Should People Vote?

[Dinwar]

Heinlein argued that those IN military service shouldn't be allowed to vote--only veterans should be allowed to. So both possitions can be held at the same time.

 

[Thunder]

anyone who pays taxes should have the right to vote.

 

[Fiona]

The way I see it everybody knows about the issues. They may not know about the same issues as you: they may not think the same isssues are important as you do. But the notion that they do not know where their own interests lie is an odd one. In the end that is what people pursue and so every one of them must be included. That is the point of democracy: it founds on a hypothesis that if everyone can have an equal influence on the uses of power they will not be wholly exploited, for they will not allow that to happen and they have the means to prevent it.

Of course people can be manipulated: but it is not true that educated people are less influenced than others. so far as I can see. The mechanisms of manipulation may be mitigated by intelligence and/or by education: but they are not eliminated. We can certainly try to apply critical thinking, and that will help, but we can only apply it to the facts we have. And none of us have very many in the scheme of things: government covers all sorts of things and we cannot know about them all: or even most of them.

It seems to me inescapable that each of us is better informed about our own circumstances than about those of others: and that influences what we believe to be important. It also limits how far we can see the consequences of what we propose on the lives of those who are in different circumstances. We are not very good at that even when we are trying: hell we are not very good at seeing the consequences of what we do on ourselves a lot of the time

So if you are proposing that there is some way of removing the right to vote from some groups then what criteria do you propose? A knowledge of current affairs? What does that comprise? I am fairly sure there is no list we could all agree on. Politics is not science nor anything like science: there is no "right" answer to political questions and there is not even any "right" question.

If you insist that there should be some form of exclusion then I will suggest that nobody should be allowed to vote if they earn more than three times the minimum wage. Such people know damn all about budgetting

 

[Dinwar]

So if you are proposing that there is some way of removing the right to vote from some groups then what criteria do you propose?

I've already stated that I don't know, I'm still working it out. For myself, I abstain from voting in situations where I know that I don't know the issues. The example I've used was when I'm new to an area--I don't have TIME to know the issues, or the people involved, and therefore I abstain.

I think it's rediculous to assume that people know the issues being voted on equally well. There have been several cases where voters complained about confusing ballots, or have misunderstood an issue and voted "Yes" when they thought that was for the issue, where in reality the vote was against it (California recently had one of those problems). There's also the habbit of straight-ticket voting, which I've heard a number of people of my aquaintance state they use in place of educating themselves about the people in question. Their logic was "He's a (insert political party); obviously he'll agree with my stance."

I in no way mean to imply that people who are ignorant of the issues in the ballot are ignorant of politics in general, or ignorant in everything, and have gone out of my way to avoid implying such. The issues on the ballot are one set of issues, which some people don't look into, for whatever reason; my argument is that such people are by definition uninformed, and I cannot see the value in huge numbers of votes if many of them are uninformed votes.

I've toyed around with the idea of voting on local issues, and voting for local officials who will deal with local matters and who will vote on state officials, who will deal with state matters and who will vote for national officials, and so on. Something like the original idea behind the electoral college. The Founding Fathers didn't expect people to understand each candidate or the issues well enough to vote on the president directly, so they established a system where they elected people who's job WAS to be so informed. All citizens could vote, but we didn't get to vote directly on the president, we voted (and still vote) on who will vote for the president. We could expand that system out to encompass all of politics. I know there's problems with it, but it's something I came up with last night, so it'll be a bit rough.

 

[Uncle Otto]

on the other hand it would increase the number of people that will inform themself about the issue, because they know they have to vote.

I look at it this way-----forced voting is the exact same thing as forced speech. Exactly what is the point? If I am forced to vote, and I use Mickey Mouse as a write-in candidate, just what was accomplished? Why would anyone in their right mind, want to be forced to vote for candidates they don't want to vote for?

And if the voter doesn't like the choices presented to him----- then what? Australia is the only country I know of that has compulsory voting. What if an Aussie submits a blank ballot? What happens then? Is that "permitted"? If so, then what was the point of the whole exercise to begin with? The exact same thing could have been accomplished by simply not voting.

