the politicians we've been electing.
Bernie Sanders is a politician that's been being elected to federal office for quite a long time.
Elections where the polls indicate the race is close, and the candidates have starkly different patterns, have high voter turnout. Where one candidate has a big lead, or the platforms are more or less indistinguishable, there's low turnout.
Voters are doing a simple cost/benefit analysis weighing the cost of taking the time to vote vs the impact their vote will have.
Absolutely, honestly, I would turn out to vote for Bernie Sanders, but that is seeming to be less likely as time progresses. So, I won't be voting at all, since I could care less if either Clinton or Trump get elected. Clinton gets elected and the status quo doesn't change very much, Trump gets elected, and maybe---just maybe some people will begin to sit up and take action.
This stance I sometimes hear from Sanders supporters (and I'm one of them, though not a US citizen myself) completely baffles me.
Why would a Sanders supporter want to risk putting someone like Trump in office (through inaction)? Asides from maybe the anti-establishment aspect, Trump and his proposed policies spits in the face of everything Sanders stands for. Even if we ignore his own dangerous, egomaniac tendencies, having a Republican president in office with a supreme court nomination on the line could easily undo all the progress (however little) the US has made in areas like healthcare, marriage equality, minority rights, gun regulation, climate change, etc, and very possibly even regress on certain areas.
There's so much at stake in this election and a Trump presidency will be absolutely disastrous for not just the US, but the entire world.
It's probably confusing to you because you don't understand that there are people who dislike Hillary and Trump in equal measures. I think either will be a complete disaster but seeing as how it looks like I have no alternatives I refuse to dignify the election by wasting my time voting between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. The idea of vote for Hillary because she is slightly less evil than trump or the reverse is just not something I'm willing to do. They are both scum and I can't stomach endorsing either one in some kind of crazy game of russian roulette.
In the case of Trump getting elected, you're assuming that we'd still have anything that resembles a democracy four years later and that the people who'd supposedly be ready to take action wouldn't be thrown in jail or disappeared or suppressed via collective violence.
Resigning oneself to naked fascism with the idea that it could somehow lead to more progress down the line is quite the gamble. Perhaps it could work out, but you're playing with some serious fire.
Trump isn't Mussolini. He's more Berlusconi, if you want to stay in Italy.
It's anyone's guess how Trump would actually rule, but throwing dissenters in jail would be admitting defeat on his only real core value, which is that he's so great that he always gets his way on charisma and "negotiation skill".
Other than that, I do agree that "it must get worse before it can get better" is bad policy, since the former is usually a lot more reliable than the latter.
Perhaps you don't care about social issues but there is a world of difference between the presumptive candidates' positions. Do you care about the fate of women and minorities?
I believe the stronger reason is your presidential election vote won't matter in most states where the contest is already decided. So a candidate winning 70-30 vs. 60-40 doesn't make a difference.
Voter turnout is higher in our presidential elections when a person's vote is generally worth less.
People SHOULD be voting at the local level where their votes still matter quite a bit, but generally don't through an interesting combination of apathy and ignorance (e.g. few people actually know who their rep on the city council is and what their basic platform is).
Unfortunately, limited information is an inherent consequence of scale. There's much better media coverage of national issues. If I read The Economist, they may provide insight into the presidential candidates. They do not have news about my candidates for city council.
Which is really odd to think about. Super local newspapers used to be the norm, but as the conglomerates got bigger the number of papers fell so they no longer had the space to cover the truly local news.
A variety of web sites have tried to fill the need, but the money needed for local news far exceeds the revenue they're able to generate.
> I believe the stronger reason is your presidential election vote won't matter in most states where the contest is already decided. So a candidate winning 70-30 vs. 60-40 doesn't make a difference.
Your vote, win or lose, also communicates very important messages:
1) 'I vote, and people in my community vote'. If you don't vote then why the hell should the politician care what you want? Does McDonalds care about the opinions of people who don't eat fast food? You think they should put more healthy options on their menu? 'So what? Who are you? Stop wasting my time.' The same goes for your community: If your community doesn't vote, then why would anyone address its concerns? In a world of 50% turnout, imagine the attention a community would get if 95% voted - on every issue, they'd be wondering, 'what does neighborhood X think? how does it affect them?'
2) It expresses a political outlook. A politician who sees their constituents vote 80-20 for Clinton over Trump is going to behave much differently than one who sees a 55-45 vote.
Countries with compulsory voting [1] mange to get this even higher without having proportional representation.
1. At least in Australia we have compulsory registration and compulsory visiting the polling station on the Election Day - if you don't want to vote you don't really have to.
You've never been to a bar/coffee house/grocery store/etc on a weekend? Lots of people work the weekend, often it is those who are paid less and have more rigid schedules. Also you run into religious days where some are not able to perform work.
Honestly it is a hard one to mandate as a single few hour window on a single day. Someone has to be working at hospitals for example.
It already is 'election week' in Australia. You can vote early, and you can postal-vote. The weekend vote is much easier to get the masses out voting, because most people don't have work (or school) to deal with on the weekend. At the last federal election I voted on the Wednesday beforehand, simply because I was passing by an early voting station.
And the queues at Australian voting stations on The Day aren't anywhere near as long as in the US. I've heard some horror stories where some people have had to wait 4+ hours (on a Tuesday) to vote in the US.
Even if an individual doesn't see distinctions between prominent candidates, there are usually "downballot" offices, local measures, and local tax measures to vote on.
A ballot isn't an exam -- you don't get penalized for not filling out every element. Voters should be encouraged to vote only on the elements they understand.
This is entirely true. PR is the reason democratic movements in countries like Spain and Greece are able to achieve power -- because positive feedback loops manifest between activism and electoral politics -- in ways that simply can't happen here.
The biggest reason people in the US don't vote is because they don't have enough options so they never get to choose people they really care about.
Sorry, this is complete malarky. The calculus of voting is: vote for the least of two evils. If we had 100% voting and everyone did this, the politicians would get better over time, because they would learn that being a certain way would result in failure. The general pool of would-be politicians would learn that maybe it would be OK to run since more normal people are winning.
It's that damn simple. Everything else is an excuse to service some BS idea.
Here are two shit sandwiches, one with onions and one with pickles. If you eat enough then the chef will eventually figure out your favorite kind of sandwich, but if you refuse then you are a selfish lazy jerk.
A representative present for a roll call and explicitly abstaining is a form of voting. A citizen staying home on election day is indistinguishable from apathy.
I vote that your opinion is not one iota more valuable than that of any non-voter. People like you really should be forced to look into a mirror an hour each day.
How are you going to force Thrymyr to look in the mirror for an hour per day, if you can't even get someone out to vote? Who would be motivated enough to apply that penalty?
I vote that your opinion is not one iota more valuable than that of any non-voter. People like you really should be forced to look into a mirror an hour each day.
No, in that case they are taking power - you haven't handed over anything. It is not a distinction without a difference, "...consent of the governed." etc.
The problem is not "being a certain way" leads to not raising enough money to compete, and/or being ignored by the media.
It's not an equation, but rather one gigantic shit show designed to stir emotion, bought and paid for by those who have money, and they give it to both sides.
And you are not using the only power you have. The shitshow is designed to get you not to vote. When fewer people vote, it's easier to control the remaining minority.
Hey everyone. Debra Cleaver here, founder of Vote.org. I am ready to answer all of your questions about voting in the US, as long as they are non-partisan. Partisan questions should be directed to your local political party. I'm especially keen to talk about ways we can use technology to modernize the election process. My current focus is how we can use electronic signatures to roll out online voter registration in states that don't have it, and for people who don't have driver's licenses.
Why do you want to increase turnout? Have you read some of the work on voter ignorance, which shows that voters have very little political knowledge, and are deeply influenced by various biases? This work shows that non-voters are have even worse prejudices and are less knowledgable than voters; how would getting these people to the polls help?[1]
>This work shows that non-voters are have even worse prejudices and are less knowledgable than voters
Does that book discuss causation? Do people not vote because they aren't paying attention to politics, or do they not pay attention because they aren't planning on voting?
I think it's at least plausible that if voting became very widespread, people might feel more pressure to stay generally informed. And of course, politicians would be forced to communicate to everyone, rather than just to groups that are most likely to vote.
From what I have read, it appears that intelligent and informed people also happen to be the ones that vote (likely for social or ethical reasons). I have not seen evidence that mandatory (or strongly encouraged) voting leads to a more informed public; do you have any evidence of this?
No I don't, I was just wondering if it was discussed in the book you linked. But again, you're talking about a correlation in this comment, and I'm wondering which way the causation goes. I don't know if there are any studies on this.
Why should their prejudices/biases not be represented? I mean, I personally probably disagree with them, but disagreement is sort of the reason for having voting.
The evidence shows that these uninformed and biased non-voters would take different views on a variety of important issues if they were less biased and more informed. Essentially, the voters represent the 'enlightened' views of the citizenry.
by who, and in what way? Arguably the issue is people are informed, just by misleading information. Whether it be CNN, Fox News, reddit, or the Drudge Deport - they all have their own bias. By asking people be more informed, you're really just adding to their own bias and prejudices with the biases of a larger group of people. People tend to gravitate towards information sources that reaffirm their existing beliefs.
There is a great deal of statistical work that compares what people think and believe. Some of these works try to 'correct' for wealth and education, then measure the gap between the views of certain groups and what their view would be if they were more well educated. Other studies compare what people say in response to survey questions to objective truths, i.e. what are the branches of the US Government, who is the president, who is the chief justice of the supreme court. If you would like more information on how voters and non-voters differ, I suggest that you read some of the work on the subject; I cannot brief you on the subject in a few Hacker News posts, as there is simply too much information.
Citizens (, especially non-voters,) are ill-informed, biased, and lack any incentive to scrutinize their views, as the only change that could come about would be a painful realization that they have been wrong (which nobody wants). If you want to read a very revealing and well-written exposition on this subject, I recommend "The God that Failed" (edited by Crossman).[1]
I haven't read the book in question, but I wonder which causes which: does being more informed cause one to be a likely voter, or does choosing to vote cause one to become more informed?
It seems to be a "dreaded third thing". Wealth and education seem to be highly correlated with electoral participation, and both wealth and education are indicators of knowledgability and rationality.
Although seeing as how there's no party in the US that would cater to social conservatives and fiscal liberals (and vice versa), your statement is mostly correct.
The drama of something to argue over with their Establishment sister party, perhaps?
It is plain that the Democratic Party doesn't want Sanders voters if they're going to demand Sanders policy outcomes. There's no drama in successfully helping people, and what kind of partisanship isn't made of drama?
It is plain that the GOP didn't want Trump voters until Trump more or less took over the ticket with the help of professional-class journalists looking for... drama.
