Friday, September 12, 2008

Get out and vote!

And while I'm at it, what's with the whole, "get out and vote" thing?

If people are so apathetic that they weren't going to vote, then they're clearly not interested enough to do any real research into the options available. This means they'll either select a candidate because they've always voted that way, because of the lies they've most recently heard on a biased media, or simply at random. In short, they're not going to be making an actual informed choice, after sober reflection on the issues of the day and the qualities of the various candidates.

Of course, the effect of large numbers of such uninformed voters is to swamp the ballto box, effectively drowing out the votes of those people who have gone to the effort of informing themselves, and so are actually in a position to be making a sane and rational choice.

Frankly, if there were any way to actually enforce it fairly, I would suggest that a minimum requirement for voting should be that one would be required to articulate just why you were voting for your candidate of choice.

Alternately, they should just appoint public representatives randomly. Either that, or just go to a true plutocrat scheme, where public positions go to the highest bidder - to a large extent campaign finance means things are going that way anyway, so why not cut out the middle man, and instead divert the wasted funds into the public coffers, where they might actually do some good?

And in case you're wondering, no, I'm not entirely serious.

1 comment:

Chris M said...

Well Hello There.

Long time no comment.

Still been reading though. Hope you had a good time in Portugal. I look forward to hearing about it.

Whilst here, can I shamelessly plug my new blog?

http://scotlandisrandom.blogspot.com/

It's a different take on where i went before. Let's see how I get on.