There seems to be an assumption that low voter turnout is driven by something other than the poor quality of the candidates offered and a rational assessment of the value of voter time versus the marginal value of a single vote.
It's not obvious to me that higher voter turnout leads to better governance.
> It's not obvious to me that higher voter turnout leads to better governance.
The assumption is based on the fact that young people have low turnout, and these turnout initiatives are almost universally about getting young people who lean/are left to go vote. Most "get out the vote" drives are not really about improving our democracy and are actually about supporting Democrat politicians and their policies, which is why they target specific demographics that are likely to vote the "right way" (Samantha Bee's audience being a blatant example here of people that would vote for Democrats).
Both Republicans and Democrats have GOTV strategies. Republican efforts have faltered of late, because they have trouble recruiting / enlisting volunteers, comparatively. You can see this in how campaign spend their money. Advertising vs doorbelling.
It now occurs to me that age may be a factor in campaign staffing. Whereas 10 years ago, Democrat rank & file were blue hairs. Think Vietnam war protestors, old school labor, academics. Now the party is much younger.
It's been a long time since I've been to Republican party events, so just from what I've read, their party rank & file hasn't seen that kind of turnover.
> Both Republicans and Democrats have GOTV strategies. Republican efforts have faltered of late, because they have trouble recruiting / enlisting volunteers, comparatively.
Republican GOTV efforts have arguably reached their limits, because their base is effectively fully mobilized; Republican leaning voters are much more reliable voters than Democrats, and much more effectively politically organized (even when not overtly through party/electoral organizations; often through highly politicized religious/organizations, including churches that overtly flour, without consequence, the prohibitions on electoral activities that are attached to church 501(c)3 status.)
OTOH, very recently there are simply fewer Republicans, as there's been an exodus from identifying as a Republican or Republican-leaning independent over the last couple years. The people outside the committee base that a GOTV effort might seek to draw in—always a smaller share on the Republican side—are increasingly just not there at all on that side.
Of course, the flip side of this is Republican active voter suppression strategies targeting Democratic-leaning constituencies, which continue to escalate (including strategies executed through state policy, especially since the elimination of key parts of the Voting Rights Act.)
> It now occurs to me that age may be a factor in campaign staffing.
Absolutely.
> Whereas 10 years ago, Democrat rank & file were blue hairs. Think Vietnam war protestors, old school labor, academics. Now the party is much younger.
I think the first part is significantly exaggerated, but it's true that as more Millennials (where Democrats have a huge edge that's remained roughly constant since adult Millennials were around to poll) have come of age but Boomers shifted from a big Democratic advantage (that only existed during the second half of the George W. Bush administration) back to a competitive demographic—I’m not ignoring GenX, its just been a pretty constant slight Democratic lean and already fully into the eligible-to-vote age range, so it has neither the coming-of-age nor shifting-preferences effects of the surrounding generations—the Democratic Party has gotten younger faster than the Republicans (whose only solid lead, by generation, is with the Silent Generation.)
> Millennials (where Democrats have a huge edge that's remained roughly constant since adult Millennials were around to poll)
Source?
As best I can tell, the Democrats' advantage in the 18-29 age group peaked with Obama's election in 2008, and has been decaying since. '08 == +32; '12 == +24; '16 == +18.
A lot of Bernie supporters hated Clinton. Also, Johnson received 1.5m more votes over his last run. Meaning plenty of Johnson & Stein supporters hated Trump.
Polls like this illustrate why approval voting is useful. List all the candidates, check the ones you like.
Meanwhile, Democrats continue to gain advantage in the generic congressional ballot.
Lots of interesting points in this thread. I have some experience in this field and will respond (off the cuff) based on that:
@ JackFr2 > It's not obvious to me that higher voter turnout leads to better governance.
True. Post-election governance could be poor even if 100% of eligible voters voted. And since we don’t suffer from complete groupthink (,yet), an result in such a scenario would still leave things to be desired for some voters. However, what people too often miss is that voting is a signaling mechanism. And that’s why it’s important for people to vote for any candidate who they believe best represents their interests, even if they are “fringe” candidates who are unlikely to win. Example: Ross Perot lost in his bid for the US Presidency, but politicos definitely took note of how many people voted for him and that has and still ripples through the game today.
The issue about the quality of governance (QoG) stems from what I like to call ‘outsourcing’. The general populace has outsourced the management of their affairs to people who, by nature, have their own interests; many some of which are actually competing interests. So, when they vote, pat themselves on the back, and then check out, they generally enable being provided “more of the same.” Also, low voter turnout is definitely looked upon favorably by insiders, (until it isn’t and then, only temporarily).
@ brookhaven_dude > Young people need to be targeted because old people are already turning out in droves, and driving policy that favors them.
