Citizenship and voting.
2004-Mar-05, Friday 17:03![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thorfinn
Apropos of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
strepsil's post regarding being forced to join the electoral roll, I figured I'd post my opinions regarding Citizenship, what I think it means, and why, in a democracy, it's crucial for a Citizen to get out there and vote correctly, rather than spoiling their vote or not voting at all.
"Citizen" and "State" are intertwined concepts. A Citizen is a member of a State and a State is composed of the sum of and the interaction between its Citizens. They aren't separable concepts. You can't have a Citizen without a State for that Citizen to belong to and you can't have a State with no Citizens that go to make up that State. In a representative democracy, the basic concept is that Citizens are formed into groups, who then elect representatives of those groups, and those representatives are responsible for the process of government and lawmaking. Group formation, houses of parliament, the form and nature of parliament vs executive, etc, are details which vary between representative democracies. You should go find out about the details for your locality, because they matter, but they're not the key thing I'm here to talk about in this post.
The key thing is that as a Citizen of a democratic State, your chance to influence politics comes when you get to vote on something. Whether that vote is in a referendum, a local election, a regional election, a federal election, or some other time, that vote is the only chance that you get to express your view directly. There are plenty of ways to express it indirectly, for example, by writing letters to your representatives, influencing the media, etc, etc, but they are just that, indirect.
Now, let's jump back to the theoretical State entity. The point of a State is to have a particular form and methodology, and the aim of a State is, theoretically, to ensure that its Citizens are cared for as best as possible. Different States, obviously, do that differently, and strike different balances, and succeed or fail in different ways, but ultimately, that is the responsibility and purpose of the State as an entity. In a democratic state, the State is informed directly about the wishes of its Citizens by the votes of those Citizens, whenever a vote comes up.
Over to Citizens. As a Citizen, you're theoretically being looked after by the State. If you wish to express views about how that State is run, it is your responsibility to get out there and inform the State of your views. In a democracy, as already said above, but it bears repeating, the only time you get to express that view directly is when you cast a vote. That makes it crucial that you actually get out there and do so. If your genuine informed opinion is, "meh, these outcomes are all the same", then okay, spoil your vote, or don't vote. Bear in mind, though, that not voting is your active choice, and it is a choice that means that you are specifically accepting the consequences of the vote, whatever the consequences be.
In a democracy, because you can vote, it is not valid to say, "Well, I didn't vote, so Little Johnny/The Shrub isn't my fault." That's a completely bogus statement. In fact, quite the opposite is true. By not voting, you have expressly accepted the Will Of The Voters As Expressed By The Results Of The Vote, and if that is to put in Little Johnny or The Shrub (leaving aside questions of electoral fraud), then that's what you voted for by not voting. Only if you voted against, do you have even a skerrick of credibility, if the State goes and does something you don't like. You're still responsible for it, since a Citizen is always a part of the State, and thus is always partially responsible for anything the State does... But if you didn't express your will when you had the chance, then you don't even have a partial quitclaim on that responsibility.
If you think "I'm in a safe Blah Party seat, my vote doesn't count", that's utterly wrong. Even in a "safe" seat, the margins count, because they indicate to the party in question whether their political base is happy or not. Also, particularly hated politicians have lost elections in supposedly "safe" seats before, resulting in them being unable to be part of the government. You can make that happen. It happens more often in by-elections than general elections, but it has happened in both.
In Australia, because we have preferential voting, go out and vote against those you don't like, by numbering the ballot in reverse. Give your most hated party or politician the highest number available, and work downwards from most hated to least hated. A preferential voting system is designed to keep out the most hated options, rather than keep in the most liked options, so vote that way consciously.
The U.S. is different. You do not have preferential voting. A vote for someone who doesn't even have a chance is basically a wasted vote and you might as well not have voted at all. So, think carefully. If there are only two clear front runners nearing vote time, choose between those two, don't waste your vote on an also-ran. (Somebody correct me if this paragraph is wrong.) EDIT (corrections based on lederhosen and blarglefiend's comments): Thus, you have to think a bit differently. You can vote for someone who isn't already a front-runner, which means sacrificing your vote this time round. The idea with doing so is to exert a longer term influence, either by making your candidate look like a decent chance for next time or by dragging one of the front-runners in the direction of who you voted for. The other option is to vote short-term for a specific candidate, if you feel there is a difference between the front runners that matters to you more than exerting a longer term influence towards a minority runner. Or, of course, if you genuinely prefer a front runner, then vote for them.
Anyway, what all this is really saying is, "Inform yourself, get out there and actually vote." It's the only chance you get to exercise your political will directly, and if you don't use it, you cannot disavow responsibility for the results. As a Citizen of Australia, I will be exercising my political will at every chance I get, and I exhort you, if you are a Citizen of this or any other democratic State, to go out and exercise your political will at every chance you get, too.
