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Did You VoteOrNot.org?
WhiskerBiscuit writes "The boys at Am I Hot or Not have started a sweepstakes to encourage people to register to vote. According to this blogger's analysis, the contest should encourage disempowered people to register (subject to the constraint that poor people don't have computers). The organizers have cleverly split the prize between a lucky winner and whoever happens to have referred them, providing a selection advantage for viral dispersal of the meme."
We ran a sweepstakes at tech-recipes.com not too long ago. The prizes were gift certificates to Amazon, t-shirts, etc. I was amazed how much traffic it brought in.
These sweepstakes sites must just have tons and tons of traffic because they turfed a lot our way. If you promoting a new site, I suggest it highly.
The problem with viral campaigns like VoteOrNot is that it is too easy to have multiple on-line personalities. In these days, nobody has one email account... it's easy for one person to be a ton of people online. That's the problem the company will have.
The problem the rest of us will have is these techniques will likely flood every forum in the world with referrals... much like the free iPod, LCD, hummer, hooker, etc. campaigns have.
I've got "politics" selected as one not to put on "my homepage", I'm logged in, and yet here this story is.
Anyone else seeing this?
The Army reading list
Not long ago, we had a federal election in Canada, and this was a focus of some of the candidates, especially getting younger voters out. However, the discussion centered around voting and spoiling your ballot. I'm of the opinion that it is better to show up and spoil your ballot than not vote at all. I don't always vote for someone because often, its a case of "lesser of the evils" and I don't want to support any of them. However, I believe that spoiling my ballot may show the politicians that people are not happy with the choices available to them.
ND is the only state that does not have voter registration.
...has come out of the several vehement campaigns to get Bush out of office: Lots of pushes to get people to register and vote. The average voter turnout in the USA is abysmal, so here's hoping some of these efforts succeed.
Viral distribution, eh? I wonder how long it'll be before one of the recent e-mail worms is rewritten to send out referral links to this thing.
In North Carolina the Jury Duty list is gotten from the list of registered automobile owners.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Kinda sums up my beliefs
no god is good
Well, it's a sad commentary on our society when we have to offer people money just to register to vote. Why aren't we all registered automatically when we turn 18? Whether you vote or not is up to you, but at least the excuse of not being registered would be gone.
In Greece the voting is mandatory. The one who doesn't fulfill her social obligation to be responsible is fined. Greece is the oldest democracy.
Personally I think if you have not voted in the past 3-4 elections you should begin to lose your rights as a citizen of the United States. The Constitution is based largely on the "Social Contract" I think that if one party (The voter) is not fulfilling their duties in the contract, the other party (the govt) should be exempt. Essentially what I am saying is that if you haven't voted in the last 12 years you should have your welfare cut off your fire/police coverage taken away and you should be sent to another country where the government no longer protects your borders. Hell I don't think you should even be required to pay taxes. If you don't vote, you should be banished from this country.
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
I've always thought registering to vote is silly. In order for a democracy to work, you need as many as possible to vote, so requiring them to register first is inconvenient (and we all want convenience).
Here in Denmark, every person over 18 is sent a card and a place/time to vote. No registration. The result is that 80+% actually vote...
Yeah ok, so we are a small (5.3 million) country so it's easier to manage here. Still makes it a much better way.
I've put my name on the ballot three times already. Even just being the 3rd option in the general election without doing anything else is challenging people to stop and consider if they really want another Republican or Democrat in office. So far, I've managed 3.5% each time, though I'm hoping for a better showing this year. (I actually spent some money on signs!)
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
Thanks for trying though.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
ROFL until I drop a WTF BOMB on U! OMG!
Or if you don't think voting matters at all, you can Fuck the Vote.
Everywhere I have ever lived has what is called an "absentee ballot". You can register to vote by mail, permanently. I voted a couple weeks ago for the primary election which is next week.
I'd start in with some vague ramblings about how apathetic people tend to vote for the incumbents just because they've heard the name, and maybe the people pushing for greater voter participation just want to keep things the way they are...
... they're young ... probably single ... possibly more educated, since they use computers? Not sure about that one. In any case, off the top of my head, I'm thinking they vote Democratic. I know for a fact that young and single skews that way.
