I don’t think that low-info voters shouldn’t vote. My concern has always been that, whilst we may be improving the mechanics and attracting voters that were previously apathetic, we might lose a lot of the current electorate.
Given the way things have worked out so far, how terrible would that actually be?
But, don’t forget that, with very few exceptions, our governments have been chosen by the minority of voters up until now, yet, despite that, people are motivated to go out and vote nevertheless.
Remember, no parties means no parachuted-in apparatchiks but only people who either come from here or who are able to persuade you that, even thought they don’t, they will actually represent your interests, not someone else’s — you aren’t stuck with Hobson’s choice as you are now.
So, I’m not sure that we’d lose too many people by saying to them “Look here, doing it this way would mean your vote actually mattered not only for once but every time.”
And, really, like I said … if people can’t be bothered to vote because it’s too much effort to investigate the candidates’ manifestos, how much of a loss is their vote? If they don’t investigate, they’re a low-info voter and, therefore, the cause of the problem in the first place … so, it’d be better if they didn’t even vote now, no?
That’s precisely the problem with party-free candidates that I’m yet to find a way around.
On what basis do you think that … when analysing the possible outcomes of such an approach or of independent candidates under the current arrangement?
I do think there is something elitist about it. Not in its mechanics, but that we, who have the time and inclination to sit around debating such abstract concepts, are asking the hoi-polloi to step out of their identity-confirming tribal comfort zone and “evolve” to be more politically engaged, like us.
They can call the Samaritans, if they like. I have to live in the World, just like them. I have as many rights as do they. I am entitled to say “I think there’s a better way of doing things.” Why shouldn’t I raise my voice just because someone else keeps silent? Nobody’s preventing them from opening their mouth, so why should they be accorded some moral high-ground because they’re not motivated to do so? Why don’t they do so? If it’s because they’re timid, fine, we can work on their self-esteem (starting with building a system that means their voice makes as much difference as anybody and everybody else’s). If it’s because they can’t be bothered then fuck ’em — they’re narcissists and sociopaths who don’t give a shit about anyone or anything than themselves anyway and are just lucky that I’m not actually suggesting you all vote for me so that I can have them rounded up and exterminated like the vermin they are.
It’s not elitist of us. Nobody’s stopping them from standing up and saying “Well, I think we should do it this way instead” but themselves. They’ve nobody else but themselves to blame.
Otherwise, anybody who has ever done anything for the betterment of the planet is an elitist and we should all turn back the clock, give up modern Medicine, clean water, hot water, etc and discourage anyone from even imagining that they should suggest a better way of doing things, the filthy elitists.
It feels a little bit the EU debate, where I thought I knew what was best for the country, and by that I meant the working classes more than anyone, but it wasn’t what they wanted. They didn’t care about the economics, or the mechanics of how things worked, they cared about their identity, their tribe.
It wasn’t the working classes who voted for Brexit, nor was it the elderly. It was the uneducated and the middles classes in the home counties and the shires. The ones who voted for Brexit were the ones who won’t be affected by it … the ones who can afford to send Tarquin on a world-tour, integrating into the community in an undiscovered backwater off the poverty-tourism trail he was following on his ‘woke’ trustafarian gap-year working-holiday soujourn to help less techno-socially evolved cultures than his own remain all that they might be, could be, ought to be, should be … and can afford to stand guarantor for Saskia when she takes on an unpaid internship in Brussels, so that the EU will accept that she won’t become a burden upon the State. In / Out, it makes no difference to them, so they could afford the luxury of playing at politics over abstracts … never mind not bothering to investigate the ramifications either way.
The idea that it was the working classes is put about by those who pretend that they are the champions of The People™ (good, solid, down-to-earth, hard-working families). It’s a filthy lie to disguise the fact that the people uttering it are the very ‘elite’ that, supposedly, the salt-of-the-earth ‘true English’ working classes voted to reject.
Ignore the few loudmouthed self-proclaimed champions of the The Working Class™ … the jingoists polluting the discourse with their fatuous paeans to sovereign tea … and consider how many people, fed up with being marginalised by the current system (albeit perhaps misguidedly choosing the wrong hill to revolt upon) took the opportunity to exercise a bit of control over their own lives for once, by voting against the government’s pro-EU stance — it wouldn’t have mattered what the issue was, they’d’ve voted against them, just to see the smug smirks wiped off Cameron’s and Osborne’s faces (and who could blame them?).
I still think we should have remained in the EU, and also that we should abolish political parties, but does, or even should, my opinion matter?
Why shouldn’t it?
You’re as entitled to your opinion as anyone else, aren’t you?
If you’re going to worry about the whether you’re humble enough, should you ever even vote at all?
Get over yourself, Uuriah … you’re as significant and potentially valuable a member of the global population as anyone else, but stop putting yourself down; you may be significant, but you’re no more so than any other individual — short of being Murdoch, Thatcher, Trump or Johnson, et al, it’s unlikely you’ll ever do anything so bad that you need worry whether you should raise your voice and proffer an opinion (least of all in the interest of improving the lot of others).
I guess, as the brexiteers knew, this is the long play, plant the seeds and slowly watch them grow.
I doubt the VIP brexiteers made a long-term play except insofar as they hoped that their long-term would be showered with more wealth and power as a result; the Britannia Unhinged lot and those with ill-stashed gains in the Caymans. — sociopaths don’t do long-term … all they care about is their own lifetime and often not even that much (they have poor impulse control and most of what they do is concerned with immediate-term payoff, not even medium-term gains).
The huddled masses who voted for it were either, as I said, brain-addled jingoists, the relatively well-off, or those who felt they had nothing to lose either way — and if anyone had any kind of long-term hopes re the outcome, it was that latter group, for whom it might (50/50) make a difference for the better, not the others.
Be difficult to get the press on-side though, but maybe we can ol’ Nige involved, put a man-in-the-pub face on it, win people over?
Heh … you’d feel as unclean as me, if we did that 😀
Besides … ol’ Fart-rage of Toad Hall is a wily bastard and I wouldn’t want to try and ride that tiger — it didn’t work for the German great-and-good who thought they could ride the Nazis …. and it didn’t work for the Tories who thought they could ride the UKIP tiger either (they got purged).
Celebrity culture and ‘influencers’ are definitely necessary, but I’m not lying down with Satan’s catamite.