Thanks for saying this. I’ve been downv-oted in the past for saying as much, but it’s the simple truth. There’s a clip of a WH Press Briefing — all kids— in which Obama gets asked about voter cynicism and such. He starts talking #s. I forget the specifics, but IIRC, he says that the presidential-election year youth vote is ~20%. In non-PE years, it, of course, falls. If one extrapolates some guesstimates for local electoral politics, things are probably even worse. So, before we even start accounting for lobbying and economic$, the “youth vote” has pretty much relegated itself to being a bit player in the general equation. If the collective is happy w/what’s happening, then fine. But if the collective really wants to be considered and to see some changes then it needs to get in the damn game. That means regularly showing up to vote (intelligently) and having a persistent and strong pre$ence in the places where policy is made. Period. The collective also needs to take ownership of this instead of waiting around for/ whining about how someone should do the heavy-lifting and organize something for them (outsourcing). And as I’ve alluded to, money is unfortunately a necessary part of this game until the rules and/or game have been changed. So, that means that the avg. person, unfortunately, has to take an interest in and actually make(ing) sound economic decisions.
TLDR: - Vote @ the polls, on the phones, inboxes and in the legislative halls (no one on the inside of anything is taking marchers and the like seriously. they probably don't even know that exist);
- Numbers matter & low voter turnout is/can be a tool;
Interestingly, the seasonality of the 18-29 voters is much greater than that of other age groups - half as many show up for mid-terms. Compare that to the 60+ age group, where ~70% vote on PE years and ~55-70% vote during midterms.
As usual, I see downvoting w/o explanations or counterarguments. Not sure how that helps promote dialogue or understanding, but 'Okay, thanks for playing(?)"
> It's not obvious to me that higher voter turnout leads to better governance.
Higher than what?
Anyway, I think you’re projecting a lot of rationality where there’s just apathy.
In any case, low voter turnout tends to harm the democrats, as demonstrated by the ludicrous variety of ways various state republican parties have made voting difficult for working people, poor people, non-english speakers, felons, etc etc.
A few authoritarian regimes have been known have high voter turnout. Russia recently had 67% turnout, Cuba 90%, Turkey had 85% though turkey is compulsory. So, turnout is kind of an independent index.
Also, statistically speaking, if the turnout is “representative” then high or low makes no difference with regard to what would occur with full turnout.
When people say we want high turnout, I think they really mean I want my side to have full turnout and the opposition very low turnout —as this is the only situation where this quest makes sense.
I don’t know about the others but in Russia, most employers will make you go and vote. Sometimes for a small reward, go vote for the “preferred” candidate and get $100. Which is significant for someone living off a median wage.
Give out free IDs, streamline the ID process, and I won't care about ID requirements. Where I live, while there are DMVs in the city, the only DMVs that provide IDs and licenses are in the suburbs, many of which close at 4:30 PM. Requiring a person to pay for an ID and hope to qualify for a reimbursement later is just two steps removed from a poll tax.
Yes of course I want felons to vote (especially if they've served their sentence), and non-english speakers as well. A citizen is a citizen.
Side comment: We had a situation here where there was a candidate for a judge, whose name was Uno. (He was ethnically Japanese.) Well, in one of the counties where his name was on the ballot, Hispanics were more than 5% of the population. The election rules required that, for such counties, the ballot instructions be written in Spanish as well as in English. For the judgeship in question, voters were to vote for only one candidate. The translation of that instruction into Spanish was "Vota para uno"!
Note well: I am not saying that citizens who don't speak English shouldn't vote.
> Anyway, I think you’re projecting a lot of rationality where there’s just apathy.
Calling it "just apathy" is unjustifiable maligning. How is it not completely rational to be apathetic to whether business interests A or business interests B win their contest? What you're doing is the equivalent of a sports fanatic insisting that someone pick a team to root for.
Give these "apathetic" people an actual choice (like say a pitchfork) and you'll see how they really feel. In fact, I'd posit that a primary mechanism by which elections are won is convincing people that "this time will be different".
"Apathy" is generally seen as a negative condition that can be cured, while the "just" distances itself from rationality which is generally seen as a positive quality.
I'm sure there's a lot of non-rational peer-group following behavior that causes people to not vote, but likewise with the people who do vote. So associating the lack of prevailing rationality to a specific choice is fallacious.
This boils down to an argument that none of the issues that divide the parties matter to you. Apparently you don't care about immigration, feminism, LGBT issues, inequality and so on? Trump is boring?
American politics in 2018 is not lacking in drama or stark divisions. If today's politics doesn't excite you, what could possibly do it?
Well, under our two party system you end up with two shopping carts full of positions, and you've got to buy one of them. Now neither shopping cart typically lines up perfectly with a hypothetical voter, but what do you do if both baskets contain things that you feel deeply about and oppose?
