Democracy or something else.....?

Macmorris

themurt wrote:

No one can claim that, in Ireland anyway, we have anything like near total turn out whenever there's an election so until issues relating to voter apathy are addressed isn't it a pointless exercise trying to disenfranchise those who don't seem to care anyway?

That would be true if the only reason people didn't vote was because they didn't take an interest in political issues. In my experience, the main reason people don't bother voting is because they don't feel their vote counts. And they're right, it doesn't. I read once that there is more chance of being run over by a car on your way to cast a vote than there is of your vote making a difference to the outcome of an election.

The Corinthian

WHEELER4 wrote:

I do acknowledge that there are some shortcommings in aristocracy and in monarchy. If there are "some" in these forms of government, there are many more in democracy. Monarchy and aristocracy don't seek to kill their citizens as does democracy. Democracy always kills and it has done a great amount of killing the royalty and the aristocracy.

That’s a silly argument. Any forceful change of power will generally result in a purge of the previous regime, so the bloodshed of popular revolutions was as predictable as the bloodshed that followed the overthrow of one aristocracy by another.

Ultimately no system of government seeks to kill their citizens, but by action or inaction that is precisely what they can end up doing.

See, Monarchy and aristocracy presuppose the rest of the people, in order for democracy to work which democracy is always based on egalitarianism, it must kill those not equal.

You’re making way too many assumptions in that statement for it to be even vaguely logically correct.

No system of government is perfect because no human is perfect. All humans are damaged goods and so any government is damaged. A system of government will never perfect any situtation nor perfect humans. Rouseau thought that government corrupted human nature and thought that by returning man to a more "natural state" he would become perfect.

Actually he wrote that the natural state was brutal and to be avoided. And given his views on democracy, I doubt he was promoting monarchy at any point.

The French revolution and the British "commonwealth" were just the unleashing the beast within.

Unleashing the beast within? You do know how most aristocratic families won their titles? I know how mine won ours and it wasn’t terribly nice.

Sand

So, where did the idea that we are born with the right to vote (taking age, criminal record, etc. into account) come from?

As I understand it, the old Liberal parties favoured it on idealogical grounds, and the old Conservitives, like Bismark in Germany, embraced it because they calculated they could manipulate the expanded working class vote through nationalistic appeals. The conservitives are still with us, the old Liberal parties were gutted in the resulting enviroment, so the conservitives were correct imo.

themurt

Macmorris wrote:

In my experience, the main reason people don't bother voting is because they don't feel their vote counts. And they're right, it doesn't. I read once that there is more chance of being run over by a car on your way to cast a vote than there is of your vote making a difference to the outcome of an election.

So, you feel it would be better to increase the apparent value of the vote to the voter by decreasing the size of the electorate? turning the vote into something precious and making each vote count in a manner that is easy to digest? If that's the case, then voter apathy is simply a numbers game?

If the electorate feel that there vote doesn't count due to the numbers in an election result being too large to comprehend then why not (and this is an unworkable idea, just an example) increase the number of consituancies so that handfuls of votes effect the results? Do you think that would bring the voters out in their droves? Do you think the constant recounts such a system would spawn would benefit the governing of the state? Doubtful....

So would disenfranchising some of the population increase voter turn out? Would those who had passed the test turn out every time? How many people would have to loose the right to vote to make those with the vote feel that what they did counted? Would it be necessary to constantly make the tests harder or easier to ensure the correct number of people had the franchise? If that would be the case then the testing idea would stop being about who understood or had the capability to understand the issues of an election but would instead become an exercise in population control. If the tests weren't adjusted in such a way then, as educators adapted to the new system, more and more people would earn the right to vote and apathy would eventually return as people began to once again believe that their vote didn't matter.

lost_lad

What about to at least get turn out up.
Polls stayed open for a week. You could vote in any polling station.
The litterally as you are walking down the street, you see a polling station, think ooh i havn't voted yet. went in and voted. Easy.
Many people dont vote becuse they work too far away from there polling station and when they eventually get home are too tired to go out of there way to vote. Also people dont like queueing for there birth rite. Would alleviate that too.

It would take longer for the result to be counted but would give a better opportunity for a more "democratic" system. The excuse of i wasn't able too go wouldn't work.
Campainging would have to be stopped before hand of course to avoid an un-fair media advantage.

pork99

The Corinthian wrote:

That’s a silly argument. Any forceful change of power will generally result in a purge of the previous regime, so the bloodshed of popular revolutions was as predictable as the bloodshed that followed the overthrow of one aristocracy by another.

It is also predictable that having decapitated (sometimes literally) the previous regime, the next set of victims are those who actually believe in freedom, democracy and so forth.

This is because revolutions are ideal opportunities for the likes of Stalin and Robspierre sieze control. People who simply want absolute political power.