I think that it hurts the GOP more than it directly helps Democrats. In my mind a sudden large increase in voter turnout may give sway to candidates running as Democrats that may not be totally in line with the DNC as a whole. You're seeing a huge leftward push by Democratic voters in the presidential election, and while I don't believe it's as fragmented as the GOP currently is, I don't see any reason why this split won't continue.
Probably the most under-represented group is the youth vote, so 100% turnout would probably mean much more progressive, socialist results as well. I say socialist here without the negative connotation.
> If that were true, why wouldn't the government try to push mandatory voting laws when it had leadership from the Democrat party?
Because the Democratic Party prefers to expand voting by expanding access (making it easier to register, and easier to vote by expanding times, methods, etc.) rather than by personal mandates and threats of punishment.
Maybe this is or isn't non-partisan, but here's a shot: I'm 25 years old. I've never voted and never will vote as long as there is a two party system. There has never been a situation where I can agree with either party or individual enough to support them in an election. How do you intend to get people like me to vote?
Also, if you did you get everyone to vote, wouldn't every vote turn in to a popularity contest? In other words, why wouldn't every candidate attempt to win their elections by appealing to the lowest common denominator?
> Maybe this is or isn't non-partisan, but here's a shot: I'm 25 years old. I've never voted and never will vote as long as there is a two party system. There has never been a situation where I can agree with either party or individual enough to support them in an election. How do you intend to get people like me to vote?
In most places in the US, there are plenty of downballot elections, many of which are nonpartisan. There are also ways to be involved in the selection of party nominees (including, but not limited to, party primaries, which are in many places open to both members of the parties and those in no party, and in some places you can vote in primaries irrespective of party. Or, in California -- aside from Presidential elections -- the "primaries" are non-partisan first-round election from which the top two vote-getters proceed.)
> In most places in the US, there are plenty of downballot elections, many of which are nonpartisan
I'll add that your vote has much more power in these elections. Usually very few others vote, and the districts are much smaller (your local city council member might have hundreds or thousands of constituents, compared with the President who has 310 million); you vote might be one of several hundred.
If you are interested in political participation one place to start would be state and local races - you are more likely to find unconventional candidates at those levels that don't fit neatly with either party.
I also find it much more plausible that a third party would make inroads at the state and local level and build momentum from there, rather than a third party candidate emerging out of nowhere and taking the presidency outright.
> I also find it much more plausible that a third party would make inroads at the state and local level and build momentum from there, rather than a third party candidate emerging out of nowhere and taking the presidency outright.
For example, and independent in Vermont could become a mayor, then Governor, then Senator, and then have a shot at the White House.
>wouldn't every candidate attempt to win their elections by appealing to the lowest common denominator?
I think that's sort of how democracy is supposed to work. Politicians win when they can convince more people than anyone else. It's like that famous quote: “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”.
Yes, everything would be better if countries were run by benevolent geniuses who always implemented the right policies even if they weren't popular. But failing that impossible paradise, democracy is the best option. And if only some people vote, and everyone knows in advance roughly who is going to vote, democracy won't work as well. The government should reflect all the people it serves.
Why exactly is democracy the best, or shall we say "least bad", option? Have you, or has Churchill, evaluated all of the alternatives? And how does the belief that you air in your last sentence, that government should reflect all the people it serves, rhyme with your belief that the ideal (but admittedly in your opinion impossible) form of government would be one run by benevolent geniuses who always implement the right policies, even if they are not popular?
If I may, it does seem to me that qualitative and quantitative government are two quite distinct concepts - one might even go so far as to say that they are fundamentally opposed. Increasing voter turnout certainly increases the quantitative, most purely democratic, aspect of democracy - but what should someone who is more interested in the qualitative aspects of government have to say about that? And if one, as a supporter of democracy as the least bad option, recognises the inherent problems of popular government as a necessary trade-off, would it not make sense to try to mitigate as much of those to the greatest extent possible? I'm not sure if increasing voter turnout to absurd levels would be in tune with this latter category of mindsets, but I'd be curious to hear what you or others of a similar opinion think about that...
> Why exactly is democracy the best, or shall we say "least bad", option?
Because government is fundamentally, inalterably whatever the citizenry decides to accept. Providing feedback on what the citizenry is willing to accept through elections and aligning government with that minimizes the frequency and degree to which the feedback from the citizenry on what they are willing to accept is provided through violent and/or destructive means.
To address your first question, the actual quote is:
> Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
So it's not a claim that democracy is the least worst simpliciter, but an empiric claim of history (and compared to 20th century alternatives like national socialism, fascism etc, is backed by evidence). None of that however, justifies the claim that democracy is the best form of government compared when compared possible alternatives.
Correct. The very best form of government is a good king with final say on all matters of importance to the state. The problem with that is that there have only been a handful of good kings over the last few millennia.
Well, you've raised some questions that I think are much bigger than an HN comments section, and I think there are many books and essays that will give better answers than I ever could.
If you are interested in mitigating the issues of high voter turnout by discouraging turnout, you are not a supporter of democracy. I don't say that as a value judgment, just by definition, democracy means everyone voting for a government that reflects the whole population.
If you support democracy, then you should support other efforts to solve these problems. Improve education to increase voter quality. Design the government so some crucial positions are somewhat shielded from popular opinion (judges, generals, etc.). Modify term limits to protect politicians from potentially unpopular decisions. I don't know, I'm sure there are plenty of other ideas. We could ask Belgium and Turkey and Sweden what they do to combat the threat of irrational and uneducated voters.
I have not evaluated all the alternatives to democracy, but I would say history has. That's not a perfect answer, but in practice democracy is clearly at least as effective as any other government system, and by many measures clearly the best option.
When I say that a benevolent genius would be better, I don't think that contradicts my other points because all real governments are run by humans, and all humans are flawed. But when a dictator or a small group of ruling elites screws up, they have incredibly strong motivations to hang onto power anyway. This is a bad thing. In an ideal democracy, there is no long-term way for any one person or group of people to remain in power unless they govern in a way that benefits their whole country. I don't think this is true for any other system of government.
Finally, if you don't consistently make decisions that your people support, they will overthrow you. It doesn't matter if you know what's best for them. There is no point in trying to design a government that doesn't reflect the people, because it won't last, regardless of how great its policies are.
"Why exactly is democracy the best, or shall we say "least bad", option?"
Because it does allow for choice. It makes the leaders accountable to the electorate, as they can always vote them out next election. Most other forms of government do not allow for the government to be changed easily.
If you have a better form of government in mind, I'm sure we'd like to hear it.
One of the more interesting ideas I have rarely seen in fiction is an actual benevolent and wise AI taking over. Closest is probably the Culture novels which shows up as a very odd society.
Voting for 3rd party's often has a larger impact than voting for the top 2 party's. Remember in a 2 party system each side wants to minimize the perceived differences. But, if a 3rd party gains support one of the major party's will generally add those ideas to the platform.
Most recently is probably Libertarian > Tea Party. Not that they really had much impact, but people paid lip-service to the ideas.
If you vote Socialist or Tea Party, the Democrats / Republicans lost your vote and have the stats to back it up.
Even if you disagree with the system, vote for whoever is most aligned with your values. Someone will want your vote and your decision may impact future campaigns.
> If you vote Socialist or Tea Party, the Democrats / Republicans lost your vote and have the stats to back it up.
The Tea Party isn't an actual party that fields candidates, its a right-wing grassroots (or astroturf, depending on who you listen to) organization that mostly backs Republican candidates, and mostly serves to push the Republicans on certain issues. If you vote for a Tea Party-backed candidates, a Republican has won your vote, not lost it.
> Remember in a 2 party system each side wants to minimize the perceived differences.
I don't know that I agree. In practice, it's hardly happening (look at the Republicans and Democrats; at Trump and Clinton), and I don't see why it would happen.
Trump and Clinton are basically still at the primary stage where people have actual choices. You can expect a push to center fairly soon. They don't want to give voters issue whiplash so they generally transition though to more centrist message.
Ideally candidates want to avoid alienating their base, but they also can't pick up more voters by pandering to them. So, everyone tries to appeal to independents and not energize their opponents base. The other strategy to to fight dirty which tends to suppress voter turnout, but that can easily backfire in a presidential election.
This also often results in coded language. Which lets you target messages to people that care about an issue without generally annoying other people.
People like you are quite rare. Most people will vote for the lesser of two evils once they hit some level of disgust.
If you read their methodology, they are trying to reach a large group first. I seems someone as rare as you doesn't matter when thousands of easy votes are still out there. Even then they may fix something else on the way to voter turnout of 80% or 90% that may be appealing to you.
No that isn't a solution or comprimise I'm comfortable with. I'm not saying itst my responsibility to cut losses and do what's best for everyone. I'm saying this system is broken and I won't be a part of it.
As long as you don't leave, you are a part of it. If you aren't acting within your power to.mitigate the problems in it, you are not only part of the system, but a willing contributor to the problems.
If you aren't comfortable with the set of options, actively work to improve the set of options to one you are more comfortable with in the future. But, today, do the best with the options you have.
If you are paying taxes you are paying for this system, by not voting, you are simply having money stolen from you to have other people do as they see fit.
pretending that your abstainment from voting is somehow going to do anything but give ignorant people more power is senseless for anyone who understands how business/government works.
Unless you give up your citizenship and leave the country you are part of the political process. Yes you might believe the system is broken, but by not voting you are saying you don’t care and you are effectively giving half a vote each to the top two candidates. I am sure this is not what you intended to do.
If all the choices on offer are so bad that you can’t choose a candidate to vote against then write in a candidate. In my experience it is very rare that both candidates are equally bad and you can’t choose the least worst option.
To address your first assertion, I am a citizen whether I vote or not. By not voting, I am consciously choosing not to be part of the political process, at least that part of the process where I vouch for a politician by giving them my vote.
And I can't name a single person I want to associate my name with by voting for them.
I think you have a very unusual idea of what voting means. You are not vouching for a politician by voting for them nor are you associated with them in any way. All you are expressing is you rate them higher than their opposition.
It's sort of the train switch moral question. If you hate them both but hate one slight more, voting for the lesser hated one makes you morally responsible for the shit they cause in some peoples' view (as opposed to being a bystander).
Let's say hypothetically your two options to vote for have the same motives but take different stances on relatively unimportant issues. The issues that actually matter aren't discussed. The only issues that are discussed are the ones that stir up people's emotions. By voting you are just supporting this system and saying everything is okay. "Oh, look. 90% voter turnout. Everything is great."
I'd much rather not have my vote counted then vote for someone I despise. "Hmm, 10% voter turnout. Something must be wrong."
Encouraging people to vote for a person they don't like just because they don't dislike them quite as much as the other person sets a very bad precedent.
> I'd much rather not have my vote counted then vote for someone I despise. "Hmm, 10% voter turnout. Something must be wrong."