For instance where should a voter who cares deeply about abortion and capital punishment to go? The Democrats are not simply pro-choice, they demean and belittle his pro-life position. The Republicans find it inconceivable that he doesn't want to execute people guilty of the most heinous crimes, and he's dismissed as an unserious bleeding-heart. So maybe it's not that he's unexcited by the issues, but rather because of his strong inclinations he has no one to vote for.
It might be that low turnout is evidence that the current 'baskets' of the two parties are poorly aligned with the current electorate.
Alternatively, these issues are chosen for prominence specifically because they're divisive.
Note how none of the issues you've listed actually threaten status quo economic interests.
(You might think immigration does, in that tightening it up would increase competition for labor. But the issue would be backstopped from harm to actual people long before the economics would be affected)
To the business interests that sponsor the elections and the general news cycle, it certainly is the goal! What a better way to assure your victory than to make sure people are busy fighting about things that don't affect you?
> Voting isn't like going to the shopping mall to buy something for yourself. It's something you do because politics also affects other people.
You're saying this like the philosophy of acting for a greater good isn't already reflected in my position, and so supports your argument Yet, regarding the issues you've listed, half the people voting are doing it because it negatively affects others? That's clearly nonsensical!
What I'm trying to get across is to ask yourself why these particular issues are so pressing and prominent. Not for yourself (I assume you've already done this). Not for the "others" (although you should do this). But constructively, in the larger scale.
If you have someone to defend, it doesn't really matter who made it an issue. Whatever new tactic is being tried, you still have to play defense. Not defending means losing.
Understanding the larger forces in play might be intellectually interesting, but if it results in apathy and forgetting to play defense it's just another way to lose.
Maybe voting isn't going to make things a whole lot better, but remember that it could always be worse.
And from a neutral point of view, both teams are doing a lot of attacking - while also seeing themselves as being under attack.
Given the circularity, taking a step back and analyzing the larger picture intellectually is the only way to possibly win!
It's funny how we could see the sensationalism of the news cycle as it ramped up in traditional channels, but now that much of our media is our own social echo chamber, it's less perceptible.
The divisions are both extreme and bad. I don't want Nationalist isolationism anymore than I want unrelenting psudeo-socalist globalists who are Both clearly in the pocket of big business. No, the issues of social identity are not the real issues facing our country in my humble opinion.
I could even argue that lower turnout leads to better governance.
If you don't care enough to pay attention, if you don't care enough to investigate the candidates, then I'd prefer that you also don't care enough to go vote. If you do go vote, you (you the hypothetical uninformed voter, not you, my reader) are going to vote for the candidate that had the most ads. I don't want elections being decided by voters who are making decisions that way.
I have only managed to vote twice in my life, in part because I don't want to pick a name at random and have been rather overwhelmed by events, yet I have had people give me a hard time about that, like it's my fault if bad candidates got elected because I didn't bother to pick a name at random.
And it always infuriates me to be told that I should vote anyway, even if it is random name picking.
We used to have a limit in place where each representative in Congress had no more than 40,000 constituents. This allowed a single individual to have a meaningful influence if they wanted to and kept people engaged. Now elections are so large that there's almost nothing you can do as an individual to make a substantial difference without having vast sums of money.
I also agree that a much larger congress would be a better thing. Returning to less large rep districts would be more representative. Granted, the House would become geometrically more chaotic (handshaking problem), but I think a better system would emerge.
That said, I don't think you are correct, at all, when you say that money is the only thing that matters. Votes matter. For example: The Nov 2012 Los Angeles elections. I voted in those elections. Mayor Garcetti won the election with only 5.4% of the city voting for him [0]. That means that I voted for ~20 Los Angelenos with my single ballot. Basically, I voted for half my homeroom in High School. You cannot buy votes nor stuff ballot boxes at the exchange rate I was able to affect with my single vote. And this was a presidential election, where turnout is typically higher. For the majority of local elections, I was voting for nearly my entire graduating class!
Another good example was Eric Cantor's primary election in 2014 [1]. Despite being the House Majority Leader, and despite outspending his opponent not just 2 to 1, not just 10 to 1, but 40 to 1, Cantor LOST. And it wasn't close, he lost 45% to 55%, a 10 point difference. Cantor resigned as Majority Leader on July 31st.
I didn't make it clear what I meant about money. The issue now is that each district is so large that in order to have an influence beyond your own vote you need a lot of money. You can't just talk to people in your community and have a noticeable impact on the outcome. If this were the case, the public would have a lot more influence over government. As it currently stands, one form of mass manipulation or another greatly outweighs what individual activism can achieve.
> We used to have a limit in place where each representative in Congress had no more than 40,000 constituents.
