Ricci (chapters 4 and 5) talks about the low voter turnout and about the general public apathy regarding elections. I have the following questions in my head as far as voting is concerned:
1. opportunity to speak vs what people say:
Is the result of elections less important than the fact that people can vote? Should we be more concerned in protecting the right to vote or somehow shape and worry about the result too? Or maybe both are equally important?
In my opinion, protecting the right to vote is more important than the actual results. You cannot have the latter without the former. True, people make stupid decisions sometimes and vote foolishly; yet, Ricci would argue that the people with "misguided" views are the most apathetic and less likely to take action.
2. Voter-turnout: If turnout is low, does this imply that people are satisfied with the current conditions/status quo and thus do not feel the pressure to change things? Or is low turnout a way of showing distrust in the system's efficacy and its ability to carry out change?
3. In page 109, Ricci quotes Francis Wilson: "ultimate particiaption is more important than constant participation". In other words it is okay if people do not vote each time, but only when they feel that their interests have not been met by the government. I wonder if this was the case with Obama, when people were really fed-up and turned out to vote in higher numbers. This was a sort of ultimate vote, even for those who did not necessarily cast a ballot in each previous election. DT maybe you can add to this, but I wonder if constant voting would be a remedy to prevent volatile election results.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1. I agree, in a society that prides itself on valuing "freedom", we can't always micro-manage everything. Giving people the freedom to vote is essential, but what they do with that right isn't something that can be changed by force.
ReplyDelete2. I would definitely say low voter turnout is a sign of distrust, or even hopelessness in the system. In general I feel that the most disadvantaged people in our society tend to believe that their votes will not really change anything, and only very rarely does a candidate (like Obama) come around that can convince them otherwise with slogans like "change we can believe in". Unofrtunately, the Obama Presidency is in many ways simply proving the cynics right. Personality-wise he is about as different from Bush as one could get, yet the noticeable differences in average people's lives are very small.
It's hard to say what we should make of the historically low turnout rates in this country. For some, some of the time anyway, it may not signify dissatisfaction with the system. Many argue the same about apathy generally, i.e., there are varieties of apathy, one of which is the "apathy of contentment." By the same token, upticks in participation can be due to deepening dissatisfaction with the party in power. That would be the most credible explanation for the uptick in turnout in the past two presidential elections: in both 2004 and 2008 there was a lot of animosity toward Bush and his policies; likewise in 2006. The shoe is now on the other foot and so the midterms in November will have higher turnout by anti-Obmama or pro-
ReplyDeleteRepublican voters. (That historically, the president's party loses seats in these midterms shows that irritation with the incumbent is usually a more powerful catalyst for voting than enthusiasm for the challenger or the incumbent. As David Brooks said in his column today, some see politics as the organization of hatreds. His point is that negative emotions are powerful, especially in the US system because producing policy that rewards a majority is terribly difficult. Obama is guilty, according to a piece on Politico earlier this week by John Harris, of misreading the results of the 2008 election as a positive endorsement of his candidacy and his ideas rather than a negative retrospective on Bush.
As for the constant voting vs. irregular voting, the Party that is best at producing constant voters benefits. That has been the Republican party historically in the US. But how things will shake out after 2010 is not at all clear now.