Somebody needs to explain this to me. The notion of forced voting is as foreign to me as is forced statements of religious beliefs. How can anyone think such a thing has any value?

Compulsory participation in democracy strikes me as lunacy.

 

[Kid Eager]

I look at it this way-----forced voting is the exact same thing as forced speech. Exactly what is the point? If I am forced to vote, and I use Mickey Mouse as a write-in candidate, just what was accomplished? Why would anyone in their right mind, want to be forced to vote for candidates they don't want to vote for?

And if the voter doesn't like the choices presented to him----- then what? Australia is the only country I know of that has compulsory voting. What if an Aussie submits a blank ballot? What happens then? Is that "permitted"? If so, then what was the point of the whole exercise to begin with? The exact same thing could have been accomplished by simply not voting.

Somebody needs to explain this to me. The notion of forced voting is as foreign to me as is forced statements of religious beliefs. How can anyone think such a thing has any value?

Compulsory participation in democracy strikes me as lunacy.

I spit on your strawman of "forced voting". It's compulsory, not forced...
Nobody goes to gaol if they don't vote, and people are not prodded into the voting booths at gunpoint.

I guess we have different worldviews then. I can't imagine the point of democracy where you have the right to vote, yet fail to see that there's a responsibility that comes with that right.

Is it really a democracy when more people don't vote than do? Even if they do end up putting in a blank ballot paper - so what. We still end up with more valid votes than total voter turnout in optional countries, so the resulting elected officials are more representative of the masses - even if some of them are reluctant participants.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

I'm clueless when it comes to macroeconomics. I might know what a recession is and roughly where my taxes go but i sure as hell wouldn't want to influence the policies that form the economy of the country that I'm living in. But such is the way of the democratic game.

In short: there should be some form of test that shows if you're smart and enlightened enough to influence the political system. Teaching kids rigorously on economics, and not just your own private economy, is obviously a requirement.

This is my problem with the "silly, ignorant, commoner" argument: Friedman or Krugman? They both have tons of authority and education, but that doesn't mean you get anywhere near the same policies, or even the best solution.

The major problem I see with compulsory voting is that those who are ignorant of the issues will constitute a large proportion of the electorate.

And what does it mean to be ignorant? How much do I need to know about the judicial system to know that a certain tax policy will be bad for me? Do I need tariff knowledge to vote on abortion rights? And what about who have completely different "facts"? Who decides who writes the test?

Democracy is not about getting the "correct" policy, it is about setting policy in line with the desires of the general populace. If you disdain the general populace, try starting a coup.

As I said in the other thread I doubt it would make much difference in practice, because the people who care enough to vote now would care enough to do the community service, and the people who don't care enough to vote now wouldn't.

That is absurd. You are just adding more people who can't be bothered to get to the booth to the people who already can't be bothered to vote in the first place.

 

[rjh01]

I look at it this way-----forced voting is the exact same thing as forced speech. Exactly what is the point? If I am forced to vote, and I use Mickey Mouse as a write-in candidate, just what was accomplished? Why would anyone in their right mind, want to be forced to vote for candidates they don't want to vote for?

And if the voter doesn't like the choices presented to him----- then what? Australia is the only country I know of that has compulsory voting. What if an Aussie submits a blank ballot? What happens then? Is that "permitted"? If so, then what was the point of the whole exercise to begin with? The exact same thing could have been accomplished by simply not voting.

Somebody needs to explain this to me. The notion of forced voting is as foreign to me as is forced statements of religious beliefs. How can anyone think such a thing has any value?

Compulsory participation in democracy strikes me as lunacy.

I live in Australia. We call it compulsory voting. But it is not actually compulsory to cast a valid vote. All you need to do is turn up to the polling station, get your name crossed off, tell the person you have not voted in that election previously. If you are not brave or stupid enough to walk out at that point, you can take a voting paper, go to a booth, put a mark on the paper (writing Informal vote is OK), fold, and without showing anyone the paper put it in the box provided. It is a secret vote, no one knows for sure who, if anyone you voted for. All what anyone knows is that a certain percentage of people voted for each candidate and another percentage cast an informal vote.