Even if you erased state boundaries (if you don't, the actual number goes up a bit), that would lead to a minimum of 8,143 members in the House.
You'd, IMO, actually do more to improve quality of representation and less to make the House unwieldy if you kept the current number of districts and made each district a 5-member constituency with STV or a similar candidate-centered proportional method of election.
It's at the point now where it's irrational to pay attention / partake in national politics at all unless you have said money. For most individuals it makes sense to treat national politics as basically the weather, and instead just invest in local politics.
But that's not what partisans do by and large outside a few key ones, because in the end for most partisans it's not about policy proposals or trying to steer the gov't, it's about identity.
The problem isn't necessarily low voter turnout overall, but the differences across groups. For example (these numbers are off the top of my head, but in the right ballpark) when middle class people vote at a 70% rate and the working poor vote at 40%, you don't get representation that reflects the communities it represents, regardless of candidate quality.
Neither the cost of voter time, as you referenced, nor its value is the same across groups.
You'll find that efforts to increase voter turnout are emphasized in those communities where turnout is low.
Apathy may be a huge part of it, but that doesn't negate the very real policies that are put in place to prevent people from voting:
- Extremely long poll lines, especially in underserved areas or those mostly populated by racial/ethnic minorities.
- Making people vote on a work day without federal holiday means that it's a financial obstacle, and employment risk. Again, this mostly hits the poor and underserved.
- No paper trail, and extremely hackable voter machines, not enough movement to fix them. [1]
- Voting Rights Act rollback: it was almost impossible to vote if you were Black in racist-run parts of the south (really, look at this [6]), and the protection against this got rolled back in 2013. There's been a bunch of voting law changes since [8].
- ID requirements that have been researched thoroughly and demonstrated to do almost nothing to reduce fraud but virtually always lower turnout, usually to minority populations. [7]
Aside from the topic of voter turnout itself, there are many other ways the democratic ideal is attacked by policy, such as gerrymandering[2], or the fact that we often refer to political parties as "half the country" when in reality only ~26% of the electorate voted for the current president[3], it was a single-digit percentage that voted for each of the eventual candidates in the primaries[4], and even "the electorate" is a lot smaller than our adult working population because felons aren't allowed to vote and we imprison more adults (mostly from poor and underserved populations) than any other industrialized nation. [5]
All this to say, yes, there's a lot of understandable apathy in our system, and we shouldn't judge their lack of desire to vote as some kind of moral failing. But there are many people who would love to participate in a democratic process but there are many concrete (and solvable) factors (with evidence and history beyond "an assumption") preventing participation, and the end result almost always favors a small group of people who don't represent the general population and already have a lot of power.
The only consistent way to boost turnout is competitive races. While I'm for universal, automatic voter registration (mostly for election integrity reasons), I acknowledge that it's just nibbling around the edges.
Big, sustainable increases in participation would come from switching to approval voting (or proportional representation, as appropriate) coupled with fair redistricting. Pretty much any measure to improve competitiveness will boost turnout.
> It's not obvious to me that higher voter turnout leads to better governance.
And that has never been the intent. High voter turnout leads to Democratic victories and rain on the election day leads to Republican ones.
If someone is building an app to create technology to make it rain on the election day for whatever reason, you can probably guess the real reason behind it.
Take it from a political organizer (who has a day job in tech): there is in fact a large opportunity for tech to play a role in affecting voter & civic engagement. But knowing what those opportunities are isn’t going to come from a tech vacuum. It will come from working closely with organizers and recognizing their pain points, vs. treating voters like customers & assuming there is a universal solution.
Exactly. Or maybe the day before, but the key being an extremely simple solution to a core piece of the problem. Even if apathy were low and engagement was high, it seems like a lot of effort for any given person to know when and where they are up to bat for voting and what they're voting on.
In 2011-2012, I built my first iPhone app, called SuperVote [1], a social ballot app that showed your Facebook friends' endorsements for upcoming elections. I was motivated to build the app for state ballot measures more so than political office elections, because in California you could have 10+ ballot measures to vote on, and I wanted a crowdsourced way to see where my friend's sat on the different measures. I built the backend model to accept a ZIP code and return back a custom ballot for each user, since your Facebook friends may live in other states, so at most you would share the national portion of the ballot.
I worked with a small core of friends to refine the app's features. I spent much more time than I should have building the website using some software called Freeway Express. I blogged regularly [2] and shared those links on various state/city subreddits. In the end, I spent about $100 on Reddit ads to get a total of 100 registered users and few endorsements. As not a designer, I recognized the app was not flashy, so it may not have been appealing to download. I also realize that the website doesn't do a good job in selling the app, and that I focused more on the ideas rather than the app itself. I wonder now how well a more polished version of this app would have played out in 2016 elections, although I recognize that the mix of politics and social media has gone downhill since 2016.
