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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
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.
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.
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.
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.