Yes there are penalties for not voting, however they are rather small. Then if you can give a reasonable excuse why you did not vote then that will not have to be paid. Yet over 90% of people do vote.

 

[Zep]

http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/Compulsory_Voting.htm

Arguments used in favour of compulsory voting

• Voting is a civic duty comparable to other duties citizens perform eg taxation, compulsory education, jury duty
• Teaches the benefits of political participation
• Parliament reflects more accurately the "will of the electorate"
• Governments must consider the total electorate in policy formulation and management
• Candidates can concentrate their campaigning energies on issues rather than encouraging voters to attend the poll
• The voter isn’t actually compelled to vote for anyone because voting is by secret ballot.

Arguments used against compulsory voting:

• It is undemocratic to force people to vote - an infringement of liberty
• The ill informed and those with little interest in politics are forced to the polls
• It may increase the number of "donkey votes"
• It may increase the number of informal votes
• It increases the number of safe, single-member electorates - political parties then concentrate on the more marginal electorates
• Resources must be allocated to determine whether those who failed to vote have "valid and sufficient" reasons.

 

[Zep]

Q: Should people vote?

A: No. Only cats should vote.

 

[R.Mackey]

• It is undemocratic to force people to vote - an infringement of liberty

For me, it all comes down to this. No one should be barred from voting, and no one should be forced to vote. Given a right, it's up to you to exercise it. You and you alone.

Plenty of other valid arguments, but this one is sufficient.

 

[Zep]

For me, it all comes down to this. No one should be barred from voting, and no one should be forced to vote. Given a right, it's up to you to exercise it. You and you alone.

Plenty of other valid arguments, but this one is sufficient.

Fair enough.

Would you also allow that as a responsible citizen, you accept you have various civic duties you are obliged to perform from time to time?

 

[Carn]

For my part I'd imagine a slightly different system so it wasn't that you put your life on hold while you did two years service necessarily, but rather that your work could qualify you anyway. For example if you decided you wanted to be a lawyer, so went to law school, and then spent a couple of years working at the government prosecutor's office or something before moving on to a private law firm, that would qualify you for public service. Likewise if a top plastic surgeon started their career in the ER of a major city hospital.

The discussion is based on the unproven assumption, that someone has a crystal ball, in which he can see, which services are a benefit to society or which services show, that you are interested in society.

Take for example the prosecutor, how do you know, that the laws enforced by the prosecutor are beneficial for society?
How do you know, that he does not do the kob, because he thinks, that the lazy justice system spends to much time worrying about rights of suspect and he therefore wants to use his position to get more people found guilty independent on whether he has to manipulate evidence, interrogate illegally or convict some innocents in his quest for more criminals being put into prison?

And the one who starts with private firm directly, how do you know, that his service does not benefit society? After all, someone pays those firms, that someone thinks he profits from their service and any service that is beneficial for a member of society but not harmful to anyone else is a benefit for society.
And how do you know, that someone does not simply avoid to work for prosecution because he thinks they are on a track to trample all suspect rights and put a lot of innocent into prison and therefore he joins a private law firm to work against this abuse?


Only Heinleins idea avoids this problems to some extent, because a society which faces constant military threats from some potentially genocidal neighbors (In Starship Troopers the bugs qualify) is obviously in dire need of a strong military force and therefore not joining military service shows, that you simply want others to die for you're safety, which shows that you are an egoistic coward.

 

[R.Mackey]

Fair enough.

Would you also allow that as a responsible citizen, you accept you have various civic duties you are obliged to perform from time to time?

Absolutely.

Rights carry with them responsibilities. Given the right to vote, I am responsible for voting and voting intelligently. The system doesn't work if we don't participate.

Where I chafe, however, is at the notion that we should be made to participate. Suffrage is an integral part of liberty, and laws and rules forcing us to vote erode that same liberty. It's a system that works best when people approach it with responsibility and virtue in mind...

