32 replies to this topic

[Wolf O'Donnell]

I remember posting an article from NewScientist about how every single voting system (or at least, the major voting systems) is flawed in one way or another.

Why Democracy is Always Unfair.

One thing I fear is that if I spoil my vote, because I don't like any of the candidates, no one takes account of that. As far as I can tell, they don't count spoiled votes.

If we are to stick to democracy, the very least they can do is give us an abstain option.

And quite frankly, it's good that people who are too lazy to vote don't vote. If they're too lazy to walk to their nearest primary school (which is the usual case in England, at least) then they're probably too lazy to weigh up the pros and cons of each candidate and vote on the perceived merits of each candidate. If we allowed them to vote, we might as well abandon democracy altogether and go in for a demarchy.

Some people advocate demarchy, where everybody is eligible for government and you select for people through sortition i.e. lottery. Who gets into power is completely random. The advantage of course is that you are more likely to get someone who is representative of the populace in power. There are, obvious disadvantages, of course, which I'm sure you can all see.

Edited by Wolf O'Donnell, 01 September 2012 - 03:11 PM.

[Showsni]

Sort of loosely related: Pogo and I know this anarchist who views politics as a form of organized, sanctioned violence. He feels that it's wrong to force any tax, behaviour, etc. on anyone by creating a law, and he thinks that we should all stop supporting the system - i.e. quit voting. I do agree with the guy on a lot of other controversial issues, but I'm not sure how refusing to vote is supposed to change the political system. Seems to me that if all the reasonable people quit voting, that would just ensure that the fringe would gain control and fuck everything up even more.

He's kind of got a point; if you decide you don't want to receive any help from the state (roads, health, schools, police, etc.) and also don't want to contribute anything (paying taxes, ofllowing laws) what are you supposed to do? Leave the country, obviously; but I don't think there are any countries left that don't have some system of government in place. Move to Antartica? Or the middle of the ocean? Seems kind of unfair there's not anywhere for dedicated anarchists to live. But I don't suppose any countries will want to give up land to them, unless they can club together and buy some/win some in a war.

If we're searching for perfect systems of voting, we're probably not going to find any. I guess they all boil down to asking each person "Who do you want to rule you?" and most people aren;t going to get their first choice. Maybe they could set up a system whereby everyone who votes for a particular person is placed under the rule of that person, splitting the government as many ways as are needed to satisfy everyone and moving people so they can live together under their chosen ruler. Completely impractical, though.

[Veteran]

One thing I fear is that if I spoil my vote, because I don't like any of the candidates, no one takes account of that. As far as I can tell, they don't count spoiled votes.

They count voter turn-out. So if 50 out of 100 people turn up to vote but only 30 votes are counted, the news would report that 20 people rebelled and 50 were not represented.