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Voting Plus Lottery Equals Voter Turnout?
qmark_is_mysterious writes "Fortune magazine has a interesting article on how it could be possible to increase voter turnout to 100% by making your vote an entry to a national lottery. By offering a prizes of up to $10 million dollars it's hoped that many people who feel disenfranchised will be motivated to go vote and express their opinion. A group in Arizona is trying to get an initiative on the 2006 ballot to get this implemented in that state. Do you think offering cash prizes will make elections more popular and effective?"
If someone is not motivated to participate by civic duty, the country is better off without their participation. Why are we interesting in 100% voter participation in voting? We need 100% participation in concern and consideration about our country/state/city. Bribing someone to vote does not remove apathy, it highlights it.
If you think voter fraud is bad now, try something like this and it would be 100x worse.
Democracy doesn't just need more voters, it needs more informed voters. Offering a lottery may get more people to the booths but these people might not know any of the issues, don't pay attention to the news but want a free lottery ticket.
I don't mean to troll, but pose a serious question: do we really WANT to have "this kind" of people influence our elections? "This kind" being the kind of person who doesn't care enough about his/her freedom, rights, or ability to affect the course of our nation and collective destiny, but rather is only motiviated by the opportunity to get a "free lottery ticket"?!
It is CERTAINLY their right to vote, and I encourage and support that, and yes would even fight and die to defend that right; HOWEVER, I tremble to think of the havoc that would be wrought on our system of government if this type of selfish, self-absorbed, unthinking nit-wits were lured to the polls (at great expense to the tax-payers) in order to cast their selfish, self-absorbed, un-thought-out "opinions" in the form of a vote cast only to get a chance at "free" money.
Frankly, I don't see any widespread legitimate reason why ANY American who has the RIGHT to vote CAN'T vote; if this type of citizen is disenfranchised in any way, it is a SELF-EMPOSED disenfranchisement, and THAT's a right we need to support too - the right NOT to vote.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
All this will do is to motivate people who really do not care who is elected to go and just press buttons so they get their lottery ticket. 100% turn out means nothing if the people voting are just doing so without making any attempt at all towards an informed decision.
On the bright side of this, we could have the world's largest random number generator.
It might also increase the odds of a third candidate to be elected (by random).
Mid-Eastern Pennsylvania Gaming Convention
I just don't understand this push to drag people kicking and screaming to the polls. If you don't care enough to spend 5 minutes voting then who thinks you will spend any time trying to understand the issues.
If you are happy with the status quo, if you don't want to take the time to understand the issues, or if you simply don't care then STAY THE HECK OUT OF THE VOTING BOOTH! Let the votes of the concerned voters count more.
I frequently skip items on the ballot because I don't feel informed or it is an issue that does not affect me in any way (or sometimes there is only one choice so I don't feel compelled to waste my time checking the only box available).
Personally I think there should be more effort put into investigating and prosecuting voter fraud (multiple registrations/voting, registration/voting by non-citizens, etc.) but any efforts at cleaning up elections seem to be viewed as "discouraging participation".
It's so insane that in San Francisco there is a proposal to allow illegal aliens to vote in school board elections since their children are in the public schools. Yikes!
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
I was thinking a while back that non-voters are shirking their duty to the democracy they live in and had sort of the opposite idea. Give out an exemption receipt for the $100 Non-Vote tax. Don't vote, and you pay an extra $100 on your taxes at the year-end. Vote, and you're forgiven the tax. Sends a clear message to non-voters that they are a drain on society, but no fear because they're paying society back.
I'm all in favor of making voting fun and easy, but I have to stop short at the idea of bribing people to vote. A lottery would further cheapen an already cynicism-inducing process, and punish those who vote because they want a part in the decision by drowning their voices in a sea of people who are just too stupid to do math.
The solution, as some other fine poster said, isn't to get people who don't care to vote, but to get people to care more.
Final point: a lot of states have anti-gambling laws, and this idea would run afoul of them. Anyone in favor of states' rights should see the idea as an imposition on the agency of the states.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
And easily shown illegal...
It would require changes in the law to implement, obviously.
You're forcing me to "pay" something to get into the lottery. That's illegal in most states (that's why you can get free game pieces for the fast food games).
Every state I know of has exceptions for certain situtions, like the government run state lottery, or powerball, or chuch 50/50s, or fire department raffles, or whatever.
So I should be allowed to enter the lottery without voting and that kills the logic right there.
Absolutely. Anyone who shows up to the voting booth should be entered, even if he or she decides to cast a blank ballot.
Paying people for their votes won't make government any more responsive which is why people aren't voting to begin with.
People aren't voting because voting isn't something you do for yourself, it's something you do for your nation. Any single person isn't going to change the election, so it's irrational for any single person to vote. I don't like the idea of voting being mandatory, but I think this is a good incentive which will give us more of a rational reason to vote.
For the most part those who actually learn about the issues to make sound decisions (both dems and reps) are already going to vote. Otherwise you're missing the idea of an election and skewing the results with garbage data and thoughtless votes.
I'd rather base an election on 100 well informed voters than a million mouth-breathers who'd want to elect Dale Ernhardt Jr anyways.
Do what other countries do and make it a NATIONAL HOLIDAY. How do we expect the poor and disenfranchised to vote if they have to somehow get out of work to vote? How hard is that.
(I believe there are various patchwork laws that allow certain periods of time off, but it needs to be national, at least for national elections)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I'd much rather see a national voting holiday.
I don't want someone randomly pushing a button or punching a hole just to get a lottery ticket, but I do want everybody to have a decent chance to vote. A normal 9 to 5 workday plus traffic just doesn't leave much time left for voting, so you've got a big line in the morning or a big line in the evening. In a free country, election day is the most important day of the year. Why shouldn't it be a holiday?