... the alternative, however, of assuming the worst in people and either forcing them to vote or denying the vote, has a way of becoming self-fulfilling. Responsibility loses something when it's enforced.

 

[gumboot]

Absolutely.

Rights carry with them responsibilities. Given the right to vote, I am responsible for voting and voting intelligently. The system doesn't work if we don't participate.

Where I chafe, however, is at the notion that we should be made to participate. Suffrage is an integral part of liberty, and laws and rules forcing us to vote erode that same liberty. It's a system that works best when people approach it with responsibility and virtue in mind...

... the alternative, however, of assuming the worst in people and either forcing them to vote or denying the vote, has a way of becoming self-fulfilling. Responsibility loses something when it's enforced.

I'm not sure I follow your logic here. Are you saying a citizen's responsibilities to society shouldn't be enforced? What about taxation? Adherence to the law?

Personally I'd argue that in modern large sprawling societies, where the direct leverage of your community doesn't work, the only way you can really ensure that people meet their responsibilities is by enforcing them.

(In traditional close-knit human communities where "everyone knew everyone" I think the peer pressure and community expectation that you do your duty was usually sufficient - the bigger society becomes the more removed we are from that immediate community pressure, thus requiring more formal enforcement).

It seems to me, really, it comes down to an issue of whether you see voting as a right, or a responsibility. You clearly see it as a right, and as a right, therefore you should neither be forced to do it, nor prevented from doing it. I get that. Others see it more as a responsibility, in which case forcing people to vote does make sense.

Does that make sense?

 

[IchabodPlain]

Are you saying a citizen's responsibilities to society shouldn't be enforced? What about taxation? Adherence to the law?

Personally I'd argue that in modern large sprawling societies, where the direct leverage of your community doesn't work, the only way you can really ensure that people meet their responsibilities is by enforcing them.

You're arguing in the case of taxation, which is not a right, and applying the same logic as though it was a right.

Rights were not intended to have, nor do they imply, responsibilities. They are explicit freedoms. There is no responsibility in the right to free speech - there are limits - but that is not the same thing.

What is your responsibility for your right to health care? Right to life? Security of your person? Refusal to undergo any medical treatment?

It seems to me, really, it comes down to an issue of whether you see voting as a right, or a responsibility. You clearly see it as a right, and as a right, therefore you should neither be forced to do it, nor prevented from doing it. I get that.

Yep.

Others see it more as a responsibility, in which case forcing people to vote does make sense.

If you want to take up the issue of responsibilities/contributions/whatever, then look no further than holding a job, going to school, owning property, etc these are actions of participation within the democracy and contribute to its general well-being. People do one or more of these things most every day of their entire lives, and replacing that for 2 years at some Habitat for Humanity or Coast Guard base, is not only counterproductive and wrong, it also ignores and undermines your goal. Crazy is crazy and lazy is lazy. You can make someone do something for two years, but you can't guarantee their future interest, nor how informed they will be.

People who live in society participate in it, whether unconsciously, inadvertently, or in spite.

 

[R.Mackey]

I'm not sure I follow your logic here. Are you saying a citizen's responsibilities to society shouldn't be enforced? What about taxation? Adherence to the law?

I'm saying that ideally responsibilities shouldn't be enforced. Obviously the libertarian ideal is impractical.

It seems to me, really, it comes down to an issue of whether you see voting as a right, or a responsibility. You clearly see it as a right, and as a right, therefore you should neither be forced to do it, nor prevented from doing it. I get that. Others see it more as a responsibility, in which case forcing people to vote does make sense.

Does that make sense?

Sure, it makes sense.

Taking a realist viewpoint, the question of whether to enforce any given responsibility depends on the social cost of doing so.

For voting in specific, I claim there is no reason to enforce voting -- choosing not to vote is a valid choice. And forcing people to vote results in screwed up election results, particularly if a majority of voters wouldn't otherwise be bothered, as has been claimed in this thread. Ergo, don't.

The alternative of denying some the right to vote, again, I don't accept at all.

This calculus does not apply to all rights, of course. To pick at random, some enforcement of responsible application of one's right to self defense is inescapable. But for voting, I just don't see the need.