Empirically, low turnout as a signal that something is wrong which provokes some kind of change to correct it doesn't work very well.
> Encouraging people to vote for a person they don't like just because they don't dislike them quite as much as the other person sets a very bad precedent.
Encouraging people to not vote because eventually that will signal that something is wrong and produce positive change is a lot worse.
Vote-for-one voting is still a ranked-preference method, its just one with only two ranks, and a restriction that only one candidate can be put in the first rank. It provides some (though often less than you'd like) input into social decisionmaking.
Abstention, in any voting system, is simply expressing absolute indifference between the available options -- it doesn't mean that you dislike them all, you could just like them all equally. It provides no useful signal into social decisionmaking. If you are actually indifferent, that's fine, but signaling indifference when what you really want to say is that you are not indifferent, but also not happy with your choices, is probably not what you want.
If you don't like the choices you get at general elections, there are ways to signal that that are far more effective than not voting. (The weakest and most basic of which is voting in primary elections or whatever the equivalent is.)
Encouraging people to vote for a person they don't like just because they don't dislike them quite as much as the other person sets a very bad precedent.
The alternative is the worse candidate get half your vote. If you really are indifferent to which ever candidate wins (i.e. they are both equally bad) then don’t vote. If you do think one is worse than the other then you need to vote to express this opinion.
No it really isn't. This is some very basic math that you are getting completely wrong for the sake of an argument. I'm not increasing either candidates popularity by not voting. If anything, I'm implicitly decreasing both of their popularities.
Personal attacks like this aren't allowed on HN. We ban accounts that do this. Please read the site guidelines and post civilly and substantively, only:
Also, you collected my email address. That's mandatory before you do the registration check. Why? I don't want to be "onboarded", and if I was, I want to be "offboarded". I just wrote to "info@vote.com" about that.
From your terms:
We may use Personal Information:
To send you informational communications that we believe may be of interest to you.
To send you marketing communications that we believe may be of interest to you.
...
We may use Flash LSOs and other technologies to, among other things, collect and store information about your use of the Services.
So this is really about building a mailing list you can spam, while tracking users to collect their behavior patterns.
if by spam you mean send election reminders, then yes, we are spammers. we're a 501c3 nonprofit. that means we don't profit off of our work unless helping to build a healthy democracy can be considered profit. also, we use a third-party database to power that tool. this probably won't shock you, but aggregating and normalizing voter roll data from 10,000+ election jurisdictions is messy and hard. there will always be the occasional false negative, which is why we encourage you to check again with your state if you think we're incorrect.
as for the privacy policy: it's too heavy on the legalese. our law firm wrote it ages ago, and we haven't had time to update it. we're not spammers. we're election reformers
I support what you do. However, that comment's blase-looking dismissal of privacy and spam concerns, rather than a serious attempt to address them, doesn't give me good feelings or confidence.
I went and looked up the 990s for Long Distance Voter and you are manifestly not drawing a large salary, but it's quite possible for a 501c3 nonprofit to be a pretty swell deal for the people operating it, even if they have to pay income taxes on all the benefits they receive from the work.
Which I apologize for not finding a more elegant way to phrase it, but the distinction between dividends, capital gains and ordinary income is not really that interesting, it's a detail of taxation.
Do you know of studies or other hard data that tracks _why_ people don't vote?
The article claims it is the difficulty of the process, but I would have guessed the top reason is voter apathy (which isn't really a technology issue).
Here's one thing technology could help with: identify which polling places are facing long delays on Election Day, so additional resources can be allocated to speed them up.
Without being "partisan", I've noticed that areas with lots of college students and minorities tend to have much longer delays than affluent mainly-white areas (I wonder why that is...)
oh sure. there are a wealth of studies out there. it's hard to say why any particular person doesn't vote, but there are some trends that show when voting is easier, more people vote. Colorado, Washington and Oregon all moved toward vote-by-mail systems, in which a ballot is automatically mailed to a voter's house, and saw an immediate increase in voter turnout.
Honestly, I'm waited to see the outcome of Oregon's automatic voter registration efforts on turnout. My guess is that Oregon will continue to lead the way with high turnout. I could be wrong, of course, but there's nothing that suggests that making voting easier would decrease turnout.
The Electoral Fraud Review report concludes that banning postal voting (in specific areas or altogether) would be a "disproportionate" response to allegations of voter fraud.
It also quite explicitly states that limiting postal votes would reduce the risk of voter fraud (p34) and acknowledges some evidence of systematic voter fraud in some regions of the UK exists.
it's hard to draw conclusions cross-country. right now i would say that we are very much in a position of denying actual citizens the right to vote, and we need to address that stat. postal mail is one way we can do that. making voting easy in general is the goal here.
My wife absolutely loves the mailed ballot approach in Washington (I'm not eligible to vote). Particularly because Washington appears to have votes of some description every quarter.
The information booklet that comes with it has been great for kickstarting investigation into the candidates and their policies, and the various other proposals that are up for the vote (booklet has both for and against arguments from different interest groups) so that she's been able to be a lot more informed as she prepares to vote.
Am I understanding you correctly? Is the washington state GOVERMENT mailing out ballots with a "pro/con" booklet or are they being sent out by some poltical nonprofit that is just printing off the standard ballot. It would disgust me if it was the election board compiling an "unbiased" pros/cons booklet that is included with every ballot.
I don't know about Washington, but California has:
(1) Candidate statements from candidates (there are requirements for being allowed to submit a statement), and
(2) Pro/con statements from the official proponents and registered opponents of ballot measures (identifying the sources for both) as well as financial estimates for ballot measures (for statewide measures, these are prepared by the state Legislative Analysts Office.)
Yes, it works great. The Secretary of State's office solicits a pro and con opinion from interested groups. At the bottom of the opinion is a laundry-list of groups that co-wrote the statement. That list is often more informative than the contents of the statement itself. The booklet also includes a candidate statement submitted by the candidate for each position.
Former Oregonian here--they do that too, and it's extremely handy to have all that stuff laid out in one place. Many an afternoon I sat down with my ballot (everything is done by mail there) and the booklet and read up on the issues and voted.
Do you (or anybody else) track about how informed the voters that are captured by "easy vote" are? I understand there are a lot of partisan disagreements, but there are also basic facts both about how US government works and what positions of the candidates are, which unfortunately are unknown to significant number of people. If you just get those people to vote, they might vote based on whose name they heard on TV, or who is handsomer, or because they heard somebody said something good/bad about some candidate and they never bothered to see if it's true. Do you think getting such people to vote more would improve the state of democracy?
I am not saying people don't already vote while uninformed - but you may be making matters worse. I am also not saying people that vote only when it's super-easy are necessarily of this kind or even have more uninformed voters than in general - maybe yes, maybe not. But I think it is a reasonable hypothesis which would be nice to check before investing money in effort in something that very well may make matters worse, not better.
I'd also be interested in data about the why's as well. My personal reasons span somewhere from personally humorous contempt of the idealized process (and its manifestation in reality) to observing how well extra-democratic interventions work for influencing specific political goals/change (esp in "democracies") under the right circumstances.
Though I doubt there will be a poll/test that would allow for such description and provide it within a larger context of being available as dataset for the public. It's easier to cast blanket statement of "low information/access" and work from such basis and pat oneself on the back for token reforms to be cited in a pamphlet/resume somewhere.
Don't most areas with lots of college students just see lines at the post office to mail in absentees? When I was in school nobody I knew was registered locally.
have you thought of open sourcing the voting backend so that cryptography and security experts can help to make sure that the votes are fair?
Also technology is good enough to be able to prove cryptographically the number of voters and to prove that a signature was taken to account. There are many ways to do this, but a professional cryptographer is the best to help in designing a system like this, not me.
hey xiphias: we help people register, not actually vote, so we're pretty confident in the security. we're always looking for hackers to try to break it however. want to help out?
As someone that is pretty content lobbying or going directly to a regulator to change a law, than through Congress or a local representative
Why do you think voter turnout is even worth spending energy on. Lobbying is way more likely to get your way and only marginally less passive. When Google got the FAA to change a regulation regarding blimps and skydiving, they didn't wait for the next Senate vote to put in their politicians, to nominate a more amenable chairman. They simply said "lets do it this way" to the FAA.
Its cute that people fought for the popular vote. But just cute.
I read this article and I still don't see the "why". It says "because there are big problems people want changed", this doesn't answer why you want to increase voter turnout.
For example, in America, the will of the people only influences change when it coincidentally is aligned with special interest will. Every other time special interests are more influential than the voting public.
This would undermine a theory that voter turnout is even a solution.
> the will of the people only influences change when it coincidentally is aligned with special interest will
I'm not sure what this means: If many people support something, is that a 'special interest'? Or won't there inevitably be a special interest supporting the same issue?
Also, do you have some research that supports this claim? I have seen research that lobbying's greatest power is to stop things from changing - i.e., to maintain the status quo.
tl;dr The most effective lobbying groups are typically supported is heads of large organizations acting independently of the rest of the organization or actual people. Estimating effectiveness has challenges in an empirical study but here are our attempts anyway.
There is another paper that shows the outcomes of public policy issues that stirred public interest. I want to find that one.
Possible. I'd argue the reverse is more likely, given that people relatively uninterested in voting are disproportionately less likely to be partial towards a particular candidate or cause or otherwise interested in changing the status quo.
Reasons for not voting vary. Uninterested voters are common, but other factors (didn't like the candidates, forgot to vote, too busy, transportation problems, inconvenient polling place) show up too.
A representative sample doesn't vote, that's the problem. The people who show up tend to be white middle-aged homeowners. Youth voter turnout, for instance, is very low compared to the eligible population [1]
Do you know of any evidence that a representative sample votes?
Even if that's true, I think 100% voting is a worthwhile goal, because it removes any doubt. If voting is already perfectly representative, then nobody should have a problem with this initiative, because it would change nothing.
are we aligned on the understanding that representative sample means a reflection of the random population? As in not a representative proportion of all subsets, but just what you might see in a random place in the country.
I mentioned to you or in another subthread that a shift in the voter demographics can effect change.
It is a waste of energy. Yes it is quaint that people actually fought for this right, now logically, you should realize this is unnecessary duplication of efforts, and you have suggested that there should be no problem increasing that unnecessary duplication of effort.
Some people, and their entities, are more influential than others and will always be. The popular vote has limited utility.
This observation has nothing to do with alternative forms of governance. This observation is simply that here and now, there are better rules you can play by than even caring about the popular vote one bit.
Ok, I think we understand each other. If you know of some study that shows the current voting population is representative of the total population, I would be interested in seeing it.
It only changes WHO is elected, not what's going to happen. Which thus far only is fantasy and speculation. I remember the last time that happened - before Obama. How much "change" did we see? And please - it does not matter if one thinks "it's all the Republicans' fault", assigning blame does not change what the outcome was (is).