Great, another app using which, people who know me in real life, can unfriend me.
The problem isn't voting or lack of awareness (although I have an inkling on which side might think this is the root cause), the problem is polarization.
More aware you are of what goes on, more polarized you can be.
The problem which needs to be solved is to not get people hold opinions, but how to consolidate their opinions with the other side.
This looks interesting and something I have thought about for some time.
What code base did you develop the web app in? And do you have an android version? I'd like if there were a slicker web app and possibly android app that I could play with.
Maybe even I would help refactor this one day in the future.
The app itself was an iOS app written in Objective-C.
> And do you have an android version?
Unfortunately there wasn't. It probably would have been helpful to write it in something like PhoneGap (now Apache Cordova) to increase engagement, but I was using it partially as an exercise to learn Objective-C and iOS.
> What was the reasoning? Were you not getting enough use and participation? No downloads? Did you fail to execute the concept in some way?
At around 100 registered users, I felt it wasn't enough interest in the app to keep going. Some of the feedback I got through the App Store included not seeing all the available candidates (like lesser third party candidates) for a given election. Since I was entering elections by hand and not using a third party API to get the information, there was alway some information missing from the lesser elections. Also, after the 2012 election was over, I didn't see the purpose of maintaining an app that wouldn't be used for at least another 2 years. Its something you need to be dedicated for in the long haul.
Mark Pincus decides game design is the unique value he can bring to politics — and then promptly ships a clone of another game. Too real man, too real.
It seems ironic that the current press cycle is that tech both has too much influence in politics (Russia, the alt-right, Infowars/QAnon conspiracy theories, Google's supposed left-wing bias) and is totally ineffective at politics (this article, various articles about how big tech is now under fire from both left and right).
I think a more accurate narrative is that the Internet largely succeeded at what it set out to do: democratize information flow, communication, and social organization. And the consequence of that has been a shift in power from groups that previously had hegemony to new upstarts that previously never had a voice. If you aligned yourself with either one of the establishment parties (as most people writing the traditional news do), then the situation today sucks, because your star is clearly on the decline. If, however, you found that both parties of 1980s-America left you excluded and unrepresented, the Internet has been a godsend for finding like-minded people. Unfortunately that sometimes includes groups that we wish would stay excluded, like white supremacists.
Unlike areas like information, economic activity, or personal liberty, control of existing institutions is zero-sum. If your party controls Congress, that means the opposing party doesn't control it, and their agenda gets short shrift. If a new group (or 20) arises to challenge your control, that's a threat. That's the situation we're in now: there are dozens of different new tribes organizing for political power, and all of them are a threat to establishment institutions like existing political parties or the news media - hence the sense that the sky is falling.
This is pretty shallow for an "inside" look, rattling off one-liners about various big money actors feverishly scrambling to hinder Trump or help progressives or Democrats, and how none of them seemed to have a lasting impact, but the bulk of the focus is on some plausibly-satire yet actually submarine app for a comedian, presumably laced with the sort of absurdist humour that people on the cusp of Millennials and Gen Z appreciate. In doing so, it succeeds in being a more half-hearted attempt at journalism than the political swaying of the businessmen it tried to cover.
The only true insight is the throwaway comment by the Virginia candidate for Delegate, where he lost by a handful of votes, and laments the Democratic party's increasingly obsolete and wasteful rules for advertising. Ironically, that has little to do with Silicon Valley, but there's real meat there that's worth exploring.
In the wake of Obama's 2008 and 2012 elections, there was a ton of angst in Republican circles as they woke up to the seemingly insurmountable gap between the innovation of the Obama campaign and the pre-internet tactics of the GOP. Added to the early rumblings against the perceived unfriendliness of the large social networks, this resulted in a huge scattershot investment in a lot of poorly conceived and equally poorly executed projects run by PACs and by the party organization. Romney's election-day tech disasters come to mind as an obvious example. Some sort of oral history from the people involved at the time would be really fascinating.
Anyways, the shoe seems to be on the other foot today, as the Democrats appear to have convinced themselves that they're behind the eight ball on tech matters (a position I find silly, considering the massive advantage they have in potential recruits and sympathetic developers).
Despite all the changes wrought by technology, politics is still played more or less as it has always been. Charismatic politicians (Obama, Trump) carry their party, hiding its weaknesses and exposing the weaknesses of their opponents. "Social networking" is an extremely poor avenue for political organizing (as distinguished perhaps from political rabble-rousing). Politics is still a game of people and personality, and investments in internet technology can only perhaps have an impact at the margins.
Instead of tech maybe they should have a real message that appeals not only to upper middle class or tech millionaires. The 2016 campaign showed to me how out of touch the Democrats are with most of the country. Silicon Valley has even less of an idea what's going on outside their bubble. As long as they have such disdain for the working class they will keep losing. At least Obama had a message. That's something I don't see today.
