I get you are being sarcastic, but the real problem is people don't vote and you see this at every level of government office. Other than the president, it's hard to engage people (which I don't really fault them for) and so you end up with politicians - all across the field - who do nothing but pander to the most extreme voters.
That's not what he's saying in the quote though, he's mad that the people who are engaged are people that don't agree with him and dismisses voters as "crazy"
He even goes as far to call this "broken" — it's literally democracy.
In Australia we have a slightly different version. We don't prevent the crazies from voting. Instead we insist everyone must vote, including the crazies. Turns out when you do that the non-crazy voters outnumber the rest by a considerable margin.
A weird thing happens when you make voting compulsory. Another bunch, which I now regard as crazy, insists they should be free to not vote. They get fined. (I have a vision of what would happen in the USA if someone proposed compulsory voting. It's far left and far right politicians who would be thrown out if the centre voted, inciting their following to riot in the streets, shouting "Freedom!")
It's kinda funny, because they are allowed to not vote. The actual requirement isn't to vote because it's impossible to police. The requirement is to turn up at the polling place and have your name recorded. You can write whatever you damned well please on the voting slip. After most elections the country gets to have a laugh at the insults and pornographic images that have been inscribed on those slips.
It's also funny because these crazies are insisting they have a right to not participate in the democracy. And they don't. Those that do participate then pass rules to fine them, and the non-participants get pissed off about that and demonstrate their now white hot anger by not voting again.
And I bet you thought I was being harsh for calling them crazy. It's like watching someone put their hand in a fire, and not remove it because it hurts.
And that is an excellent example of why compulsory voting works. The voices of the crazies literally get drowned out by the people who would otherwise be too lazy to vote. Or perhaps they just figure they are in the centre, know stuff all about the candidates, and most other people are reasonable like them so they won't change the outcome. But it turns out if most normal, reasonable, uninformed people remove themselves from machinery of democracy, what you get left with is crazies voting for crazies.
I'm also Australian but I do not think our style of compulsory voting would be popular in the US, my understanding is the way elections are managed in the US suppresses the voter turnout.
For example in the US they have their elections on a Tuesday (in Australia it is a Saturday), this strikes me as suboptimal if you want the most people to vote then you should hold the election at a time that is convenient for the largest number of people, which is not in the middle of a regular working day.
Australia also has pre-polling (i.e. you can turn up to a polling station and vote before the nominated "election day") and Postal voting (both of which are to my understanding extremely controversial in the US).
I believe in the US you also need to register to vote and you have to take steps to maintain your registration. again that is an added barrier that creates more friction.
Australia also has Preferential voting, I do not believe US elections use this method.
The point is that most people just aren't that engaged with politics, period. Most people who aren't voting aren't complaining about who is getting voted in.
A political and electoral system can have elections that are fair in principle but tend to produce results few are happy with in practice even when they voted for the winner. Is that democracy? Well, maybe, but I'd argue it's not doing democracy very well.
US presidential elections come to mind; the likely nominees of both major parties are viewed unfavorably by a majority in polls, but one of them is almost certainly going to win.
Dilute the votes of those who care with votes of random idiots who would never vote if not forced to and who make their decisions randomly or based on populism.
You can as well add 30% random votes, although those would be spread equally between candidates, not based on color of their hair, or random fake quote on the ineternet
it would at least help with making voting the default, also it would be normal to insert it into a schedule for employers, have enough polling places, etc. (okay, okay, I know, of course it's terminal naivete, fascist cumbombs would continue to smear their nastiness all over anyway. yet defaults matter. laws matter.)
The issue is voters are uneducated. You get compulsory voting you get the same issue with the california prop system scaled out: where people are given a choice and vote on what feels right from the proposition name and two sentence description alone. Research and looking into bias be damned.
Look at Australia. They have compulsory voting and a government that sells off natural resources to the highest bidder same as many others. Many Australians just get drunk on election day and write in “banana.” You can’t force people to care about something using the law that they don’t already care about.
Rates of informal voting of 5.1 % in the house of reps and 3.4 % in the senate nationally at the most recent federal election put paid to that comment.
With all due respect, I find it hard to believe anyone with any knowledge of Australian elections would write your comment.
To be fair Australia doesn't really have a choice in the matter due to forces outside of the country. Any political leader who tries this doesn't remain leader for very long.
Most of the public is aware of this, and will probably continue to accept it as long as the general standard of living doesn't fall to much.
Citation needed.
I live in a country with compulsory voting, and I don't see any indication that it drives engagement. Lots of people only go voting because they have to. They simply vote for the man or woman they think looks best, or they have seen on TV and said something funny, or stuff like that.
> The vast majority of people vote for who they trust.
But in many many cases without really looking into who is trustworthy.
Have you lived in countries without compulsory voting? Have you worked in electoral politics? Would the population be more engaged without compulsory voting? Different countries do not amount to controlled experiments. Brasil, North Korea, Belgium, and Australia are all very different countries. All have compulsory voting.
> But in many many cases without really looking into who is trustworthy.
> They simply vote for the man or woman they think looks best, or they have seen on TV and said something funny, or stuff like that.
These two things are largely linked. If one believes that one can view the true nature of reality and divine the future then one is in for perpetual disappointment with politicians. Trustworthiness can only be known a posteri. A priori we only have heuristics. The reason for the existence of representative democracy is so that politicians do the work of politics.
One may not always agree with the electorate but my experience tells me that compulsory voting does drive engagement. It changes how political parties spend money and who they use that money to try and influence. Engagement in countries with compulsory voting is different to how it would be in the same country without compulsory voting.
The average member of the electorate possesses no expertise in any single field and is ignorant of everything. The average member of the electorate holds no single opinion. This is a good thing.
Whether people's beliefs are right or wrong is one thing but what you don't want is a bunch of radicals (of any persuasion) who have made the leap of faith which prevents them from reversing course. When large proportions of a society is radicalised to hold extremist and exclusive political opinions, that's when voters cannot be convinced. This rarely ends up good for society and occasionally ends violently.
