Philisophical political thread...

[Tom Servo]

I think in some ways the voters should bear the brunt. You don't get the power of a democracy without accepting the responsibility.

The biggest problem is the sheer number of people who don't bother to vote. Over 40% of eligible voters didn't bother to vote in the 2016 election.

Of course, compulsory voting doesn't fix the problem either. I seem to remember a discussion about how difficult it was to research everything on the ballot in a recent election, do we want people who haven't bothered to do the research voting?

On the other hand, there are people who don't vote not because of apathy, but disenfranchisement. There's a reason the phrase "if voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal" exists. You also can't then add a test to make sure someone's qualified to vote, because a) it'll inherently be biased towards whoever is creating said test and b) perpetuates a system where the less educated will get less say and therefore continue to be less educated, reinforcing an ad-hoc caste system.

So, yeah. Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other ones.

[Crazed_Insanity]

If it was truly intended for voters to bear responsibility, elections would not be held anonymously.

Voters are generally less educated/informed and more prone to react emotionally.
Further, we don't track who voted for what, unlike law makers at congress, so how can we really hold any voters responsible?

By placing most of the blames on voters is essentially brushing problems under the carpet.

Voter turn out also cannot really be blamed on the voters.

Why should voters eagerly show up to vote for the lesser of the 2 evils and things don't ever change anyway?

It's almost as if movie studio made a crappy movie and then blame the people for not showing up to watch the movie. It's an important educational movie and all should watch it!!! So what if it's boring and won't make much difference in your life anyway?

Voters just need to worry about how to best cast their own votes rather than worry about how others do with their votes.

It's also vitally important that we have higher criteria for people to put their names on the ballots. I think right now, convicted criminals can lose their rights to vote, but they could still run for public office in most cases! That's just not right.

If we can stop the lesser of the 2 evil game, a lot of problems could be solved.

Continue to the blame it on the voters, we'll just have these same recurring problem. Because only Jesus Christ is in the business of fixing people. A lot of people don't want to be fixed and even refuse to acknowledge they have problems.

[Tom Servo]

And here we have exhibit A on the disenfranchisement part.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Huh?

[Dicknose]

If it was truly intended for voters to bear responsibility, elections would not be held anonymously.

That was how they did elections in the US initially.
It was considered the best way to hold people accountable for their vote.
However “vote buying” was common. That doesn’t work if the voting is secret, how do you know the person you paid voted the way you wanted?
So it was a better trade off to have private voting without buying but lose the ability to know how people voted.

I don’t think the accountability is that big a deal in most votes, people are quite open about it.
It was here for a while, we had (have!) a very right party that is borderline racist. Polls would show little support then come election they would do much better than poles. People would vote for them but would admit they support them even to a pollster.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Yeah, Voters will eventually pay for the dickhead they voted in office anyway, so there's really little point in trying to hold voters responsible.

Conservatives saw thru the GOP BS, that's why they decided to give trump a chance. Next time around, they'll either revert back to the usual GOP BS, or vote in somebody even more horrible... whatever they do, yeah, we will all feel the brunt of the fuckupness, but we can't really hold them accountable by deporting them, right?

Only other options are deporting self or civil war.

Best option is to prevent future dickheads from appearing on ballots... or else democracy probably won't survive. Dickheads will inevitably become dicktators.

[dodint]

It was here for a while, we had (have!) a very right party that is borderline racist. Polls would show little support then come election they would do much better than poles. People would vote for them but would admit they support them even to a pollster.

The Bradley Effect, here.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Bradley effect certainly happened, but the Obama effect has proven that Americans can overcome racism too!

Unfortunately Obama didn't improve most Americans economic situations enough... sufficient hopes were dashed after 8 years, of course it's not entirely his fault, but disgruntled people will always blame it on the president... especially if they are already racists.

And now we have swung way past Bradley, pretty sure people can now proudly shoot from the hip and acknowledge that they're racists and will support Hitler if he can promise them better lives.

Again, when this happens, how can we hold racist disgruntled voters responsible for anything? Vote them off the island? Build a wall around them and let them stay inside? Slaughter them? Just fuck this nation and move else where?

There's really not much you can do to your fellow deplorable countrymen other than not baking a cake for you or kick you out of restaurants. Even those are stupid things to do.

The rich and the powerful in this nation will only end up richer and more powerful while we fight amongst ourselves.

Remember, Trump and Hillarys kids are actually friends.

[Tom Servo]

It's true. America was in no way doing better by the end of Obama's term than during the great recession when he started.

[Crazed_Insanity]

If you not really interested in having genuine discussions here Swervo, please just foque off.

I'm trying to branch away from you, I'd appreciate similar efforts to stay away from me.

Now, if you're genuinely wishing to have discussions here, I'm all ears.

Think about what you want... and then post or not post here accordingly please. I appreciate it.

Otherwise, don't get mad at me for Systemize and Christianize all over this forum!