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Six Degrees of Voting
An anonymous reader writes "Received a link to SixDegreesOfVoting.com that is a new take on the Registration drive concept. From the Manifesto: 'if we make sure everyone we know is voting, and they make sure everyone they know is voting, and so on, wouldn't everyone be voting?' Match it with a nice flash map showing linked signups, it looks pretty cool (albeit leaning solidly to the left right now)."
People who need to be prodded to the polls with a sharp stick aren't going to be well-enough informed to cast their votes meaningfully.
A lot more is at stake than the presidential election: all the house of representatives, a third of the senate, and lots of state and local elections.
When you force the ignorant into the polling places, they will most likely vote for every selection, even the ones they know nothing about. So you wind up with candidates getting votes because of their party affiliation or their cool-sounding names. That's the last thing we should be pushing for.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
Now I'm going to get this viral link forwarded to me by 8500 people...
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Jesus loves you, I think you suck
Is it my business whether or not my friends vote.
Like religion, it should be an individual decision and like religion, I find people who meddle in the affairs of others in these issues annoying.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
That is somewhat counter-intuitive:
When will we see a nationwide campaign encouraging people not to vote if they don't care? Or what about people who just don't have the time to do the homework? I know too many people who vote based purely on party or distant relationship than on merit.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
The importance of this election makes it necessary to share opinions in meaningful debate, and get others around you excited and educated.
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The site is a web of users that works on referrals at the user's discretion. Let's see how far it could go and if it will impact this election in a meaningful way. Never before has something like this been attempted in a political sense.
Use this link to sign up under the root of slashdot community:
http://www.sixdegreesofvoting.com/?ref=296&mac=1c
If I get everyone I know to register, and they get everyone they know to register, then eventually everyone will be registered. Getting everyone to vote is a totally different matter.
Cheers,
Craig
Corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Reading a few comments here I understand the feeling of distaste for uninformed voting but here are a couple notes (I'm one of the creators):
1. Of the people signed up, 65% have left some sort of comment. This means people who are signing up do feel a certain way and aren't signing just to signup.
2. Unlike rock the vote or those sorts of drives we don't actually DO anything or try to force anyone. We are instead a opinion site aimed at being as middle of the road as we can be. Our goal is to create as many informed and excited voters as possible.
3. The gimmicks on the site (yes I know they are gimmicks) like the flash map and user tree are aimed at making users come back and read more and say more. We hope when someone comes back and logs on they see something on the homepage or user comments that interests/angers/excites them.
4. Of the users who put themselves down as black (undecided) almost 70% ARE registered. This means that there is a good chance they will vote. That means that they need to be digesting as much information/opinion as possible in the upcoming weeks to make their own decision an informed one. Again, our site aims to help that.
I am personally all for telling people to stay home and not vote if they dont know the issues (and will move a comment to the front page if someone wants to say that on the site) but given the tendency for static voting (always along party lines) I think the more interest and dialog the better. You don't have to tell your friend to vote just tell him to take a look at the site and signup if its piques their interest.
I hope I never live to see that day.
And what makes you so qualified to judge how other people vote? So you know people who vote purely on party. Why isn't that on merit? What if I disagree with every stand in a party platform. Shouldn't I then vote for candidates of another party?
What makes someone so friggin' self righteous they think they can decide who should vote and who shouldn't?
Proding someone who they are voting for and why is meddling. Just saying, 'Hey, there's an election coming up. Are you registered?' is not meddling.
If you were out with a friend and spouse and starting needling them on their choice of birth control--that might be meddling. If your friend starting coughing up blood, saying, 'do you need a doctor?' is not meddling.
I am a little surprised someone who chose the name HotNeedleOfInquiry is worried about being meddlesome.
I'll get my R.A. from college to vote and she'll get her dad who wrote for 'Seinfeld' to vote and he'll get Wayne Knight to vote and he'll get Kevin Bacon to vote.
People who cannot name their own Senators or Representatives...
We harp on not having enough people voting but we ignore the bigger problem of having people vote who don't know the issues let alone the players.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Honestly, if you don't have the desire to vote, do everyone a favor and don't let your uneducated opinion be heard. More is not better. I would rather have one surgeon performing open heart surgery on me then 100 farms.
People are under the deluded impression that Democracy is just. It isn't. It is just more likely to be just then other forms of government. However, it is perfectly within a democracies ability for 51% of the population to put the other 49% into slavery. The very reason why this nation has a bill of rights is because the founding fathers recognized that Democracy is less then perfect.
Just because 51% of the people say something is right, does not make them right. It just means more people believe one thing over another. Pick your favorite philosopher or political figure. No matter how accepted that person might be right now, at one point they articulated an opinion which the vast majority disagreed with. That didn't make that person wrong, just in disagreement with the rest of the world.