Quite the opposite, actually. No tinfoil necessary. You're right that GOTV campaigns are never really nonpartisan -- whichever way the demographic being targeted tends to vote, that's the side the organizers are supporting.
As for the audience for HotOrNot, let's see
If my guess about the demographic is right, and the organizers aren't Democrats, then they're fools.
Incidentally, I'd question the idea that people who don't vote aren't informed. I think it's just as likely that they have opinions about politics as useful as ours, but don't see any particular reward or impact from voting. Offering some additional reward in that case makes a lot of sense. I'm sure there are also some who are just uninformed, but I wouldn't be so quick to write off the mass of non-voters.
I don't agree with the sentiment Carlin expresses about voting here at all (and I would suspect even he would argue differently today), but, as others point out, the Night of Long Knives took place two years after Hitler was elected in 1932. He was popular and he was elected in an election. "Full, free, democratic" may be an exaggeration, but one can say the same about U.S. elections. There's no question that Hitler's government was corrupt and evil, but it was a popular government, at least at first, and in fact there is evidence that Hitler's rule was even popular in some of the countries the Nazis invaded as well. Carlin's overall point -- that the popularity of a leader is no guarantee that he or she will be beneficial to society -- is quite reasonable, and Hitler is a good example of that.
I think you need to widen your political outlook. The political spectrum isn't simply composed of Fascists, Anarchists and Good, Honest, True Americans.
Just because someone wants to tighten voting rules and regulations doesn't make them a fascist. At the same time, opposing those rules doesn't make someone an anarchist. An anarchist would be pretty offended that you would characterize them as someone who believes in voting for a government under a minimal set of rules. An anarchist doesn't believe that one person should ever have authority over another person -- an outlook that doesn't mesh very well with voting.
With no rules about who can vote, when they can vote, and how often they can vote, voting becomes completely meaningless. But that isn't the same thing as anarchy.
On the other hand, if you take voting restrictions to extremes you will end up with meaningless votes. No question there. However, there are a number of political systems which may or may not have restricted elections. The word that best suits a system where the government has control over its citizens' everyday lives is authoritarianism, or at the extreme totalitarianism.
Really this discussion is all about the right number of restrictions on votes in a democratic system. I guess the answer to that depends on what the desired outcome of the voting is.
In a totalitarian regime, the purpose of voting is to make the government seem legitimate. In an authoritarian one, it may be that, or it may be to make the people feel as if they have some say in how things go. The question is, what's the purpose of an election in a democratic republic. Is the purpose to express the will of the voters, and have them choose the person they want to represent them, or is it to have the public choose the person who is best qualified to represent them? Those two options may seem like they're the same thing, but they're not.
In the first case, if the people choose to elect a mass murdering psychopath, the system is working perfectly -- as long as their votes were accurately counted. If the goal is to choose a person who is qualified, then the choice of a psychopath would be a failure.
So the question is, what's the goal of the US democracy? Is it to choose qualified leaders who will help the country, or is it simply to allow the public to choose anybody they wish, whether that choice is self-destructive or not? If you believe that the country should be allowed to "shoot itself in the foot" if it wants to, then any restrictions on voting would be bad. On the other hand, if you think the goal is to choose leaders who will make the country a better place, then you should consider what restrictions would encourage the choice of good, responsible leaders.
People who believe that the act of voting is the important part should be ready to defend the right of the completely insane, or the severely mentally retarded to vote. People who believe that the important part is choosing a good leader should be willing to defend restrictions on who is allowed to vote.
Neither of these camps is "fascist" or "anarchist", they're just different varieties of democrat.
If you want to hear sad news, get ready. At that start of high school Government, everyone had to take the immigration exam as a test of what we already knew. You need to score 90 or above out of 100 to become an American citizen, right?
7 of the 30-some people in my class passed that criteria.
That was pathetic. Especially since the questions practically answered themselves:
N ) Which of the following is the residence of the President:
N+1) The White House is the official home of who?
Or were asked repeatedly:
8) How many states are there in the Union?
100) How many states are there in the Union?
One of the ones most people missed was probably:
X) How many years can a president hold office?
A) 2
B) 4
C) 2 terms of 4 years
D) 10
And you wonder why politicians can get away with the bullshit they do...