MicroWavePew: Even amid high turnout, less than 40% of Americans voted in all three most recent national elections
IllogicalbitConsidering the state of the US, it’s really amazing more people don’t vote.
Really is frustrating with the amount of apathy going around, it only hurts ourselves
effingjoeIt might not be apathy; it could be the fact that for presidential elections, a vast amount of votes simply don't matter, and that fact bleeds into other elections, where their votes would matter.
What I mean when I say that the votes don't matter is that if a person is right-leaning in a solid blue state or vice versa, they can be reasonably sure that their vote is meaningless, because we let land masses vote for president, instead of people. Of course, this doesn't apply for local elections, but I think it's pretty plausible that this depresses turnout in them, anyway.
There should be a lot more engagement for an updated representative system. Nudge nudge from Europe. I recommend representative voting.
I recommend representative voting.
Do you mind elaborating on this? Do you mean Proportional Representation?
Yes, that’s the accurate name! I’m not sure I would call FPTP representative given how alternative votes are lost. Like if I’m a socdem in a red district my vote is void, since the FPTP only have one seat. In a proportional system there are bigger districts with more seats so that lesser groups can get their votes distributed onto a seat.
Like instead of NY State being 102 Dem & 48 GOP, it would be 70 Dem, 10 Socdem, 10 Greens, 20 GOP, 10 Trump, 10 Libertarian etc.
Like instead of NY State being 102 Dem & 48 GOP, it would be 70 Dem, 10 Socdem, 10 Greens, 20 GOP, 10 Trump, 10 Libertarian etc.
Isn’t the problem that there’s only two options? Here in Norway we have 10 different parties that are all quite popular. To me having only two options seems only marginally better than 1.
Yes. They have FPTP elections everywhere from top to bottom. Even state houses and senates are divided in blue and red because of this, WTF.
They could really do with an electoral system update.
Yes, but the problem is deeper than that because one party is demonstrably worse than the other. Dems are still too conservative, Republicans are literally tearing the country apart.
TechyDadI always use this analogy when people say "but the Democrats aren’t giving me everything I want:
You’re on 8th Street and want to get to 1st Street. In front of you are two cabs. The Democrat cab will only take you to 3rd Street. Close, but not really your destination. The Republican cab will take you to 16th Street before locking you in the cab and setting it on fire with you inside.
By the way, not choosing in this analogy isn’t an option. If you don’t choose (don’t vote), then a cab is chosen for you.
So is the Democratic cab perfect? Of course not. However, it’s a lot easier to recover from being dropped off at 3rd Street than it is being set on fire all the way over on 16th Street.
CheemsWell the problem is we don’t have ranked choice voting in most all places. So if you’re not voting for red or blue you are kinda wasting your vote.
That’s what happens when you have a presidential election system like the electoral college instead of a popular vote.
Liberal voter in Arkansas? Your vote doesn’t matter. Conservative voter in California? Your vote doesn’t matter.
It’s just the sad reality of a winner-take-all system that places more importance on the geographical size of a state rather than individual voters.
Which means if everyone who didn’t vote instead voted for SpongeBob, he would have handily taken the election
In other words, third party candidates could win, ending the dictatorship of the winner that’s the automatic result in a democracy with only two options (or a stalemate where nothing gets done if two government bodies are controlled by opposing parties.)
YoBuckStopsHereIn many states it is near impossible to vote unless you are unemployed or retired due to long lines, terrible hours, and voting locations. It makes me happy to live in a mail-in ballot state where I get my ballot weeks before election day, I have plenty of time to research everyone on the ballot (including judges) and make the best choice available. That’s Colorado for you, but we are not alone in that.
PA mail-in ballot represent!
And that’s a big reason why Republicans are criticizing mail in ballots. If it became that easy to vote, then many more people would vote and they would have a harder time winning elections.
So Republicans will still claim mail in ballots are full of fraud despite there being no evidence of any voter fraud on a significant scale. (Definitely nothing that would sway a federal or state level election. Likely not even enough to sway a local election.)