Anyone interested in electronic voting, I would suggest reading the article: Internet Voting: A Requiem for the Dream in the last issue of Phrack. It was eye opening for me.
seth, it's feasible, but not with existing technology. i'm off-hand, somewhat flippant rule of thumb is that this isn't something we can realistically discuss until we can go a single week without a major security breach. right now breaches are so common that they barely merit a news mention.
once we're there in terms of security, however, i am confident that we will see a radical increase in voter turnout.
I get that security is a major, major concern but scanning headlines seems like a really poor metric for deciding when technology is "ready". There will always be bad/rushed/under-staffed developers and bad business decisions that lead to security breaches. That doesn't mean existing technology isn't capable of being secure.
we agree 100%. technology is capable of being secure, it just isn't secure yet. think of the stakes here. if a 16 year old hacker working out of his mother's basement in belarus could change the outcome of the US presidential election, we'd all be farked.
Debra, how would you feel about an Australian-style fine for failure to vote here in the U.S.? I assume Vote.org work primarily on technological ways to promote voting, but will it also deal with social structural or institutional ways to increase voter turnout?
Requiring you to show up at a particular place and put a pair in a box, with the option to actually mark something on it (Australian style mandatory voting) hardly violates freedom of speech.
Refusal to participate in the political process very clearly looks like speech to me. And a very important kind of speech. A great many people think "They're all bums. I'm not voting for any of them!" You can find some of these people in threads on this post!
Who are we to tell them otherwise?
I also don't think that the "you're allowed to show up and not check a box, but you've still gotta show up" argument passes muster. That's very clearly an attempt to coerce speech out of someone which is also a 1st amendment violation.
Subpoenas to testify in court are coercions of speech. As are requirements to disclose financial information for tax returns. And the obligatory "yelling fire" example. You are coerced to tell a draft board about your suitability for combat. Protesters are frequently to coerced to limit their speech with armed force.
You can be an absolutist if you like but in the real world the U.S. First Amendment has had limits since the beginning. Which is not to say that free speech doesn't need to be protected! It's just to say that the government has a legitimate interest in promoting its own democratic nature, so a mandatory voting system is possibly legal.
Don't forget that civil disobedience is an important form of speech. Think of not voting in this situation as a speech tax. It's free as in speech, not free as in beer. :P
It's pretty sad to see your statement downvoted. I, too, consider voting to be both a duty and right of citizenship, and wish more people felt the same.
One may consider it an ethical duty without agreeing that it should involve coercion. And in the end, you can force people to put a piece of paper in a box every few years, but you can't force them to care about what they're doing.
A duty is stronger than a right, and implies an obligation, not just an option. Countries that implement obligatory voting (or rather, obligatory showing up to the ballot, there is no need to vote once there) are obliged in turn to make voting as accessible as possible. Voting in Australia, for example, rarely takes longer than 10 minutes on the day (a weekend) if you hadn't already visited an early voting booth or mailed your vote in.
Technical you don't have to vote here in Australia, you just have to put a ballot paper in the box at the polling station and have your name crossed off the roll. Of course most peopl (95%) do bother to vote once they are at the polling station.
The best part of compulsory voting Australian-style is that it encourages people to show at least some interest in the political process since they know they will be voting.
Yes we manage to keep a much large percentage of the population involved in the political process by having everyone turn up at the polling station. Sure we have a lot of low information voters, but we also increase the percentage of the population that pays attention to the issues - at least around election times.
Hi Debra - (longish) question about the white labelling aspect of vote.org:
It seems like the implied value of vote.org is that increasing voter turnout can make democracy 'better' by making it more representative. This can only happen however, if the increase in or delta from voter turnout is itself representative of the community at large. If the increase in turnout is only from the extreme of one end of the political spectrum, then that doesn't seem to help democracy.
But if you are white labelling vote.org, then the organisations that use it will be far from partisan and therefore the delta from voter turnout wont be representative.
So if vote.org is used primarily by one side of politics, how does this help democracy? (assuming you can't show that side of politics is objectively better) And if vote.org is used equally by all sides of politics, how does the increased voter turnout change anything?
Could voting be "improved" if instead of higher turnout with the same outcome the focus was on informing voters on the issues better?
In other words, rather than let's say getting 100 yeas to 80 nays versus 1000 yeas vs 800 nays, on an issue, might it not be better to get 95 nays vs 85 yays on a material issue?
Debra -- you're awesome. Thanks for doing this. (And congrats on getting into YC!?)
Question for you -- you famously have run the predecessor organization to Vote.org on a shoestring budget. Do you have tips on how to interact with "software volunteers" who want to help on civic projects like this?
Is your organization focused only on general elections, or on primaries as well? I couldn't find any information about primary elections on your site, even though many of the most consequential decisions are made then, when voter turnout is at its lowest.
The fact that the parties have privileged access to the ballot is arguably not a partisan issue.
In many places, the support of a recognized party dramatically lowers the requirements for getting on the ballot. In my state, by as much as a factor of 3:
As a non-Republican, non-Democrat, when I voted in the last primary, there was exactly one referendum on my ballot, and nothing else.
I was also the only person on the nonpartisan register at that time of the morning. They had to crack open the shrink-wrap on the ballots just for me. I imagine that not many other people would bother to drag themselves in to the polling place for that one issue, were they not also choosing candidates for one party or the other.
Have you thought about efforts to open up access to a nationalized voter file? As it stands right now, a one-time snapshot of all 50 states would cost approximately $144,000. This makes it difficult for get out the vote efforts, and for efforts to identify registration irregularities.
Also, have you thought about open sourcing your work at all? I know there are a large number of developers ready and willing to help efforts like this, particularly for a non-profit like yours.
What is your go to answer to people who say they don't vote because in the state they vote in, they believe the candidate they want to win will be elected without them making the effort of going to vote? I have a few I generally go with, but curious what you tend to use.
Every election is about much more than just the presidency. There's always state/local elections, propositions and ballot measures. And these will often have a much more direct affect on you than the President of the U.S. Most local ballot measures aren't unanimous and the results are usually much closer to 50/50, otherwise the city council would've passed it already. So even if you're a Republican in California your vote will absolutely still count for something.
> What is your go to answer to people who say they don't vote because in the state they vote in, they believe the candidate they want to win will be elected without them making the effort of going to vote?
I think this is a great project, but I don't think it will work without a strong political analysis -- that is, the installation of roadblocks to voting is an intentional political act. How do you intend to get states that are intent on suppressing the vote from certain populations to adopt technology that would make it easier to vote?
Ok, don't laugh: I did a whois search, got the owner's contact info and sent an email. We spent the better part of a year discussing the sale. Both political parties had tried to buy it from him in years past. Ultimately he sold it to me because we are fiercely nonpartisan.
Not everyone should vote. This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but democracy only works with informed citizens. If you have a bunch of people that are not informed on the issue voting you're probably going to have an outcome that is awful. If you think politicians are bad now, just wait until the populists have the uninformed voting in high numbers (hey, that sounds familiar this year.)
To me, if you don't care enough to take time to vote as it is, you probably don't know the issues, and you probably shouldn't vote. Or maybe you do know the issues, and that's why you're not voting.
There are some cases where this is not true, such as someone having a weird shift; but that's what early voting is for, and that's why most states have legal paid time off for voting (up to 3 hours.) There's also mail-in ballots, absentee voting, etc. Democracy isn't always a good thing, to be frank; and it's undoubtedly why the U.S. was set up as a representative democracy rather than a pure democracy.
> To me, if you don't care enough to take time to vote as it is, you probably don't know the issues, and you probably shouldn't vote.
Or maybe you live in a state where your vote doesn't matter because it's not a swing state.
Or maybe neither two-party candidate is on the right side of the issues you care most about.
Don't want to go to war? Do you pick Hillary or Trump? Who knows? Want to see Criminal Justice reform? Which candidate do you pick: The one that backed mandatory minimums helping shift the scales to the prosecution and making judges largely irrelevant for a majority of cases or the "not liberal" one? Want to see domestic spying scaled back and transparency introduced? Which candidate?
Oh, I agree with all of that. I amended my post to mention that too. Usually I've vote for a 3rd party though, but I agree that choosing to not vote is just as legitimate as voting. I don't agree with the sentiment of "you can't complain if you didn't vote." That's total nonsense.
One doesn't need to be "well informed" about politics to express a perfectly valid preference based on one issue that is important to them
(indeed, democracy works much better if people who aren't very informed about politics in general turn up to vote en masse against a politician that proposes something that will harm their relatively uninformed demographic[1])
The real reason not everyone should vote is that it's not a good thing for people don't feel strongly enough about something to vote to deprive those that do of relative political influence.
[1]a corollary of this is that variable turnout is probably a good thing (easier to discriminate against a demographic if you know that 100% will vote for the other guy regardless of how they act)
The voting constituency is not, nor has it ever been, made up of informed citizens. Indeed, you could probably say that the more extreme your political views are, the more likely you are to vote. In this case, more 'average' voters would result in a moderation of discourse and alleviate the hyper-partisan gridlock that currently defines the American system.
I have a theory that since that the USA doesn't make election day a federal holiday is one of the major factors the working class of america is not voting, usually it takes too long to vote, and it's not paid for employees, especially blue collar ones.
I wonder what are your thoughts about it, and how can it happen in America? I've seen every single proposal be rejected in congress.
> what are your thoughts about it, and how can it happen in America? I've seen every single proposal be rejected in congress.
The Republican Party has, for decades at least, had a program of making it more difficult to vote. I'm not saying that to be partisan, it's just a fact (sometimes facts favor one party or the other, but we shouldn't ignore them, twist them, or try to create a false equivalence). I believe it's because they are the minority party, especially among working class people.
A law called the Voting Rights Act was passed in the 1960s that restricted many of those practices, which had been used to prevent minorities from voting in much of the South. In the last few years the Supreme Court said the Voting Rights Act was no longer valid, and many of the practices (though in different forms) quickly returned in Republican-controlled states. For example, in many places they increased the documentation required to register to vote, and then made it harder to obtain the documentation. And then they dramatically reduced the voting locations, so that registered voters have to travel further and wait in long lines in order to vote.
> In the last few years the Supreme Court said the Voting Rights Act was no longer valid
That is not what they said. They did not overturned the VRA.
What they did was overturned a section which labeled specific states and counties that were subject to increased scrutiny and protection, on the grounds that demographics have changed in the last 50 years, and that now that list is out of date and includes too many districts which no longer need the increased protection. They noted that the law could and should be amended to specify districts which previously were not in need of protection and now are, but that is outside the role of the Supreme Court, so they left it up to Congress to fix that.
> They did not overturn the VRA; they just overturned the part that allows the whole thing to be enforced in a timely manner.