There are lots of working class people that aren’t racists and bigots (and in terms of bigotry against people of color, many working class people are people of color) and everyone accepts that there are many elites that are racist and bigoted. I’m not sure where the “working class” comes into the equation here.
I know plenty of liberal white collar people who immediately call someone who thinks about gun rights, has doubts about immigration or same sex marriage a racist and bigot. Independently of the merit of these opinions writing these people off is not a good idea.
Remember when Obama said that thing about clinging to guns and religion? He ended up winning Pennsylvania by 10 points! Don’t pretend this is a new phenomenon or that anybody actually cares that much about it.
> or that anybody actually cares that much about it.
I assure you, those of us for whom gun rights are a central issue - an issue of basic civil rights - care.
As it is, I have no particular love for the Republican Party, but I simply cannot see myself voting for a Democrat for state or national office given their history of voting as a bloc against gun rights.
Objectively, I have no idea if gun control is a net positive for the Democrats at a national level - but I'm confident that by branding themselves as the party of gun control they are driving away a large number of people who would otherwise be reachable.
I don't even disagree with you - but given that Obama won ~53% and 51% of the vote (a higher vote share than anybody since HW Bush in '88) it's not as important as some would think.
Well, consider common terms like “flyover state” and “rust belt”. What do you suppose a person who talks like that really thinks about the people who live there?
Coastal disdain for the middle has long been a thing yes. I suppose the modern difference is that when manufacturing was still onshore, no one cared what the coastal elites thought.
At least Obama had a message. That's something I don't see today.
My man Bernie had a simple message: free healthcare and college education. And love him or loathe him so did Trump: build the wall. Clear, to the point, and instantly everyone knew what they were promising.
> Anyways, the shoe seems to be on the other foot today, as the Democrats appear to have convinced themselves that they're behind the eight ball on tech matters (a position I find silly, considering the massive advantage they have in potential recruits and sympathetic developers).
Democrats are not convinced Republicans have an advantage in technical skill or available domestic technical workforce, they are convinced that there is an assymetry between parties in the willingness to partner with hostile foreign powers and engage in criminal methods of cyberwarfare in pursuit of electoral victory, which mitigates the advantage Democrats believe they retain in lawful use of technology.
Reading this made it seem to me that this tech can be extremely effective. By pinpointing exactly who was worth their time talking to (i.e. if husband of target answers the door you ask for target otherwise politely leave) the Koch brother's were able to overturn an initially very popular public transit bill.
I think tech can be effective when its used to make on the ground activism better. It's a truism in political science that face to face politicking and door knocking wins elections. If you can improve the effectiveness of that sort of activism through technology, I don't see why it wouldn't be useful. Of course, that introduces risks as well; it would be simple to end up only talking to people who were probably going to swing towards you anyways, and ending up in yet another echo chamber.
I didn't mean in my original comment that technology is entirely useless. More that it's a distant second to the things that have always worked in politics, and that "our tech is worse than theirs" is the refuge of a losing party looking to cast blame for their losses.
Ah, I misunderstood you. I definitely agree that message and charisma are far more important than tech. Even in the case I cited, the tech just identified who to speak to, but that does no good if you don't have a friendly volunteer to convey a resonating message.
In the suburban liberal utopia I live, we get lots of door knockers/canvassing.
Republicans are usually a middle aged male female team. They are very polite and will discuss the election in general before admitting who they represent. They will also try to sway with fiscal voting histories and moderate policy choices.
Democrats will usually be a group of twenty year olds or middle aged teachers. They are pleasant, but immediately hand you the flyer and start to discuss 'stopping' this or that. They usually don't talk about their candidate, but discuss negatively the competition and Republican national level platform concepts and of course recently Trump. The majority of flyers they send out are negative campaigns.
There is one campaign this year and the only ads running on TV right now is a negative ad against the Republican because he voted against funding bills that claimed to support some senior citizen project and schools. I honestly think this is a smooth play on the Republican party to keep quiet.
Yes, odd how that works. Being outspokenly left seems to have few consequences, being outspokenly right appears to have worse consequences. At least half of developers appear to be some form of right wing but you’d never know it. Indeed, most of us have learned to shut up.
One thing about this that strikes me is that "right wing" and "left wing" don't adequately describe either people's positions or the extent of the impact of the chilling effect you described.
I would not consider myself "right wing" - I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and have no problem with the vast majority of the social issues embraced by the left. I take issue with the way they intend to address them sometimes but that applies to all parties and to government in general.
Still, I often bite my tongue when guns come up as a topic of conversation in a professional settings, because when I speak on that topic it's automatically assumed that I'm a Republican. Democrats (and assorted other leftists) seem to regularly project their preconceived notions of what a Republican is onto me, and assume that they are correct.