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Re: Afterthought
Date: 2004-03-06 03:27 (UTC)Can you elaborate on that argument? IIRC there are several examples in Europe to show that minor green parties can grow into a significant political force. What makes it impossible for the US Greens to follow the same course?
I'm not sure that you're not putting the cart before the horse here. When you're a fringe party, you don't compromise because there's nothing to be gained from doing so. You probably get a lot of your votes from people who feel strongly about one particular issue.
Compromising on that issue risks losing your hard-core supporters, and there's not much to be gained from doing so - after all, you're still not going to win anything in the next election. (And, let's be blunt, you can afford to make all the promises you want, knowing you're never going to be called upon to keep them.) Here, not compromising doesn't say much about your ability to do so - it's merely a recognition that there's nothing to be gained.
But when the party's support base grows, compromising becomes more useful. As you move away from being a single-issue party (as the Australian Greens are currently doing), you have more room to compromise without wiping out your support base - and if you're big enough, compromising might actually get you something tangible.
Granted, but listen: Bush is not a problem because he is Bush. He's a problem because the extremist factions who had previously marginalized themselves have taken hold of a disproportionate amount of power within the Republican Party: they run the show.
You're talking as if the Republicans weren't that bad until 2000, when Buchanan fed them some extremists. I think that's a little over-generous; they may have gotten worse, but they were plenty bad enough to start with. Bush is a bumbling, ignorant, underachieving nincompoop, who has the connections to get him into the Presidency; that's a nightmare with or without Buchanan's ex-shipmates. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, and the rest of the current gang of bastards - weren't most of them deeply entrenched in the Republican party machine long before 2000?
And like it or not, even without trying, that party has the support of 40-50% of the country.
Nitpick: Of those who actually *vote*. More like 25% of the country as a whole.
Less influential than what? I don't believe that voting for a marginalized party is influential at all,
It was very influential in 2000. Not in the manner Nader's voters would have preferred, but the fact remains that had the Democrats managed to woo a few more of those supporters they'd have won the presidency. Which is a powerful incentive for any Democratic candidate to at least consider the left side as well as the right.
(Not that I think that'll be much of an issue in this election; IMHO, Kerry can afford to pretty much ignore the left, because most will hold their nose and vote for whatever looks like the best chance of beating Bush. But in future elections, the memory of 2000 may be influential.
I could wish for the same to happen here, but honestly? Not going to happen. I believe that the keys to reform of our electoral system are firmly in the hands of the people who don't want to see it.
Oh, I don't think the Nationalists introduced preferential voting out of the goodness of their hearts :-) It was just a saleable way of boosting their power - the right thing done for selfish reasons.
And as things stand, it might well be in the Democrats' interests to introduce such a system. With preferential voting, they'd presumably have won the last election.
(I doubt they *will* introduce it, because the American public seem to be fundamentally incompetent when it comes to electoral systems, and making the change and educating voters about the new system would probably seem like too much hard work. Just like I don't see the USA going over to metric any time soon...)
Re: Afterthought
Date: 2004-03-06 13:01 (UTC)The fact that until you reach 5%, you don't get access to equal public funding is a big one. Also see below: coming in second-best is the same as losing completely in our system. That's the biggest. You get the same benefit from winning 6% of the vote as from winning 35% of the vote: you both lose to the big fish.
And you get the alternate joy of seeing someone utterly counter to your interests elected for four years.
When you're a fringe party, you don't compromise because there's nothing to be gained from doing so. You probably get a lot of your votes from people who feel strongly about one particular issue.
When you're a fringe party that has no chance whatsoever of being elected, you don't compromise because you apparently feel your principles are more important than actual incremental small gains that might beneficially affect real peoples' lives.
I also don't think you grasp how hostile the situation on the ground truly is to third parties. The defining point is that second best gets you absolutely nothing. And if a third party draws away people who are angry and energetic enough to vote for a party, it increases the chances of that party losing.
If you stand to gain something by coming in second place, then the situation changes; supporting a third party is much less of a high-risk element. And unless I'm wrong, that's the situation in the countries where the third parties rose to prominence.
You're talking as if the Republicans weren't that bad until 2000, when Buchanan fed them some extremists. I think that's a little over-generous; they may have gotten worse, but they were plenty bad enough to start with... Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, and the rest of the current gang of bastards - weren't most of them deeply entrenched in the Republican party machine long before 2000?
I wish it were that simple. I don't have the space here to give a history of the Republican party, but here's a quick precis: the majority of the South, before LBJ's Civil Rights actions, were Democratic. The segregationists jumped parties after desegregation in 1968 or so. So while Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. were knocking around in Ford's administration, the R party (I speak also of the people registered as R's who vote, not just the people at the top, BTW, and that's important) was undergoing a bit of a redefinition of itself. That didn't really manifest until the 1980's, when the Rs in the Senate and House finally shook free of their old New Deal Democratic allegiances.