To be perfectly honest, I -don't- want more people to vote. I want less people to vote. As it is now, too many stupid people vote. Too many people vote based upon who has the prettier words, looks the best, or just fills them with a warmer feeling. I don't care if it is the stupid southern house wife you just doesn't trust any liberal because, well, no one in her family ever has since the civil war, or if it is a stupid stoner college student who really has no fucking opinion of his own, but is pretty sure everyone else hates Bush and so he should too. I don't want these people to vote. There input into the system isn't helpful. It is just noise. When they vote, I don't feel any sense of pride that two uneducated idiots made their decision based upon something that has absolutely nothing to do with reality.
Voting is a mechanism to reach a consensus as to who should rule. When you rule, you have the authority to pass laws that will result in violence on the population. I don't care if you pass a law to stop gumball theft. You just authorized violence against your population. Laws don't work without the threat of someone taking either your property or you freedom and sending you to jail.
So, when the decision is coming around as to who gets this power, take it fucking seriously. Don't tell idiots to add their input. If they don't want to vote, good, don't encourage them. The fewer idiots that vote, the more that my vote counts, and the more that non-idiots votes count.
I propose a different solution. Tell your friends not to vote. If they are stupid enough to do as you say, then you are doing the world a favor by keeping them from voting.
Are the designers so lame that they can't even name the 50-nifty-united states?
No aloha for me I guess :(
You mean like how republicans are for smaller government and less meddling and dems are for bigger government and more meddling? How republicans are strong on security? Like the way shrub took us from a budget surplus into a deep-ass debt? The way he lied to the nation about the reason for draggin us into a war that has made the world a much more violent place? The way clinton kept the fed cranking dollars until it made the japanese bleed money, thereby reducing our foreign debt? The way we enjoyed more prosperity under democratic presidents for the last two decades than under any meddling republicans? The way reagan made it an almost holy crusade to drive "enforcement" into people's bedrooms? The way the present administration uses religion to tie the hands of science and commerce?
Those party lines?
Looks to me more like a giant ball of rubber bands.
I hope next time you'll think twice before submitting a site driven by a pointless flash app to /. Would it really have been so fucking hard to offer a box that says "what state are you in?"
...is wicked cool. Interesting that the clusters are around Seattle, L. A., Chicago, the Twin Cities, NYC, Boston, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, and Raleigh, NC.
Love the Third Amendment?
It is a pyramid scheme! They never work, and are usually designed by greedy cold-blooded individuals to cheat idiots out of their hardearned money.
Even if this one seems to lack step 2(=??), DONT FALL IT!
Ok, the topic has been mentioned bevore, but let me rephrase it a bit:
Why should I be interested in getting people to vote, regardeless of what they vote?
If I convince people to vote, who share my political opinion, then the benefit is obvious.
If I convince people to vote, who would vote for another candidate or party, then I act contrary to my political intentions. The election result I want is less likely to happen as it would be otherwise.
If I convince people to vote, that have no predetermined opinion and do not care about any candidate or party enough to vote on their own, then their vote will be pretty much random.
If there are more than two parties or candidates (and that is the case even in the US system) then they will most likely not vote the same as I will. So why should I convince them to vote?
It would only make sense if I convinced them to vote for MY candidate.
It is probably better for the system as a whole, if more people vote, because this way it an claim to stand for all these people, and should ideally reflect the opinion of more people.
But convincing other people to vote seems contrary to my personal and selfish interest.
What is the standard? How informed is informed enough? When is an opinion enough of an opinion? So voting based on the last yard sign I saw isn't enough. Is listening to talk radio? Reading one newspaper a day? Reading slashdot?
I respond to every time someone presumes to have some standard on who should vote and who is better off staying home. None of the big shots who presume to tell other people they shouldn't vote ever steps up with some specifics.
How do you decide my vote is only noise? When is my opinion enough?
What is this thing called 'everyone we know'?
Call me an Asshat but I like the fact that many people do not vote. In my mind, the only thing worse than people not voting, is uniformed people voting. I like the fact that you have to put forth at least a little effort to vote... at least then I know people have convictions about what they are voting about.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Think of each person you know.
OK.
Now, do you want this person to vote?
If you do not feel sufficiently informed to vote, then please do not vote. We already have far too many people who mistakenly believe they are sufficiently informed, and vote.
Thinking you are sufficiently informed to vote when you are not, and voting, is remarkably similar to driving while intoxicated. And, I suggest, should carry similar penalties.
I'd call it "six degrees of apathy and anarchism".
Except, I can't be bothered, and you can't make me.
What if all your friends are non-voting felons and/or illegal immigrants?