> What is it about politics that makes it go that way
It's not “politics”, it's the US electoral system, and particular:
(1) single-winner majority or plurality legislative (and state executive) elections and
(2) Indirect federal executive elections where the voters are elected in winner-take-all plurality elections at either state or a mix of state and district levels.
Together, this strongly encouraged a system of two major national factions, each of which strives to acheive a winning coalition with as little compromise on policy priorities as possible, which in effect means minimal size to acheive victory.
Exactly...can you imagine anyone at Google's fabled cry-session in 2016 coming to the mic and asking why it is so awful that they voted for Trump? They would have had an immediate impromptu review followed by termination.
Instead we get everyone telling the mob what they want to hear and no one can figure out why the votes counted don't reflect the "consensus".
I watched the video and if I remember right somebody did come up and gave a reminder that they should be considerate that there were Trump voters. They were promptly booed.
Just out of curiosity, how did Trump win? (From what little I know, I've read his team focused on getting electoral votes while Hillary's team focused on some fancy data science strategy that ignored important districts. But, everyone else keeps saying it was fake news and Russian covert ops.)
Here is Clinton's exact quote, taken from the Wikipedia article on the "basket of deplorables" remark[0].
"You can take Trump supporters and put them in two big baskets.
There are what I would call the deplorables—you know, the racists and the haters,
and the people who are drawn because they think somehow he's going to
restore an America that no longer exists."
Can you explain why white Trump supporters have chosen this as a banner to rally around rather than reject those elements and that ideology from their platform or their identity? Why is it wrong to deplore racism and hatred?
"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Laughter/applause) Right? (Laughter/applause) They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic – Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America."
The key word that you omitted is "irredeemable"- basically she is saying that there is no hope for redemption for people have certain beliefs. What does that imply about how she would have governed people who are, in her words, irredeemable?
> basically she is saying that there is no hope for redemption for people have certain beliefs.
Well, sure, if you omit the part where she admits to being "grossly generalistic" and where she says she believes only "some of those folks" are "irredeemable," then you might interpret it as a statement about people who hold certain beliefs rather than people who refuse to be persuaded from their beliefs... but that would be omitting the full context.
>What does that imply about how she would have governed people who are, in her words, irredeemable?
Nothing. Obviously, she was speaking in the context of campaign strategy, reading something more ominous into it would be disingenuous.
Hillary Clinton has all the charisma of a sack full of angry cats but I don't think she did insult her voter base.
She insulted racists, bigots, sexists, etc... but those people aren't her base. Angry, disenfranchised rural white voters and their embrace of Trump's populism by way of race-culture supremacy/identity as a reaction against America's demographic and cultural shift has been thoroughly documented. Also, her description of the rationale for the rest of Trump voters is one that Trump voters themselves admit to.
What didn't happen is Hillary Clinton calling all Trump supporters (or, by extension, all white people or all working class people) racist and "deplorable."
> She insulted racists, bigots, sexists, etc... but those people aren't her base
She said that "half" of Trump voters are those things.
> What didn't happen is Hillary Clinton calling all Trump supporters (or, by extension, all white people or all working class people) racist and "deplorable."
Trump voters know other Trump voters. They look around themselves and don't see "half" of them being those things - therefore, they infer that Hillary Clinton had misidentified many of their friends as being those things.
>She said that "half" of Trump voters are those things.
Was that bigoted? Yes, and she paid for it. Imprecise, yes, but I don't think she was literally claiming 50% of Trump supporters were those things. But was it entirely untrue?
I lived through the same election cycle as everyone else. I've seen the racist elements of American white supremacism and the alt-right embrace Trump for whatever reason, and I've seen the contempt in which some Trump supporters appear to hold the rest of the country. They voted for a man who has said far, far worse things than Hillary Clinton, yet it's more important for them to form solidarity with racists than to admit that maybe she wasn't entirely wrong. When you're willing to get in bed with swine you won't wake up smelling like roses.
I would question your premise. Clinton, and the left wing and Democratic Party, have taken a number of policies/opinions and labeled them to be racist.
It’s part of a particularly odious strategy: make a bold stand against “hate,” then describe everything your opponent stands for as hateful, regardless of the reality.
1. The US-Mexico border wall. The purpose of the wall is to prevent people from illegally crossing the border to enter the US. Say what you will about its effectiveness. I doubt it would be that effective and think our money is better spent elsewhere. But if you support it, you'll be branded a racist.
2. Deporting illegal aliens. If you agree that people who are in the US illegally should be deported, you'll be branded a racist. Race has nothing to do with it. It's the legality of it. If you don't like the law, lobby for it to be changed. You'll also be accused of hating all immigrants (i.e., ones here legally) which has no basis.