 

[R.Mackey]

You're arguing in the case of taxation, which is not a right, and applying the same logic as though it was a right.

Rights were not intended to have, nor do they imply, responsibilities. They are explicit freedoms. There is no responsibility in the right to free speech - there are limits - but that is not the same thing.

What is your responsibility for your right to health care? Right to life? Security of your person? Refusal to undergo any medical treatment?

Disagree with this, at least with respect to the American Constitution. Any right can be abused. It is our responsibility not to abuse those rights, and there are further responsibilities implicit in them.

The Right to Free Speech and associated Rights to Free Assembly, Freedom of Religion, and Freedom to Petition do imply responsibilities -- that responsibility is for Americans to communicate and govern themselves. This cannot be done without these Rights. The First Amendment essentially enshrines the ability of Americans to form the Committees of Correspondence and Public Safety, and their modern-day derivatives.

Similarly, the Second Amendment enshrines the right of the individual of self-defense, and of communities to raise police forces and militia, and so on. These carry with them the responsibility to use these powers and tools for personal and public good.

The Third Amendment, the little-used anti-Quartering right, implies that if we want a national defense above and beyond local militia, we need to pay for it and set aside dedicated barracks. Those are responsibilities as a nation.

And so on.

In the American system, our rights are not given to us at all -- we have them by default. Only breaches of them, that we've collectively agreed to as the tradeoff for workable government, are well defined, as clarified by the 9th and 10th. So when a "Right" is listed by name, it's done for an express purpose. The Framers didn't give us the First Amendment because they thought it was a good idea, or they were being nice to the citizens. They did it because they knew we would need it. All of the original Bill of Rights are things that were trampled by the British, and ultimately led to Revolution. They knew as a result of experiment that these freedoms were essential.

Why were they essential? Because without them, we cannot execute our responsibility to self-govern our people.

 

[Dinwar]

All of your responsibilities amount to acknowledging that rights are relative to the rights of others. Or, to put it another way, our responsibilities imposed on us by our rights consist of not violating the rights of others.

I fail to see any manner in which refusing to vote constitutes a violation of someone else's rights.

 

[IchabodPlain]

I know this can delve off into a different topic of rights and responsibilities. and I didn't thank you before on trying to keep the two issues separated. I will try to attempt to do so in the future as well.

Disagree with this, at least with respect to the American Constitution. Any right can be abused. It is our responsibility not to abuse those rights, and there are further responsibilities implicit in them.

The Right to Free Speech and associated Rights to Free Assembly, Freedom of Religion, and Freedom to Petition do imply responsibilities -- that responsibility is for Americans to communicate and govern themselves. This cannot be done without these Rights. The First Amendment essentially enshrines the ability of Americans to form the Committees of Correspondence and Public Safety, and their modern-day derivatives.

No. The first amendment does not say "you have the right to free speech and freedom of the press/assembly, provided you use them responsibly/do not abuse them." A definition such as this clearly leads to the loss of the right.

Similarly, the Second Amendment enshrines the right of the individual of self-defense, and of communities to raise police forces and militia, and so on. These carry with them the responsibility to use these powers and tools for personal and public good.

I can full well buy a gun and keep it under my bed for the rest of my life. In doing so, I am not using my right/responsibility for any personal or public good - in fact, other than ownership, I'm not using the right at all.

I cannot, however, shoot my mailman for no good reason. There are limits to the scope of the second amendment, as there are any other right. In this, there is the distinction between what is proscribed behavior for my right and limits to what I cannot do with my right.

The Third Amendment, the little-used anti-Quartering right, implies that if we want a national defense above and beyond local militia, we need to pay for it and set aside dedicated barracks. Those are responsibilities as a nation.

No, that is the logical conclusion of such a right, not any kind of responsibility.

And so on.

Indeed.

The only requirement I can see for voting (other than being of the appropriate age) is citizenship. Participation/contribution is incumbent upon being a citizen in a given society. So if you want to tie some sort of civil/military service to voting, you should require those things for citizenship.