Specifically, they overturned the preclearance requirement, which requires places that have been found to discriminate in the past to get clearance from the Justice Department before implementing changes to voting procedures.
This requirement was to prevent jurisdictions from implementing changes that have major deleterious effects on specific groups and then having one or more elections occur (and then official acts and laws passed shaped by the results of those elections) while the legal challenges work up through the system.
That's EXACTLY my point, I'm from the "third world" and our election is on a Sunday and Monday is off for everyone, elections are a celebration, it should be a very important moment to everyone, enough to get so drunk the day after :-). It's so confusing living in the USA and looking at so much justified apathy for the political environment.
What people here would never understand (and this is due being mostly white nerdy dudes here) is that it's so hard to get time off work when you're a blue collar guy, and even though it's paid off in some states (California for example pays for 2 hours of work that day) it's not enough. And it's stated by many companies that your work is more important, especially since nobody goes to vote anyways.
I work at a startup and nobody went to vote, everyone has work to do. I cannot skip a "lunch meeting" cause I don't have "lunch meetings".
>I work at a startup and nobody went to vote, everyone has work to do.
Indeed, everyone has work to do. It does not absolve us of our civic responsibility. I don't live in California, but would be surprised for anyone at a startup here in Atlanta to have significant problems taking a couple hours out of their day to go vote were they to want to. Apathy is a definite problem however.
The main problem is people who aren't allowed to take a couple hours off without being threatened with firing. Even if they are able to, they may get paid less which for someone in/near poverty can be unacceptable. Most retail and fast food workers are in this situation, for instance. Many of them will be working/commuting the entire time the polls are open.
California has tried to solve this very problem by requiring employers to provide 2 hours paid time off to vote on Election Day [1]. I'm not sure how good compliance is, or how many employees are aware of their right.
Hmm, where did you get the idea of noone working? Most people don't work on sundays, but some of course do. Because vast majority of population doesn't work, this makes elections more accessible.
I am inclined to agree. During election days, I struggled to get time off from my retail job to go vote. If young people are encouraged to vote, they should not be financially penalized for doing so.
Also, you have to go to a polling place next to your neighborhood. Most of the time work is not anywhere close to just take off during lunch and get the vote out. It almost ends up being a hassle.
Sundays would be better, but there is still a substantial part of the population that works on Sundays.
Additionally, the "closed" primaries vs "open" primaries are bullshit. As a citizen I should be able to go to a polling place, choose a candidate and get out.
"Additionally, the "closed" primaries vs "open" primaries are bullshit. As a citizen I should be able to go to a polling place, choose a candidate and get out."
Depending on the state, though, it's the party choosing who the candidate they want to put forward is. So it should be that party's right to decide who gets to partake in that decision. I mean, would it make sense for a whole bunch of Republicans to come and vote in the Democratic primary?
>So it should be that party's right to decide who gets to partake in that decision. I mean, would it make sense for a whole bunch of Republicans to come and vote in the Democratic primary?
It shouldn't matter if a Democrat is voting Republican or the other way around. People can change their minds, and should not be disallowed to vote if they find that the other party is doing a better job in making the country a better place.
If a whole bunch of Republicans vote Democrat, it means that the Republicans have failed to do their job! Saying you can't vote because of that is like a childish loser saying you can't play for the opposing team.
My point is that such a decision should not be made and it segregates our democracy and makes it an "us vs them" fight, when in reality we're all in this together.
But primaries are about political parties choosing who should represent them aren't they? Political parties are private clubs. If you aren't a signed up member of that political party why is it any of your business to have a say in who represents them?
I don't know much about US politics but I don't think they are determining who is on the ballot are they? They're determining who can claim to be the official Republican Party but I don't think there's any reasonable grounds to say that that's wrong.
Ted Cruz can still be on the ballot if he wants to can't he? As an independent? How could the Republican Party stop him?
There's "sore loser" laws in some states that would be a problem, and he would have to collect thousands of signatures in most states where he wants to be on the ballot.
It's a complicated morass of rules that would cost a lot of money:
"It shouldn't matter if a Democrat is voting Republican or the other way around. People can change their minds, and should not be disallowed to vote if they find that the other party is doing a better job in making the country a better place."
This is the Primary. Not the actual election. Those people are free to vote for whoever they want in the general election.
"If a whole bunch of Republicans vote Democrat, it means that the Republicans have failed to do their job!"
In the general election, yes. Not in the primary. In the primary, it means that one party is trying to choose the candidate in the other party that would be easier for their party to beat.
" Saying you can't vote because of that is like a childish loser saying you can't play for the opposing team."
No, it isn't. Not when you realize what election you're talking about.
"My point is that such a decision should not be made and it segregates our democracy and makes it an "us vs them" fight, when in reality we're all in this together."
Your point doesn't make sense when a party is trying to pick it's own candidate.
The obvious solution to this is online voting. This also removes any hope of a fair election, so expect this to be pushed pretty hard in most locales soon.
People can vote by absentee ballot. They have plenty of time to do it.
It's a consistent pattern that in places with frequent elections, turnout is low. There is a form of voter fatigue. Switzerland votes every six months, and has very low turnout.
How would making election day a federal holiday increase voter turnout among anyone not working for the federal government. Plenty of federal holidays are working days for my company.
And plenty aren't... Many companies actually respect that every single company I worked at in the 10 years I've lived in America respected Christmas and New Year Day for example. I don't get your point, your situation is not the same as everyone else.
I'd actually be surprised if you worked for a private company and got every single federal holiday off. In 2016 they are:
Friday, January 1: New Year’s Day
Monday, January 18: Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Monday, February 15: Washington’s Birthday (aka Presidents Day)
Monday, May 30: Memorial Day
Monday, July 4: Independence Day (aka Fourth of July)
Monday, September 5: Labor Day
Monday, October 10: Columbus Day
Friday, November 11: Veterans Day
Thursday, November 24: Thanksgiving Day
Monday, December 26: Christmas Day*
Even growing up I had (public) school on Columbus Day.
Service workers work on almost all of them. Even the once sacred Thanksgiving isn't a day off for many retail employees anymore. Where I worked year ago they brought in low paid part time workers on holidays to cover for the full timers (who had benefits) who had the day off.
There's almost no companies that I know of that give off MLK Jr. Day or Presidents Day off. It's even a joke that only govt workers get those holidays off. Most places are not going to change their time off policy no matter what federal holidays are, if it's important for a company to have election day off they would already give it off, some official stamp of Congress isn't going to change anything outside of public office.
To those commenting with some variation of "only informed citizens should vote," pause and consider how much overlap there is with your idea of what an "informed" voter is with race/class lines. You may be unwittingly (or wittingly in some cases?) insisting that voters in the US should be, disproportionately, wealthier whites.
Studies on statistical aggregations often show that a crowd can make a better guess collectively than any individual member.
If you ask a crowd to guess the number of jellybeans in a jar, the people who are the worst overestimaters and underestimaters tend to cancel one another out, and the mean and median of all responses will be shockingly close to the actual numeric value. Therefore, my hypothesis is that reaching 100% voter turnout will be more beneficial per unit cost than any attempt to "inform" the citizenry already most likely to vote.
Here is a thought experiment. 20% of voters are knowledgeable about a subject, and vote accordingly. 80% vote based on a coin flip. How do the random voters harm the outcome of the vote? They add noise to the result, certainly. But if the signal from knowledgeable voters is unable to overcome the random noise, how certain can you really be that those people are correct? Is it at all important to know what percentage of all voters cared enough about the subject to self-inform, rather than just trust their lucky voting coin?
Outside a hypothetical, people are very rarely entirely ignorant of a subject. Even if they know only one true thing about it, when they vote based on that thing, it is incorporated into the statistical aggregate, and therefore influences the final result in some small way. If you restrict the vote to knowing certain things, only those things end up influencing the final result, and you can therefore bias the result by changing the test criteria.
As you point out, being "uninformed" seldom means total ignorance and a random vote, so throwing relatively uninformed non voters into the mix is unlikely to be neutral
So the question is what factors people who are largely indifferent to and ignorant of politics will incorporating into the statistical aggregate to a greater extent than voters that do care.
I'd suggest that the little pieces that people who don't know or care very much about politics tend to be aware of are [i] the recognised status quo (incumbent, major parties) [ii] the status quo ante (incumbents actually picking up votes based on old campaign promises they didn't deliver! and "the party of Lincoln") and [iii] the most simplistic elements of campaign advertising and media coverage.
Are these likely to be signals of who will be the more competent and popular government which the more motivated and generally more informed voters have tended to unfairly overlook, or just noise?
I used to think this way. The thing that changed my mind was learning how much people think the USA spends on foreign aid[1]. On average, Americans think 28 percent of the federal budget is spent on foreign aid, but it is about 1 percent. People base policy preference on their mistaken impression. When informed of the correct amount, the number who think America spends too much on foreign aid changes from 61% to 30%.
Foreign aid is one persistently misunderstood issue that I know of, but I worry that there might be many similar issues.
What people think of as "foreign aid" may vary. The budget covers everything from bed nets to bullets. If you count only spending on operations that most directly assist poor foreigners, such as US AID, Peace Corps, and UNICEF, rather than just writing checks to foreign politicians, militaries, and bankers, it amounts to about $7-$10 billion, or 0.2%-0.3% of the budget.
And nothing in the US budget takes up more than 25% of it. The top 4 items are, in fact, Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, military, and debt service (6.5%!). Even if you count all military spending as some sinister form of foreign aid, you can't get to 28%. The problem there is not just being uninformed. Someone must be actively spreading misinformation--lying to the public. That's a much bigger problem than simple ignorance, and trying to restrict turnout to only "informed" voters is not going to help when people believe they are informed after hearing enough lies.
Nobody was permitted to see the Emperor of China, and the question was, What is the length of the Emperor of China's nose? To find out, you go all over the country asking people what they think the length of the Emperor of China's nose is, and you average it. And that would be very "accurate" because you averaged so many people.
The averaged length is likely to be close to the length of the median Chinese person's nose.
It would not in any way be accurate in terms of judging the fact that is the length of the Emperor's nose, but it would be the best possible guess China could possibly make based on the information then available to it.
You could as easily ask America how many grams of cocaine George W. Bush used while avoiding overseas military operations. And if you can ask that, you can also ask whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton would make a better U.S. President.
You don't vote on facts. You vote on opinions. And if you want to know "America's opinion", more responses will yield more accurate results.
The comparison is fundamentally flawed because the amount of jellybeans in a jar is an objective fact not subject to interpretation by anyone's values.
Since white people are disproportionately less likely to be convicted of a felony (even when committing the same crime), aren't proponents of the idea that every eligible voter must vote also insisting that voters in the US be disproportionately white?