If the elections were on a weekend, like Saturday or Sunday then I turn out would be greater. But the puritans evangelists say that Sunday is for their imaginary little man living in the skies 🙄
Voting is irrelevant now. It can’t stop what’s happening. Not to say you shouldn’t vote, if you’re informed. But the population is not civically educated, by design. And they’re not educating themselves, that’s the role of the government, which is captured. So the solution is… wait. Wait for the fascism, the war, the collapse. Bernie was proof that reform is impossible.
Hopeless take my dude. I know it feels like we’re on a train careening towards a cliff, but don’t forget that there are lawyers, judges, and even a small subset of politicians that are still fighting the good fight, and they need to know that we’re still behind them.
They may be in a minority, but I think as more and more people wake up, look around, and get involved politically on the local and state levels, we can still turn this ship around. We have access to more information right at our fingertips than we ever have in the past. It’s important for us to strike down fascist and extremist viewpoints, shout them down, and ensure that the younger generations see more level headed approaches.
Never stop fighting.
Agreed! I won’t if you won’t my dude!
I get out and vote no matter how inconvenient it is, for you guys. Because I believe and I want others to know that I believe too.
CylusthevirusOk doomer.
I wish I weren’t.
NateCouldn’t vote in the last primary because I was registered as an independent. Not making that mistake again
Lauren Boebert, the hated representative from Colorado won reelection by just a few hundred votes. This in a state that has mail-in ballots.
A few hundred more people had to vote and we never would have heard from that nutcase again, and yet people couldn’t be motivated enough to do it. They wouldn’t even have had to drive anywhere to do it. Literally a few seconds of their time and she would have been gone. Nope. People were just too goddamn lazy to do it. And yet those same people would be the first to complain about her winning.
The vast majority of our problems in the US are homegrown and are a result of apathy and laziness. We live in a participatory democracy and that system only works when people actually participate in the process.
99% of people have no idea who she is and have never heard her speak. People on lemmy (and reddit) do not appreciate how small their echo chamber is. These places do not represent mainstream USA. Most Americans do not give a shit about any of this. As long as they have their starbucks and ubereats and netflix in their NYC/LA/SF apartment. It’s fucking sad.
I do agree with this - I think it is a mix of apathy, laziness and ignorance. These people see a Democrat in the White House and then complain why the Dems don;t solve all their problems. We don’t live in a dictatorship. These people don’t understand that the President can’t just decree that something gets done. We need a buy-in from Congress to fund things and within Congress, we will always need to have some level of cooperation between the parties to get stuff done. That’s where twats like Boebert are so dangerous because she, along with most Republicans, will stop at nothing to halt any Democratic agenda from progressing. But average Joes don’t understand that and our useless mass media doesn’t really report on it.
PavidusI don’t think it had to do with laziness in most cases. It’s simply become a “damned if I do, damned if I don’t” situation. Voter apathy is huge.
小黑。“Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich – that is the democracy of capitalist society.”
“Democracy is not identical with the subordination of the minority to the majority. Democracy is a state which recognizes the subordination of the minority to the majority, i.e., an organization for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other, by one section of the population against another”
“Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that “they cannot be bothered with democracy”, “cannot be bothered with politics”; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.”
Curious CanidI really don’t understand how the extreme emotions involved with politics in our society can result in apparent apathy. Their are conservatives who are willing to kill people over their political differences, but they still don’t vote. Progressives get angry about hate-filled legislation and our steady loss of civil rights but won’t spend a few hours to vote the people doing it out of office.
Most races are now decided by tiny percentages. Either party has the potential to suddenly take over the government by an overwhelming majority. Convincing less than a tenth of the people who don’t vote to show up would do it!
Is saving the country from chaos really not worth a few hours?
Remember that Republicans have also deliberately done their best to make it much more difficult to vote for a lot of people, as well as opposed any measures which would make it easier to vote.
Standing in line for 11 hours on a workday without access to water would deter most, and that works as designed.