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Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

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Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#171

Post by lotharbot »

debracleaver wrote: post #106
jimrandomh wrote: post #63

There's a very important reason to do this which no one has brought up. US elections have a lot of vote-suppression shenanigans; in some noteworthy cases (including the 2000 Presidential election), fraudulently removing voter registrations, understaffing and obstructing poll locations changed the outcome. This sort of thing becomes much more difficult to execute and much more difficult to get away with if there's an…

Jim, shenanigans is the word that comes to mind for me as well. I've yet to meet this mythical "apathetic American" that people talk about, but I've met tons of people who were prevented from voting by administrative incompetence (at best) and what appeared to be deliberate attempts to prevent citizens from casting ballots. Here's an fun example: 7 out of 9 of the states that were prohibited from changing their votin…

I've met plenty of people who don't vote for reasons of apathy. Especially in midterms.

I also have one friend who always casts a blank ballot, as a matter o principle.

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#172

Post by tehwebguy »

pjc50 wrote: post #109
debracleaver wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh sure. there are a wealth of studies out there. it's hard to say why any particular person doesn't vote, but there are some trends that show when voting is easier, more people vote. Colorado, Washington and Oregon all moved toward vote-by-mail systems, in which a ballot is automatically mailed to a voter's house, and saw an immediate increase in voter turnout. Honestly, I'm waited to see the outcome of Oregon's aut…

The UK increased postal voting, and found greatly increased fraud: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26520836 I'd be concerned that some of the increased turnout aren't real voters...

That article is just the opinion of Richard Mawrey QC.

Here is the Electoral Fraud Review report from the Electoral Commission in 2014. Mawrey seems to strongly disagree with the findings of the report.

http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file...

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#173

Post by JacobJans »

baron816 wrote: post #156

The biggest reason people in the US don't vote is because they don't have enough options so they never get to choose people they really care about. Plus, no individual vote matters. This all has to do with our winner-take-all elections. Countries with proportional representation have much higher voter turnout rates (often in the 80-90% range). That's because you get to vote for the person or party you want, and they'…

One of the worst lies perpetuated by the media is that the presidential election is the only one that really matters. There are so many elections that have a direct impact on your life that you can participate in – state, city, and county election. These are not generally very partisan. Sadly, local elections often don't have enough options simply because there aren't enough politicians standing for election.

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#174

Post by dragonwriter »

US voter turnout is low relative to many other modern democracies (much less compared to the ideal of 100% turnout) because the choices are poor because of the structure of the electoral system which supports only two viable parties at a time (which two has changed nationally twice in the history of the nation, and when things were more regional there were times when the two locally-viable parties included one of the national parties and one other, such as the Missouri Republican vs. Farmer-Labor period.) This is a fairly well-established effect of the electoral system, evidence through, among other things, comparative studies of modern democracies.

So, what is Vote.org's plan for dealing with this, which is the fundamental problem in keeping turnout low?

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#175

Post by afinlayson »

It's an easy problem to solve, just have to make incentives for politicians to get more people to vote. Oregon made it an opt out state, and made all votes be mail in ballots. Seems like an easy way to increase democracy.

You could also make it so any politician's terms relative to the populations voting for him.

If 50% of eligible voters vote for someone with 51% of the votes, they should only get 25.5% of the term.

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#176

Post by dragonwriter »

JacobJans wrote: post #173
baron816 wrote: post #156

The biggest reason people in the US don't vote is because they don't have enough options so they never get to choose people they really care about. Plus, no individual vote matters. This all has to do with our winner-take-all elections. Countries with proportional representation have much higher voter turnout rates (often in the 80-90% range). That's because you get to vote for the person or party you want, and they'…

One of the worst lies perpetuated by the media is that the presidential election is the only one that really matters. There are so many elections that have a direct impact on your life that you can participate in – state, city, and county election. These are not generally very partisan. Sadly, local elections often don't have enough options simply because there aren't enough politicians standing for election.

> One of the worst lies perpetuated by the media is that the presidential election is the only one that really matters.

The problems with the electoral system effect all offices which are elected by either plurality or majority/runoff, not just those for Presidential electors. This includes all members of Congress, most Governors and statewide elected officials, most state legislators, most mayors and other elected local executive officers, and the many city and county legislative officers (city council, county supervisors, etc.) that are elected in single-member districts.

There's some of the latter that are elected in vote for N and the top N win elections, which tend to provide slightly more choice, but still less choice (and less effective democratic representation of the choices made) than proportional election.

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#178

Post by ssmoot »

partiallypro wrote: post #165

Not everyone should vote. This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but democracy only works with informed citizens. If you have a bunch of people that are not informed on the issue voting you're probably going to have an outcome that is awful. If you think politicians are bad now, just wait until the populists have the uninformed voting in high numbers (hey, that sounds familiar this year.) To me, if you don't care…

> To me, if you don't care enough to take time to vote as it is, you probably don't know the issues, and you probably shouldn't vote.

Or maybe you live in a state where your vote doesn't matter because it's not a swing state.

Or maybe neither two-party candidate is on the right side of the issues you care most about.

Don't want to go to war? Do you pick Hillary or Trump? Who knows? Want to see Criminal Justice reform? Which candidate do you pick: The one that backed mandatory minimums helping shift the scales to the prosecution and making judges largely irrelevant for a majority of cases or the "not liberal" one? Want to see domestic spying scaled back and transparency introduced? Which candidate?

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#179

Post by notahacker »

burkaman wrote: post #103
cloudjacker wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read this article and I still don't see the "why". It says "because there are big problems people want changed", this doesn't answer why you want to increase voter turnout. For example, in America, the will of the people only influences change when it coincidentally is aligned with special interest will. Every other time special interests are more influential than the voting public. This would undermine a theory th…

Is it at all possible that the will of the people could influence change more often if more people were involved?

Possible. I'd argue the reverse is more likely, given that people relatively uninterested in voting are disproportionately less likely to be partial towards a particular candidate or cause or otherwise interested in changing the status quo.

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#180

Post by cloudjacker »

burkaman wrote: post #132
cloudjacker wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, a representative sample votes. A shift in the demographics of voters influences change.

Do you know of any evidence that a representative sample votes? Even if that's true, I think 100% voting is a worthwhile goal, because it removes any doubt. If voting is already perfectly representative, then nobody should have a problem with this initiative, because it would change nothing.

for evidence we could start here: http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/demographics

are we aligned on the understanding that representative sample means a reflection of the random population? As in not a representative proportion of all subsets, but just what you might see in a random place in the country.

I mentioned to you or in another subthread that a shift in the voter demographics can effect change.

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