I didn't (and wouldn't) make such a comment. However, based on my personal experience, if wealth or race were a predictor at all, my "informed voter" group would likely be comprised of disproportionately few wealthier individuals.
I know politically informed minimum wage folks, and some really politically-flawed doctors and upper-level managers who spend so much time on their job or kids they don't care to read into politics. The "informed voters = rich whiteys" theory is just an assumption that infers people who want informed voters are often racist.
Lets leave race out of such discussions and stick with how we could make an unbiased solution (race/class blind qualifier tests or whatever).
education: 9th grade = 23%; High school grades = 50%; some college = 65%; BA = 71%; advanced degree = 76%.
Income shows the exact same, that as income goes up voter turn out goes up.
In theory I would agree with you that an unbiased solution resulting in 100% voter turn out across the board is the way to go. However, until such a solution manifests itself, how can race or any other existing bias be left out of the discussion? Isn't addressing existing bias in voter turn out part of the solution?
This is an interesting point. I suppose the counter would be that we only want the politically informed people who would naturally self-select anyway. It shouldn't matter if there is a bias in previous voter-turnout as many of the previous people who did vote would now not qualify, and the non-voters just stay as-is. Anyone who abstains would also need to vote as abstaining to make sure turnout stays high. I'm just riffing here, getting deep into the weeds of how a potential system could work.
We won't know until we try. People are afraid of this option because they will be called elitist (see parent commenter), but the 'elites' would not be the ones a good solution would favor. If it fails then we fall back to where we are now.
"but the 'elites' would not be the ones a good solution would favor"
Depends on who gets to define what a good solution is. Given that our country has a huge history of, and still has a problem with suppressing and disenfranchising minorities and women, I am not willing to experiment with anything that's not designed to expand the vote to as many people as possible.
how do i vote this up roughly 1,000,000 times? does that happen here or is that only a reddit thing (please excuse my ignorance -- i try to spend very little time in online comment threads and a lot of time working on vote.org)
> does that happen here or is that only a reddit thing
Each registered user can upvote each comment once; with a little accumulated track record, they alternatively can downvote once. Soliciting upvotes, etc. is against guidelines and generally not done. Talking about voting, rather than the subject at hand, is generally frowned upon.
So, more importantly, why do you support this comment so strongly?
So let me get this straight, you are trying to encourage people to vote but think your vote here on hacker news should be worth 1,000,000 times more than others?
> Perhaps wealthier whites are more informed on average? Why does race or class matter?
Perhaps they are more informed on issues that affect wealthier whites and on the ways they affect wealthier whites. They probably are much less informed about what's affecting the poor Latino district.
Informed on what, though? Which candidate will be better for getting things like mandatory sick days passed, or which candidate will be better for business?
I'm likely to be flamed out of existence for saying this, but I'm against 100% voter turnout. A shocking number of people in my social circle get their political opinions by intuition. Never do they watch a debate, nor do they have any idea who the contenders are. When the primaries were running in my home state I asked several of my friends about their opinions and most of them only knew one person from each party that was even running.
They were passionate about their hatred of the opposing party's most-tweeted person, and clueless about what their person's positions were, the states they were from, their voting history, their "moral fabric" as it were...
Point is, screw my friends. If they only Facebook-Care(TM) about politics, they shouldn't be encouraged to vote anyway. They do not get to decide my country's fate.
In fact, I want the opposite.
I want a test. Step one: Name 3 people in your primary and name 3 in the opposing party's primary. Who is your party chair? Who's in the majority in the house? Who're the senate majority and minority leaders?
Coming from Australia where we have mandatory voting, you're missing one of the biggest benefits.
When people are forced to vote, the parties HAVE to accommodate that not only their 'die hard fans' are going to get them through the election.
It leads to far less extremist views from the parties, or if they are extremist, they often temper some of the points later to ensure they don't have a huge backlash during the election to their policies.
As an Australian, compulsory voting is widely accepted and touted here as a good thing, so even questioning the rhetoric surrounding it is likely going to get you mobbed, even if you try to preface with the statement that you don't necessarily think it's bad, you just aren't convinced it's necessarily or demonstrably good.
But I'm not certain that it's connected in any way to less "extreme" policies in any empirical way beyond such reasoning being a local culturally embedded myth.
Of course, there's no definition of what an extreme position is, because middle, left and right themselves have no objective meaning.
And for the non-Australians, just do a Google Search for "Pacific Solution" and judge for yourselves how full of shit we may/may not be...
One argument I see often made most recently here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-14/why-do-we-have-a-two-p... is compulsory voting in Australia entrenches the dominance of Labor and the Coalition (the two established parties). However given the non-compulsory US political system is also dominated by two parties I'm not sure how true the argument is.
The AEC manages the federal election roll. Enrolling is technically compulsory for all citizens but only seems to be enforceable once you are on the roll.
Failure to get your named crossed of a a voting booth (voting isn't compulsory - turning up is) results in a $50 fine.
If you don't vote, you're fined. Presumably the government has a national registry of every citizen. If it's anything like my home country, then you're also obligated to keep the government informed of your current address at all times.
When I was younger, I got deeply involved in local, county, and state politics. I even ran for office once, was treasurer for a congressional campaign, and was on county and state executive committees. I met governors, senators, presidential candidates, and one sitting president. I had a well-informed opinion on any issue you can name, and changed positions on many of them as I got older.
What did I learn? When I got to personally know all these politicians, including their unguarded utterances, I learned they don't give a shit about anything but power and money. Not one really cares about my family or anyone else I care about, except for their vote. Not one.
> I learned they don't give a shit about anything but power and money. Not one really cares about my family or anyone else I care about, except for their vote. Not one.
A million times YES.
I wish people understood this. Then voting would not be pointless. We need to figure out a way to place better people in office and that requires smart voters.
This is also where the more Libertarian ideology could help. How? By stripping government of all but the basic functions they are supposed to perform. Over time our government has grabbed more and more power, money and influence. If we pulled them back to basics and reduced the reach they can have into our individual and business lives things would get better.
Though I respect your real life experiences have caused a rationalized apathy. I personally do not believe that inaction is ever the correct course of action. So, instead of voting what would you suggest? Attempt to grow a fourth party? Encourage watchdog mentality? Make sure politicians fear the people they represent?
What do you suggest? Get fat on potato chips and hope the world falls apart in a humorous way?
It's not apathy, it's a realistic assessment of where my time is best spent. Instead of lying to myself that I have any influence on politics, I focus on providing and caring for my family and friends. This includes spending time and energy on the people around me, my work life, and planning next moves that I have some control over.
I spend very little time on "news" of any sort, only reading headlines a few times a week with a little more effort spent on things that affect my career. I've been living this way since 2000, and I have to say that it has paid off much more than any political involvement I engaged in.
The alternative is to work hard to become a player in the political game, the end result of which is becoming just another asshole politician / lobbyist / activist who is either chronically angry or on the power and money treadmill. There's more to life than that.
The real apathy is believing that you can make the world a better place using the machinery of politics, rather than making it better one person at a time with those you encounter in daily life. The latter is difficult, the former is easy.
I understand it can ethically makes sense, what is more/less difficult and what is more realistic. However, we dont live in a bubble. Groups are provably more powerful than individuals and, if you believe in evolution, an individuals rulers can effect who will and will not breed causing lasting effects over generations.
I can understand that you do not want to be part of something bigger and can rationalize it by focusing on real problems right in front of you. But simply by posting here you have already decided you wanted to give something to everyone else, namely apathy and the belief that nothing will ever change except your immediate surroundings. If you believe that ideas can go viral, you have enabled a large group to surrender. Are you ok with the only people who believe they can change the world to be the ones with ambition and hunger?
Changing the world, your rulers abd your life should never be seen as a hopeless endeavour. Once it has become that, we truly are nothing more than sheep and parrots.
Perhaps a positive move forward for you* would be to work on community projects or small, focused gov't sponsored projects rather than going as high-level as you had before. The assumption being that the more money you involve the more red-tape you get and the more impediments (safeguards) are in place to frustrate you (protect taxpayers)...
* (well, other than continuing disdaining politics and government, which seems to be treating you alright currently)
Um, no. I work with individuals and people in my community to help others. Most issues that people really need help with don't need money so much as someone who will listen to them. That's the essential beginning point. How would it help to involve the government?
Educating the poor up to speed with modern technology doesnt require money? Who wants to keep me alive while I do this service? Who benefits more from this education, my government or me the individual?
I share the same perspective, but draw a different conclusion. Instead, educate the electorate, the first step of which is reversing Citizens United. Then, make voting as easy as signing up for Facebook (whether that means online or mail-in voting). An informed, active electorate is the single most terrifying thing to the Establishment.
US schools can't teach everyone to read, expecting them to be able to effectively teach complex topics that involve nuance - let alone opinions - is wishful thinking.
> Instead, educate the electorate, the first step of which is reversing Citizens United.
Citizens United is easily the most misunderstood SCOTUS case in history at this point.
Citizens United has pretty much nothing to do with educating the electorate. It is about the right of ad-hoc groups of individuals to exercise the same rights of speech that individuals and media corporations already have. Ironically, it has nothing to do with making it easier for the wealthy to influence politics, and actually makes it possible for the middle class to have influence that they would otherwise never have.
Before 2009, there was nothing stopping Michael Moore from self-funding a documentary about Bush's war crimes on advance of the election. Citizens United affirms that a group of people who, unlike Moore, aren't wealthy enough to produce an entire film individually could still pool their money together and produce that movie together. They could launch, say, an IndieGoGo campaign to produce their own version of Last Week Tonight, focused exclusively on the election.
This is almost entirely orthogonal to education of the electorate, though to be honest, it's easier to make the argument that Citizens United makes it easier to educate the electorate than the other way around.
The only people whose time it is worth to research candidates is that of those who are paid to do it, those being lobbyists. What economic sense does it make for any individual voter to spend the weeks and months it would take to have any idea what all of the candidates that might be running might think on even a small number of major issues?
It seems my friends who vote on intuition are the ones likely to already vote -- by getting higher turnout you might actually reduce their proportion of the vote. Don't shoot yourself in the foot on this one.
shrug YMMV. Luckily, mine just opine loudly then on voting day say something like "My vote wouldn't matter anyway, so why take the time off from work?"
I too an opposed to encouraging the uninformed to vote just because.
I differ with you on some points. I do not watch the debates either. I don't watch the debates because I pay attention all of the time, not just during the election cycle. I care about a limited number of issues and I keep track of where politicians stand on those issues when they're not running for office.
It's not that I'm not informed. I am more informed than most of the people I know. It's just that I don't care one way or the other about how strongly a politician denounced some other jerk's controversial opinion when I step into the voting booth. That's the kind of gotcha issue that the primaries have started to feature.
> I want a test. Step one: Name 3 people in your primary and name 3 in the opposing party's primary. Who is your party chair? Who's in the majority in the house? Who're the senate majority and minority leaders?
