Mayor ,'Lies My Parents Told Me'
[NAFDA] Spike-centric discussion. Lusty, lewd (only occasionally crude), risque (and frisque), bawdy (Oh, lawdy!), flirty ('cuz we're purty), raunchy talk inside. Caveat lector.
{{{Cass}} I'm so sorry your relatives are assheads. Is there any way that they'd give the neicelet to you?
I like enthralled.
Owen is adorable. He looks so grown up!
We colored eggs on Saturday and then did the egg hunt Sunday morning with the neighbor kids. I forgot to take pictures on Sunday--having too much fun watching the babies run, but here are pics from the egg coloring. [link]
I totally read this as "Mr Rogers." Very different vibe there.Me, too.
Non-voters enjoy all of the benefits of a free and democratic society, while putting in none of the (really quite minimal) effort to contribute to it. The personal freedom to be a moocher isn't one I'm terribly invested in protecting.Not so. They are subject to taxes, the draft (when in force), and other governmental requirements. They are expected to obey the laws, and subject to the same consequences, when they don't. They have to live under the administrations of the people they defacto-choose (that is help to elect) by not voting.
If someone is totally uniformed, and just goes and picks any oldass name off a list so he's not fined, how is he contributing to the process in any meaningful way, except perhaps, by introducing an element of chaos?
I mean, I get what you and brenda are saying, but what kind of freedom is it to choose a leader, if you're making people do it. If they're not invested? Fine.
Deena, Aidan looks like a super scientist who's plotting to take over the world.
Your babies (including the grown one) are beautiful.
I mean, I get what you and brenda are saying, but what kind of freedom is it to choose a leader, if you're making people do it. If they're not invested? Fine.
I think eventually most people would get invested in the process. But it is sort of like "sit at the table voting booth until you've eaten your broccoli voted".
CUTEHEAD OWEN!
Damn that is a good lookin' kid ya got there. Two of em, actually!
I love the Owen pictures, Cashmere. Oh, he just the cutest.
I think it is an issue of personal freedom.
I don't. Or more precisely, I think the argument there is about as strong as the one for avoiding jury duty or paying taxes.
I don't understand how by-choice non-voters are excluded by anything except by self-exclusion.
It's a public good, in economic terms. "Every vote counts" is not true at an individual level. It's true in aggregate. It may well be that I hold a view that most people around me agree with, but who won't make that known because they don't believe their vote changes anything (which it doesn't, individually), or because they have more important things to deal with in their own lives (which they do, individually) or simply because they don't care as much.
This, of course, is the dynamic that allows special interests to hijack a system. Corporate welfare, for instance, is worth a great deal to a few people in a position to benefit from it, and who thus will push hard to get it. It costs the rest of the country more than it's worth to the people who get it, but because it's so spread out, the people disadvantaged by it don't care as much and don't push back to the same extent.
What is skewing it. I'm not arguing. I'm just not following, I guess.
Given that the categories against which it skews tend to be those who have the least political voice to begin with, I would say a feeling of disenfrachisement is a likely contributor to voter apathy. Of course, this is only exacerbated when the people also affected by the issues that most affect you don't believe that their votes count and don't contribute them. They don't just disenfranchise themselves.
There'll be other factors too, of course. In the US, where there's no standardisation of the electoral process, residents of poorer districts are likely to have a harder time registering a valid vote. That skews the cost-benefit analysis of trying to vote in the first place. Bad weather affects voter turnout too. Political interference is a possibility; the Jim Crow laws post-Civil War are an obvious example, but some of the Floridian issues of the 2000 election indicate it's not a dead issue.
In short, people who regard their vote in ideal terms, as democracy incarnate, will vote regardless. People who take a more pragmatic approach to things (i.e. most people) will have the probability of them voting, and thus of them - and people impacted by the same issues as them - being heard, affected by external factors.
The hundred dollar fine would pretty much result in all poor people voting.
No WAY we're going to push for that.
Political interference is a possibility; the Jim Crow laws post-Civil War are an obvious example, but some of the Floridian issues of the 2000 election indicate it's not a dead issue.
Or the NeoCon voter challenges in Washington State last year.
Political interference is a possibility; the Jim Crow laws post-Civil War are an obvious example, but some of the Floridian issues of the 2000 election indicate it's not a dead issue.
Or the NeoCon voter challenges in Washington State last year.
Or Ohio's Secretary of State investing in a voting machine company.
As some additional material, Wikipedia has stuff on both the Australian electoral system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_electoral_system) and compulsory voting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting), if anyone's interested.
Do you think that the American culture will support the low amount of declining voters and spoiled ballots if the vote were mandatory? Or would the culture support it in time? For how long would things get worse before they got better?
I'm not sure. I'm afraid I don't understand what you're saying there. What's declining, the number of voters or the number of non-voters? Re spoiled ballots, I myself am in favour of including a "No Preference" option on the ballot (which of course just formalises the de facto option of entering a spoiled ballot), but I don't know how anyone else would feel. For myself, I think it would be valuable information to be able to distinguish between people who genuinely don't have a preference and those who do but just felt the personal cost of registering it outweighed the benefit.
If I didn't want to vote now, fining me $100 is unlikely to get me to cast an informed vote, if I cast one at all and don't decide to just pay up for the privilege of not being bothered.
Under the Australian system, you would have the right to make that choice. The effect of compulsory voting on voter turnout suggests you're in a small minority, but I would certainly support your right to make that call.