From 1980 to 1992, the Rs shifted further and further to the right. In the early 90's, talk radio emerged as a meme transmitter; Rush Limbaugh, Michael Weiner, and Dr. Laura began taking the ideas of the extemists on the far right (the fringe that was attracted to Buchanan's party) and tranmitting them into the everyday. The Media Is Overwhelmingly Liberal. Health Insurance Is A Privilege, Not A Right. Feminazis Are Destroying Our Society. Klintoon Is A Nazi OMG! This made a difference in the base of the Republican Party; it took the concepts that were dear to the heart of the Patriot movement and Buchanan's isolationists and normalized them. In short, it made the R party a welcoming environment for the real nutjobs when in 1996 they fled from the specter of a black woman as VP candidate.
The Republican Party has changed fundamentally over the last 40 years, but the change has accelerated remarkably over the last eight. The point to come away with here is that, by accepting extremist concepts and shifting towards their positions, the Rs absorbed the angry, loud, vocal, voting nutjobs. And they're playing to those extemists, to keep them from splitting off.
(continued)
Re: Afterthought
Date: 2004-03-06 13:16 (UTC)Not true. First of all, they have the support in popular polls of non-voters. But more importantly, the sad truth is that conservatives vote, because by doing so they retain control. The majority of people who don't vote are the disenfranchised. It's a fallacy to look at the percentage of voters and split it down the middle. If we had mandatory voting in this country, the situation on the ground might change. But that won't happen. Because of the above.
It was very influential in 2000
As a suicide ploy. Yay. Forgive me if I don't applaud; the damage done by Bush is far too real for me to believe that it was in any way worth it. It wasn't. I say that in part because polls are now showing the same amount of people supporting Nader now as they were at the same time last election. I say it partly because I get angry at the idea that the damage done is somehow justified by any kind of possible future benefit in a hypothetical election. But mostly because I really doubt Kerry or any Dem candidate would be able to please the people who think that their vote is some kind of statement.
Kerry can afford to pretty much ignore the left, because most will hold their nose and vote for whatever looks like the best chance of beating Bush.
Bush could afford to ignore the far right, because they'd hold their nose and vote for whoever isn't a Democrat now that their party of choice has betrayed them. He isn't, because he recognizes the important fact that the extremists are the ones who go out and vote. And tell other people to vote. And get in arguments in bars over it. And spread the word. They're the ones with the energy and the motivation.
Note that he would be ignoring them if they were likely to vote for someone else no matter what he did.
Like, um, the Greens.
Oh, I don't think the Nationalists introduced preferential voting out of the goodness of their hearts
I didn't think so. But electoral reform has to get past the Republicans, because the House and Senate are split in half down the center. And it's in their best interest to kill it. So.
Plus, I have a difficult time seeing how a federal system like ours would institute some kind of similar reform. It seems like anything radical enough to do the job would be too easy to kill.
Now, going back and reading what I've read, it seems clear to me that the Democratic party really needs to learn from the Republican Party's strategy, and to begin playing strategically to the left in order to recapture the third party voters. That may be an argument in favor of third parties running for president, but I find that difficult to balance with the danger of this game.
The problem is, and has been in recent history, that the Republican Party is a brand identity, as is the Democratic Party. And despite the fact that the Dems would actually be more beneficial for the majority of people who vote Republican, they vote for the Republicans because they're loyal to the brand. That made it safe for the people in the far-right third parties to run; they knew that their best interests were going to be served by the Republicans getting into office anyhow.
It isn't safe for progressives to run a third party and leech the support of the most active potential Democratic activists. It's counterproductive and self-defeating, and any other adjective for fucked in the head that I can think of.
It's hard enough trying to make slow progress in a country that defaults to the Republican brand identity the way it defaults to drinking Coke, and that's what makes the Greens infuriating. Not to mention dangerous.
Re: Afterthought
Date: 2004-03-06 20:54 (UTC)Not true. First of all, they have the support in popular polls of non-voters. But more importantly, the sad truth is that conservatives vote, because by doing so they retain control. The majority of people who don't vote are the disenfranchised.
Hang on... that looks self-contradictory. If conservatives vote, and most of those who don't vote are not conservatives, then the proportion of Republican supporters overall will be *less* than the proportion of Republicans among those who vote.
In any case, I was taking 'support' here to mean 'tangibly support'. Telling the pollsters you believe in a party doesn't mean much if you don't then go out and vote for 'em.
Re: Afterthought
Date: 2004-03-06 20:59 (UTC)