I don't know those last two for sure. I don't really care about the minutiae of what happens in the morally bankrupt and corrupt US government, but I am politically informed. If I vote it'll be for Jill Stein. Should my vote not count because I failed this test?
We need to provide the accessible information then mandate the vote. I am sure a short ten to twenty minute video can sum up the critical issues for each candidate. Then ask them to vote.
We cant throw out people under the bus for not being equipped to make informed choices just because their primary source of information is shared content in social media. Let's fix that then make voting easy.
Democracy.upgrade()!!
Agreed, agreed, agreed, agreed...a million times agreed!
People are alarmingly ignorant of not only candidate's political positions but also lack the interest (and in some cases the ability) to analyze what they are being told and promised in order to reach sensible independent conclusions they might be able to use in driving a voting decision.
We don't need more ignorant voters. In fact, we might do far better with fewer well-educated and engaged voters.
No, I don't mean we should require a Masters degree. What I do mean is that there ought to be a higher threshold to being able to vote than simply being alive and wanting to do so.
How would this work?
Want to vote on a measure for, say, a new transportation law? No problem, here's a packet, study it, take a test, pass the test and you can vote.
Want to vote on a new law affecting patents? No problem. Packet. Study. Test. Pass. Vote.
Want to vote for President? It will require some work. Lot's of issues to consider. It might take a year of studying the issues just to be able to pass the tests.
If we had a system where every voter really and truly understood the issues and could tell bullshit from reality we would not have the equivalent of "political trailer trash" running for office. No Clinton, no Bernie and definitely no Trump.
The three choices in front of us today are truly vomit inducing, each at their own level. It is a sad statement that we finally got here, the same spot nearly every South American country has navigated over the years.
Yes, that spot where Populism grabs the masses and does not relent until the destruction is obvious enough even to those not paying attention. I sure hope we don't go there. The sad truth is that all three of our candidates are Populist manipulators who are not at all good for this country.
...and our voters are too stupid to see through it.
...which is EXACTLY what has destroyed most of South America over decades of Populist manipulation.
US voter turnout is low relative to many other modern democracies (much less compared to the ideal of 100% turnout) because the choices are poor because of the structure of the electoral system which supports only two viable parties at a time (which two has changed nationally twice in the history of the nation, and when things were more regional there were times when the two locally-viable parties included one of the national parties and one other, such as the Missouri Republican vs. Farmer-Labor period.) This is a fairly well-established effect of the electoral system, evidence through, among other things, comparative studies of modern democracies.
So, what is Vote.org's plan for dealing with this, which is the fundamental problem in keeping turnout low?
Surely among those who already vote, there are also the most partisan and most fanatical among the whole population so you really cannot conclude that those who vote are necessarily more informed, just more motivated.
who decides if someone is informed enough? will their be a test? if so, we're treading dangerously into the jim crow era of american voting, and i don't think either one of us would be comfortable with that.
There's a very important reason to do this which no one has brought up. US elections have a lot of vote-suppression shenanigans; in some noteworthy cases (including the 2000 Presidential election), fraudulently removing voter registrations, understaffing and obstructing poll locations changed the outcome. This sort of thing becomes much more difficult to execute and much more difficult to get away with if there's an expectation of 100% turnout, as in countries which have mandatory voting; large asymmetric chunks of the population failing to reach the polls no longer look plausibly innocent. I think mandatory voting is worth having for that reason alone, in addition to the other reasons.
Jim, shenanigans is the word that comes to mind for me as well. I've yet to meet this mythical "apathetic American" that people talk about, but I've met tons of people who were prevented from voting by administrative incompetence (at best) and what appeared to be deliberate attempts to prevent citizens from casting ballots.
Here's an fun example: 7 out of 9 of the states that were prohibited from changing their voting laws under the VRA of 1965 immediately passed restrictive laws once the VRA was gutted.
> 7 out of 9 of the states that were prohibited from changing their voting laws under the VRA of 1965 immediately passed restrictive laws once the VRA was gutted.
Here's a question that I'm not sure you can answer publicly: Ideally, support for voting should be non-partisan, and everyone seems to want to operate on that principle (including Vote.org).
But what if it is a partisan issue? What if the most important problem is that one party truly opposes voter turnout? Personally, I think that's the case, and I think our failure to address the real problem, for whatever idealistic reasons, is the primary reason we make so little progress.
Put a gun to people's head to vote? I can think of few things more morally reprehensible than that. An individual should determine how, and if, they participate in civic life for themselves. The view that sees individuals as simply so much chattel labor existing for the benefit of whichever bureaucrats running the state at a given moment is simply unsupportable by any sort of real logic. To give you warm and fuzzies that vote-suppression did not occur is insufficient cause to demand that I participate in a system that, where I live, has no effective choices in any election cycle and frequently poses questions which simply should not be open to democratic opinion at the get go.
Your view is also terribly naive. If you get your way, what prevents the "shenanigans" from simply moving to another part of the process, say before the vote? Also, I would simply turn in a blank or random ballot because playing along with the sham of legitimizing the outcomes of questions where there is no choice is not tenable: do we stop secret balloting to prevent my antics? Do we evaluate the votes I make to determine whether or not I'm being a good citizen?
The big lie of much of "democracy" is, as a magician once put it, "When I cut the cards, I let you glimpse a few different faces. You conclude the deck contains 52 different cards (No. 1—Pattern recognition). You think you’ve made a choice, just as when you choose between two candidates preselected by entrenched political parties (No. 7—Choice is not freedom)."
Your proposal simply puts the threat of force to those that would not otherwise play the charade.
The other parts of the process also have shenanigans, yes. Those are worth fighting against, too. I have no problem with people making protest votes and am genuinely confused by your implication that I would have a problem with people turning in blank or random ballots.
I find it kind of funny… as if "politics" can only decided by being prodded like chattel to voting booths.
History of man shows many effective ways of influencing governing systems on many different levels, some more violent than others… and with modern technology ways people could only imagine of in the distant past are possible (beyond the present skinner box of political theater most elections are, and arguably to some degree or another, have always been), of which most people (forget about those who even show up to a voting booth) will never be interested/knowledgeable on/have direct means to do anything about.
This is a worthy goal, but is it a good thing to have 100% voter turnout? Every direct democracy has failed since the time of Socrates. After several generations, direct democracies turn into a mob with the majority voting themselves benefits while minorities become permanently disenfranchised. At least voter disinterest allows minorities the possibility of voting as a block and gaining influence in off-year elections. In my opinion, sometimes too much so.
Not to sound elitist, but is that really a good thing? What sorts of people are going to be simultaneously not motivated to vote, and good at picking the best candidate?
I am skeptic of electoral democracy, but as long as we're doing it, aiming for 100% turnout is the only option. The incentives in electoral democracy reward those who marginalize voters who disagree with them, and it's far easier to marginalize the powerless than the powerful. This is an unacceptable outcome, yet we've done it since the founding of the republic, and we still do it today.
Erm, how do you define best? (I know how _I_ define it, but not anyone else.)
More importantly, what sorts of people are simultaneously motivated to vote and NOT good at picking "the best" (translation: my preferred) candidate? PLENTY.
I actually like Karl Popper's take: elections are for getting rid of bad rulers, nothing more. Constitutional limits on government ensure a free and open society, while insulating leaders from the will of the people prevents a tyranny of the majority.
I refuse to participate in a process I know from personal experience to be corrupt at the local level. When the people responsible for investigating are the same people responsible for the illegal acts and the state and federal agencies tasked with enforcement won't even take the complaint -- well, there's nothing that's going to convince me that there is any hope for this county's process.
In 2004, our ballots had the presidential candidates as the first item. I personally witnessed ballots being sorted at the polling location and placed in different boxes based on that first item. The boxes were identifiable as to which was which ("GWB","JK" and "AO" - all others), placed into the back of a sheriff's car, and driven to the election board's office. The "GWB" box remained in the back seat of the car while the "JK" and "AO" boxes were taken in to the office to be counted. Since I wasn't blessed as an "official" observer, I was not allowed inside. The "GWB" box was never counted, driven back to the Sheriff's office, and was discarded in their dumpster, locked and unopened. Anyone in that particular batch who voted for GWB had their votes, not just for president, but for congressional office and local issues, thrown out. Every single official -- county, state, and fed -- I tried to report the issue to responded with some variation of "mistakes happen, it's not an issue we're going to look into". Party officials didn't care -- D's votes got counted, R's didn't care because the D's had solidly carried that county for decades and more-or-less written the county off, and no one else had the manpower to do anything about it. My vote (in the AO category that time around) was counted, or at least made it inside to be counted, but it still bothers me that things are so corrupt that there isn't even an attempt to hide the corruption.
Fix the absolutely blatant corruption, and I might, possibly, be motivated to vote. I don't mean charging people with little misdemeanors and letting them plead out to fines. I want to see felony charges and jail time for those participating, furthering, and knowingly benefiting from the systemic abuse of our election processes.
Really? Is that based on evidence, or just a gut feeling? My gut feeling would have been the opposite: people are too lazy and have a general feeling of "it wouldn't matter anyways, I'm only one vote".
Why is 100% so important? There will always be a section of people who really do not care about choosing their representative. Why insist on such people voting too? In my opinion it would be a random, ill thought out vote.
I don't agree with the stated goal of 100% turnout. As many people should turn out to vote as their are citizens who want to vote. If you're not self-motivated to vote one way or the other, with so much being on the line these days, then maybe it's better that you don't.
I've always thought that online voting could be made MORE secure than traditional systems. If you combine cryptography with more traditional layers. It can also be anonymous.
Take an existing online registration, allow a user to login, and "create a password". Take the password, hash it with the users registration id, and a salt, and that becomes the id for a ballot. Now a user can always login, and view their existing vote (as long as they remember their password) however no outside or inside user could directly link a ballot with a voter.
In addition, allow all online votes, and registered users (who voted) to be instantly publicly accessible via API by 3rd party non government organizations so that all results can be monitored.
The hashing algorithm can be the same used by any traditional password system.
Online voting (the kind you could do in the comfort of your own home) suffers from manipulation in the more traditional form: I sit at your house with a baseball bat and make sure you vote for my candidate of choice. Voting at a voting booth prevents that.
I'm generally in favor of overhauling the voting system with technology (especially open source technology that can be publicly validated), but I think there are still benefits to having people vote in a supervised public space making sure people can vote anonymously and safely
You're right. I was actually just about to edit my post to comment on the fact that absentee ballots still suffer that problem, so perhaps my thoughts here are invalid.
However, vote by mail is more likely to suffer from the peanut butter & jelly problem, which is getting food smudged on the ballots while filling them out at the dinner table.