That's a terrible idea. We have enough problems making sure voting fraud doesn't happen now, and adding thousands of convenience stores into the mix isn't going to help anything.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
First, all state lotteries should be outlawed. They are a terrible way to collect tax dollars, offering both the state, the media (advertising) and the lottery game creators the chance to become as rich as the winners themselves, while the majority of the burden is placed on people at or near the poverty level. Terrible terrible idea -- should all be abolished.
... especially because the government is picking up the tab its *NOT FREE*.
No doubt, someone will respond this would be a free lottery -- to that I say it would use existing lottery infrastructure, and the prize money has got to come from somewhere
Second, It would not encourage turnout that much, look at the number of people that actually play lottery in any state. It's not going to have much of an effect. Turnout is always greatest when important issues are on the ballot -- the lottery won't matter one way or the other.
Third, Why encourage 100% turnout? Many people vote their choice *BY NOT VOTING*. By not voting, you are saying that you're going to let other people who care about the issues decide it. There's nothing wrong with that in a free country. Why use an artificial chance drawing to coerce someone into voting if they wouldn't normally otherwise?
Just quit adding all this crap to the process. Quit adding to government, quit adding to my tax burden, and let me do as I would like to do.
My affinity for hyperbole knows no bounds
If people can't feel strongly enough about participating in democracy by going to a polling location in their neighborhood, how can we expect the concept to survive. What is next, bread and circuses?
This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
But on jury duty, they are obligated to listen to a (hopefully) in-depth debate on a single issue for many days. 40% of the voting public think that Iraq attacked us on 9/11, and that's why we're over there. Goodness.
If someone is too ignorant or apathetic to vote, they SHOULD NOT vote, because their vote has negative value.
It's a logical truism: democracy is rule by the people. The people make choices, who their leaders are, and such. In order to make a real choice, you must be educated to some degree about the options, and have a preference as to which option is best.
People who are neither ignorant nor apathetic do vote, in very large numbers, already. The solution to the problem is not increasing turnout by any means, but by doing it the right way: by education, and giving people a reason to care.
The latter would be fixed primarily by two things: improving the process of selecting our candidates, and reversing the course of centralizing the power that we have continued on in full force since the early 20th century and the beginning of progressivism. Give Congress back its power, give the states back their power. The more power your local officials have, the more you will see that your vote counts, and the more you will be likely to care about voting.
I think you need some history lessons. Discrimination on account of intelligence is just a wrong and illegal as discriminating on account of race, creed, or color.
Both the wise and fools need equal representation under our (the US) government.
First let me prefix all of this by saying that I do agree with parts of the Libertarian platform I do not think that it is a good solution as a whole.
First of all, we have to pay off our national debt before we can lower taxes to the level that you propose. I do not believe we should lower taxes at all until we have severely reduced our debt. This is because, once we are paying less in interest, we can afford to reduce taxes even lower.
Second of all, I'm not convinced that government spending can be reduced to the level that you propose. According to Table 3.2 on this site the cost of legislative functions alone was 2.8 billion in 2003. Even assuming that most of that cost is due to horrific extravagance, your goal is extremely ambitious.
There are also some functions of the government that I do not believe can be privatized. In my view, the goal of the government is to accomodate any problems that the market cannot solve on its own and I think this set of problems is larger than you think. The most important thing that needs to be done in order to insure that the market serves its participants is to do what we can to make sure that people know what they are buying. That is to say, we need things like the FDA and other such agencies. Perhaps the spending of these agencies can be reduced, but I would not want to live in a country where they do not exist.
The Libertarian solution of creating competing private regulatory bodies isn't feasible. If that were implimented, I would not only have to research every product I use, but also every regulatory company for that industry. Companies could also set up regulatory companies just for the sake of approving their products (perhaps using names remarkably similar to more trustworthy ones) and if the ruse were publically exposed, they can just create a new one. The public has a short memory for this sort of thing and in the worst cases the company can just change its name for a (somewhat) fresh start in the court of public opinion. What do you do if a trustworthy regulatory company comes under new management that is less scrupulous? How long will it take for people to find out that they can no longer be trusted?
Government spending should be reduced and I think this can be done by having the government only focus on simpler goals. We need to keep the government on a much shorter leash, but we should recognize that it has its uses beyond maintaining basic order.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
Your post seems to imply that you think your vote will be checked for correctness by some sort of official. Where do you live?
Here in Australia, where we do have mandatory voting, the concept of an anonymous ballot is still adhered to.
Put simply, this means that you get your name signed off the electoral roll on entry to a polling booth, get handed the ballot sheets, and then enter a private cubicle to complete the sheets.
The system is kinda flawed in that it is supposedly mandatory voting, but in reality is only compulsory attendance. I refuse to pick the lesser of two evils, and as such either protest vote (Greens, Dems, even One Nation once), or write something I think those counting the votes will find amusing.
I do believe that where a system of compulsory voting is instituted, that "None of the Above" should be an option (as mentioned by another poster).
For a long time I didn't vote.. Why? I had no idea what was going on. Politics didn't interest me in the slightest... I didn't know the difference between right and left... So, I didn't vote.. Mind you, I didn't complain either....
/SHOULD/ vote.. There are people that are quite ignorant and that's fine...
I think if you don't know what's going on - that's fine. Not everyone
What I think SHOULD happen is that on your voter registration card you should have a simple multiple choice test regarding the various platforms of the various parties... you fail the test you don't vote...
But somehow I don't see that coming into effect anytime soon.