> If you don't like the law, lobby for it to be changed.
So on this particular point, I was clicking through a bunch of Youtube videos last week while bored and saw one in particular that stuck out. The particular point was about refugees, not illegal immigrants, but it seems that at least some people are absolutely convinced that there's already an authority above the US government that makes enforceable laws, and that Trump/etc is just ignoring those laws. No amount of arguments or explanation during the video could convince the person that there is no such law.
Specifically, he won the election by edging a thin margin of electoral votes in key swing states, while losing the popular vote by millions. How exactly that came to be is stil a matter of debate.
That's not precisely correct -- it's very well understood. Many, if not most, of those millions of votes came from states he could not win no matter what he did (CA, NY) -- as a result there was no reason or incentive to spend time or money campaigning there.
Well, there is debate on the tactical decisions that lead to that. I've heard that Clinton's campaign chose to make non-optimal decisions for winning the presidency to try and help downticket races, because they assumed presidential victory was assured. Whether that was the right strategy is up for debate, kinda I guess, I mean, we know who won.
Trump won because the Democrats ran Hillary. She was the problem. Her giving the impression of a divine right to hold the office. Her history of scandals. Her lack of charisma. There were a lot of people who held their nose and voted for Trump, not because they were racist or sexist, not because they wanted Trump, but because they were voting "not Hillary".
If most news media is to be believed, Russia hacked the election.
Though what they mean by that is that Russia hacked the DNC servers and exposed illegal or quasi-illegal action by those at the top causing mass disillusionment with the DNC among those on the fence.
In addition they (russia) apparently spent less than $300,000 on facebook/social media ads. (For context, the DNC and hillary spent over 1/2 billion on ads/commercials and trump spent a little more than $300 million.)
Trump won the election because his message resonated with the voters where it mattered. Clinton won the popular vote because all the people who voted for her live in the same 4 states.
>(From what little I know, I've read his team focused on getting electoral votes while Hillary's team focused on some fancy data science strategy that ignored important districts. But, everyone else keeps saying it was fake news and Russian covert ops.
All of that is likely true, but to what degree is a matter of debate.
It does seem to be true that the Democrats tried to play it safe with Clinton and that she failed to connect with the same demographics that other Democratic candidates, or Trump, succeeded with.
It also seems to be true that there was some effort on the part of the Trump campaign (with or without his knowledge) to engage with Russian "covert ops" and that these efforts were at least somewhat successful, given the admission on the part of the DNC that the damage caused by Wikileaks was too great to overcome. Connect the dots between Wikileaks, Russia and Trump wherever you like... no one here can offer anything but conjecture on the matter.
I think a lot of it has to do with the simple fact that out of the entirety of the Democratic and Republican fields, Trump alone was the most charismatic and showmanlike and was most able to entertain and capture media attention. Modern elections are more about hype and the news cycle than competence and intellect. Clinton found herself a magnet for the disillusionment and impotent rage for which Trump provided catharsis and, in a close election, that was enough for him to squeak by.
There's a lot of fear and anxiety in America, at least parts of it.
You've got millions of American's one paycheck away from being homeless. [1] There's the insane cost of college, yet you still need a degree to succeed. The insane cost of healthcare. There's the wealth inequality. Wages are stagnate. And global warming is only getting worse. Etc.
Now there's three paths that I think are taken when this sort of thing happens. You've got the fix the problems route, or the scapegoating route, or a combination of the two. Hillary Clinton didn't really address these fears, she represented the status quo. Trump, on the other hand, was the clear scapegoat candidate. He was the candidate you vote for if you believe or feel all the problems stem from brown people, women, etc. opwieurposiu's comment above/below demonstrates this feeling, I think. People like him/her voted for Trump. Trump's slogan was "Build the wall". If you believe the problem is caused by minorities, you vote for the candidate that wants to great rid of minorities. So yeah, he'll probably win again unless the Dems run a candidate that actually addresses these problems, which isn't likely. As the problems get worse, I imagine the scapegoating will as well.
People elected Trump, and that is indeed a serious problem. But Silicon Valley thinks the right way to solve that problem is not to address the root grievances and problems of Trump’s supporters, but to outmaneuver them via technology.
And of course, you have the profoundly amoral Mark Pincus and the hateful Samantha Bee spearheading this.
>> "The app, intended to be a kind of social network to spark political activity,"
Most of the big change in politics in the last decade has come from apps that make it easier to do good old-fashioned grassroots organizing. It's why the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) is making waves now. They usually just use Twitter for the social network part.
The rest of the article talks about other attempts at apps for political organizing, and the politics of political apps. Not a bad read if you're into the subject, but I expected a look at the technical failure it opens with given the title.
It's not obvious to me that higher voter turnout leads to better governance.