Or I come over to your house and tell you I'll give you $10 to vote for my candidate. If you had to go to a voting booth it might not be worth the effort.
A truly secure system is not going to debut in conjunction with a government vote. It just isn't, for multiple reasons--not the least of which is corruption.
Such a system would have to decide something popular, but ultimately unimportant, first. Examples would be the winner of a competition show like American Idol, or a referendum/sweepstakes to name a new Doritos or Pringles flavor.
Once the system has been proven in a large, but unimportant, nation-scale vote, we can then begin to ask "why can't we vote on important issues in the same way?"
my general take on this is that we are ready to go with online voting when it is as secure as paper based voting. honestly, we're not there yet, but it is something i expect to see in the relatively near future.
While conventional voting is far from great, the first time someone hacks an online vote is going to set it back for decades. It could be better now, but it almost has to be perfect to get people to switch.
whenever a local election comes up, the first thing I want to know is that who are running for what, and what's their key difference and if available, track records. A quick comparison chart/table will serve the purpose but I rarely if ever found that, hope someone will create a website like that for all, so voters can know the quick-facts before voting relatively easily.
There are plenty of ways, but you should still have doubt. Take the two people running for the big seat right now. They're both saying what they need to say to get the biggest base. How does listening to what they say in this crap-storm educate me as a voter?
I recently realised that one big advantage of compulsory voting is that it completely kills attempts to suppress voter registration or differential turnout.
How do you plan on dealing with voter suppression and gerrymandering?
If you make voting compulsory for registered voters, you end up further suppressing voter registration (specifically suppressing registration of those in situations which leave them disproportionately unlikely to be able to get to vote and poor enough to see the fines as an issue)
If you ensure all voters are registered, then making the voting compulsory is redundant.
There is no advantage to compulsory voting, unless you believe that democracy is enhanced by diluting the votes of those with a preference for a particular representative with those that don't care.
Compulsory voting's advantage is giving people an excuse to vote.
If you are legally obligated to show up at the voting booth, even if you elect to spoil your ballot at that point, your employer can't fire you for taking off work to do so.
A public holiday would be a far less authoritarian way of achieving the same end. Postal ballots and the option of extending voting hours also exist.
And frankly, if people are at risk of being fired for taking time out to vote, the problem is that employment law allows people to be fired for voting, not that electoral law doesn't compel them to choose between the risk of being fired or the certainty of being fined.
It's an easy problem to solve, just have to make incentives for politicians to get more people to vote. Oregon made it an opt out state, and made all votes be mail in ballots.
Seems like an easy way to increase democracy.
You could also make it so any politician's terms relative to the populations voting for him.
If 50% of eligible voters vote for someone with 51% of the votes, they should only get 25.5% of the term.
I want my brother to tell all of you guys about how it's not worth his time to vote. (Especially in an extreme democrat state like california-- it's unlikely that he'd be the deciding vote.)
But my brother is so aware of the value of his time that he doesn't post on HN.
I've always been skeptical of these kind of "rock the vote" initiatives because I believe they motivated not by a overall altruistic love of democracy, but a motivation to sway elections towards the organizations favored political party. What are your thoughts?
I've worked with RTV for years and have nothing but great things to say about them. They, like Vote.org, are nonpartisan. I can speak to our motivations, however: we want to see 100% voter turnout and don't give a flying fig who you vote for, as long as you vote. We've been criticized by both sides of the aisle for not appearing to have a political stance, but fuck it: voter turnout is too important to waste time on partisan games.
Why? Why do you personally care what I do? Why do you think forcing someone to do something against their will is to be desired? What do you get from it?
Make voting easier and accessible for those who want to vote? Sure, great. Coerce and force those who choose to opt out? Unacceptable and unamerica.
I feel like an easy solution is to just pay people $20 when they vote so that it's no longer an irrational decision. People will find a way to register and vote if there's a financial incentive.
Part of the problem right now is that it's hard to convince someone to vote because it's not actually a rational decision. With very high probability, your voting action has no impact on your life, and it takes significant time. Make voting a rational decision, and we'd probably see more people doing it.
100% voter turnout assumes that not voting is a not an meaningful expression of someone's right to vote. Unless there's option to express this within the voting system, there will always be voters that don't vote.
Second, if it's safe enough to bank and file taxes online, it safe enough to at least take an unofficial, but publicly published count online; people could for example update their vote during the run up to the official election.
Some countries have had penalties for not voting. Unclear if this helps, or hurts, the system.
Tax errors can, and are, routinely corrected. There's an error tolerance for taxes that is way, way higher than for voting. What if you realize three months after the fact that your taxes are off? Might be a big problem, but not as big a realizing three months after the fact that election results are wrong.
If someone were to vote on your website, how long would it take?
One of the main reasons why people don't vote is not being informed enough. Let's be honest, we hate the media and a lot of people don't know WHAT to believe anymore.
So do you have any plans on educating the people to think more logically and look at statistics for example when choosing to vote? Of course I'm not suggesting you to have any bias towards any candidates, but rather educate the people on what they vote for.
you can't vote on our website, but you can receive help registering to vote, checking your status, and getting your absentee ballot. we focus on the nuts and bolts of voting, but there are so many great orgs out there who work on voter education.
To the vote.org people who are here - have you ever considered throwing your weight behind alternative democratic mechanisms, like sortition, for selecting representatives?
This would have the effect of considering all eligible citizens for Government, thereby mitigating many of the problems with voter turnout.
appears to be some progress until you scroll down to see the interview and survey results. the study is all 18-34 year olds. compare against the past 15 years of voter history age grouping on turnout/registration, not a representation of the majority of the voters. they essentially asked their 18 year old kids what car to buy for their 65 year old grand parents. "Easy, Lambo."
Why? High voter turnout is like high page visits, it does not necessarily translate into good things. Ideally people who understand political issues and see that by voting they can truly help their ideology must vote.
I realize that, but all to often bad ideas are implemented incrementally. Online registration is an obvious step along the way. Next up: Internet ID (for "secure" online registration).
Well there are a bunch of comments from Debra Cleaver in this thread that make it clear that she doesn't trust online voting yet. But yes, this is an obvious step along the way. Eventually we will get to a point where online voting is practical and safer than physical voting.
But eventually, it will. I don't think we really disagree here, unless you think that widespread online registration will somehow cause online voting to inevitable happen too early. We tried electronic voting already, it didn't work very well, most states stopped doing it. When the technology gets better we will try again.
Self-driving cars recently became a safe idea even though software is inherently buggy. Someday the same will be true for voting.
I have no idea myself, but I think we can guess based on the fact that democrats generally want more turnout and republicans generally want less turn out. That suggests that democrats and republicans generally agree that the 100% would benefit democrats.
That doesn't explain Washington State, where the Democrats didn't use their state-provided primary at all (all of their primary delegates were allocated by a caucus you had to attend) and the Republicans did (though only one candidate is running now, so it doesn't really matter).
The Democrats made you physically get up on a Saturday and go, unless you had a valid excuse. Elections in Washington are by mail, so to vote in the Republican primary, you only had to walk to your mailbox.
vote-by-mail patters are changing, however, to be more representative of the electorate as a whole. i think it tended to skew more conservative in the past because the RNC invested considerable resources into VBM programs. the DNC has been a little later to the VBM process.
I did notice the org has raised $650K from a variety of sources.
It might be interesting to see the ideological bent of the source of that funding. But I'm guessing it probably isn't oil drillers and Jesus in public school promoters.
i would say that our funding tends to come from more progressive donors. that being said, we are ready, willing and able to take funding from say the Koch brothers should they ever offer to financially support our efforts to increase voter turnout.
i tend to think more in terms of progressives and conservatives than dems vs. republicans. given the demographic makeup of our country, the majority of citizens are progressive: they assume that the future is brighter than the past and long for forward thinking policies.
then again, i can't see into a crystal ball. i will say this, however: both major parties would have policies that represent the will of the people if we had 100% voter turnout. we'd see greater satisfaction with government and a more equitable taxation system with increased turnout. i also think we'd see higher investment in education and health care.
oh, interesting. i guess i know doom and gloom people from both sides of the aisle, but more from the conservative side? at the same time, americans are overwhelming positive as a people, are we not? why get up every day if you don't think the future is bright enough to justify shades.
(yes, i just made a corey hart reference in public. i think i just dated myself)
It will be interesting to see how the methods to increase voter turnout will affect who comes out and what their voting patterns will be due to anchoring/recency/etc. It's possible that this demographic may be more apathetic at the moment and thus more impressionable. On the other hand, we could have segments that are politically motivated but do not have the reasonable means due to socioeconomic circumstances such as not being able to miss time from work, family, etc.
Here are a few justifications of democracy and how increasing voter turnout would affect them:
1) Epistemic (democracy is good because it makes the correct choices). Increasing voter turnout doesn't do much because 10,000 randomly selected voters are sufficient to get the correct answers and increasing less competent voters would actually make it work.
2) Preference Satisfaction (democracy is good because it maximizes preferences). Increasing voter turnout is only beneficial if it improves the representation of voters to actual population.
3) Consent (democracy is good because we consent to it). Increasing voter turnout is only good if you deny those currently not voting are somehow not consenting. Higher voter turnouts make it easier for government to justify laws however - 'but you all voted for this!'
4) Transformational (democracy is good because participating makes us better people). Increasing voter turnout would be good regardless of how representative the new voters are of the population at large.
TLDR - there are many ways to justify democracy, increasing voter turnout will be good/bad/irrelevant depending on the justification.
I would like to see a security discalimer just like the one at the airport regarding if your bag has ever left your possesion: "Has anyone at any time come to you and asked you to cast a vote for them, or otherwise attempted to compromise your individual right to vote"
hey all. it's been great chatting with everyone. i have to go offline for a bit to eat dinner and talk to potential partners, but happy to pick this conversation back up later tonight.
Wouldn't insisting on motor-voter take it to near 90% ? Most states refusing motor-voter are controlled by the hard right.
Sure hope there is a plan to fund 100% more voting locations and booths.
Because Republicans have figured out a great way to kill voting when they simply just have to give in and let people vote is to defund voting locations.
Unless the plan is to just have everyone vote absentee but that allows for votes to be "lost".
Perhaps that has something to do with people who aren't supposed to vote, who's demographics skew to the left side of the political spectrum:
- Foreign citizens with drivers licenses
- Permanent residents with drivers licenses
- Felons with drivers licenses
- Drivers under the voting age of majority
- Non-naturalized immigrants with drivers licenses.
ok, let's keep this simple: until having a drivers license is a requirement to vote in this country, let's not rely on driver's licenses as a requirement for voting. the DMV was not built to administer elections. that's what local election offices are for
We need to go beyond Motor Voter IMHO. The DMV was not built to be the foundation on which democracy rests. Also, a surprising number of Americans don't have driver's licenses.
