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Comment by Lionsion | Hacker News Reader

Time to call your Congressmen. I live in a purple district, and I'm going to make it clear to my Republican representative that:

1) I'm going to vote in November,

2) I will vote for him if he votes to keep the pre-existing title II net neutrality regulations, and against them if he does not, and

3) Net neutrality is even supported by a majority of Republican voters [1], so if he votes against it's clear he's voting against his constituents.

[1] http://www.publicconsultation.org/united-states/overwhelming...

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For everyone's amusement, can you let us know what he says?

When I lived in Texas, the responses I got from my representatives were comically evil. Straight up bond villain.

That sounds exactly like what I got from Cathy mcmorris Rodgers in eastern Washington as well

I wonder if there's a "Letter's from my Congressman" website where random people post letters they got from their congressman.

There has got to be a reddit sub for this, right?

Time to make it happen

We’re on Hacker “I could make Airbnb in a weekend” News. Why doesn’t it exist yet?

We have something like this in Germany. It's called Abgeordnetenwatch (www.abgeordnetenwatch.de - Agbeordneter is, in this context, a member of the German parliament). You can find out who your local representatives are and ask them questions, which are hopefully publicly answered.

So bots can post fake letters there.

Same. I have to give her some credit for not pretending to care.

What was the basic gist of the response?

My response from a Texas senator was that he "supports net neutrality" and then went on define net neutrality as the exact opposite of the commonly accepted meaning.

> then went on define net neutrality as the exact opposite

This guy and my former Arizona senator must have gone to the same school. During the campaign, we listened to a PBS feature of this future senator and family from their kitchen, a happy working middle class setting, discussing their views. He was strongly against bailouts he said, and within 4 months after getting elected he voted just the opposite. The public seldom hears these in our media.

And that's probably what he honestly believes because that's how some lobbyist explained it to him. I think a huge chunk of America's problems would be solved just by getting rid of lobbyists.

You mean not explain complicated technical matters to congressmen at all, so they will be making decisions in complete ignorance? Or explain them, but people who do it would be called not "lobbyists" but "educators" and would be only allowed to say what agrees with some opinions, but not the others? Or allowing anybody explaining things to congressmen and just not calling it "lobbying" because it's a dirty word?

> You mean not explain complicated technical matters to congressmen at all, so they will be making decisions in complete ignorance?

I'm not sure you've thought this through. Consider:

1. Representatives voting in complete ignorance would vote 50/50, on average. However, some representatives will actually have the technical knowledge needed to vote properly, so the majority would probably fall in NN's favour. What do you think the vote ratio would look like if they only received biased information from lobbyists with deep pockets? Suddenly voting in ignorance doesn't sound too bad (and this applies to any issue, not just NN).

2. To further the above point, the wisdom of the crowd is a robust phenomenon whereby a group of independent voters can make better aggregate decisions than any single voter, probably for exactly the reasons I explained above. However, this breaks down if the votes are no longer independent. Lobbying destroys this property. If you look up the "wisdom of the crowds", lobbying encourages homogeneity, centralization, imitation, and emotionality.

> Representatives voting in complete ignorance would vote 50/50, on average.

Why?

> However, some representatives will actually have the technical knowledge needed to vote properly

By "properly", you mean "agreeing with me", right? This does not require any technical knowledge.

> so the majority would probably fall in NN's favour.

You implying everybody that has technical knowledge supports NN, and only reason to oppose it is ignorance. This is wrong and incredibly condescending.

> What do you think the vote ratio would look like if they only received biased information from lobbyists

Depends on how biased it is. If it's biased in favor of NN, the ratio would be something different than if it's biased against NN.

> Suddenly voting in ignorance doesn't sound too bad

Yes it does. Why would we need any Congress at all then? We could replace them with a cheap one cent coin and save a lot of money and drama. The point of representative government is that it is a focus point of an effort to figure out the right thing to do, and that all participants at least kinda trying to do it. If it's just random, there's no point of wasting effort on it, we can do much better random much cheaper.

> whereby a group of independent voters can make better aggregate decisions than any single voter,

I agree, having elections makes more sense than having a King.

> However, this breaks down if the votes are no longer independent.

Nobody is truly independent in a modern society. Not even a King - historically, there were lots of weak monarchs manipulated by their courts and seconds in command. Neither a person living in a modern society. Of course people influence other people. And this can produce negative effects like groupthink and mass panics. So what's your suggestion - ban talking about politics? Mind-wiping congressmen before voting?

> By "properly", you mean "agreeing with me", right?

I mean in the interests of their constituents.

> You implying everybody that has technical knowledge supports NN, and only reason to oppose it is ignorance. This is wrong and incredibly condescending.

I imply nothing of the sort, but the majority of people certainly favour NN.

> Yes it does. Why would we need any Congress at all then? We could replace them with a cheap one cent coin and save a lot of money and drama. [...] If it's just random, there's no point of wasting effort on it, we can do much better random much cheaper.

Except it's not random, as I explained.

> I mean in the interests of their constituents.

Constituents have different interests. Sometimes diametrically different.

> but the majority of people certainly favour NN.

The majority of the people favor a vague description of NN in the form of "do you want to access sites for free". The majority of the people has no opinion about the specific NN regulations being discussed since they don't have a slightest idea what these regulations are and how they work and what exactly changed in 2015 and 2018. It's fine to favor this specific regulation, but claiming "the majority supports it" as an argument is bullshit, the majority has no idea what it is about. It's like asking people "would you like to be murdered?" and presenting the results as support for specific crime reform or gun control proposal. This can't be taken seriously.

> Except it's not random, as I explained.

You "explained" that everybody who has technical knowledge would support NN, if only those pesky lobbyists didn't meddle. It is an unsupported statement based on fallacious premises and so far the only factual support is the abovementioned unserious polls. Not enough by far.

> The majority of the people favor a vague description of NN in the form of "do you want to access sites for free".

Please point to all the polls or surveys that framed the question this way.

> The majority of the people has no opinion about the specific NN regulations being discussed since they don't have a slightest idea what these regulations are and how they work and what exactly changed in 2015 and 2018.

And the same can be said for our elected representatives who, on the whole, are just as technologically illiterate as these other citizens you seem to disdain so much.

> You "explained" that everybody who has technical knowledge would support NN

Really? Please quote the exact text where I made that claim.

Furthermore, that explanation is completely immaterial to the point I was responding to, which was about your claim of randomized bill voting. I suggest you reread this thread.

> Representatives voting in complete ignorance would vote 50/50, on average

I suspect that there would be a strong status quo bias in ignorant votes, so 50/50 is not a realistic assumption in my opinion. Not that this is even a realistic starting point to begin with because interested parties will alway try to disseminate information to law makers (directly, or indirectly).

> I suspect that there would be a strong status quo bias in ignorant votes

Not sure about that. If the status quo were satisfactory, it's less likely there would be a vote to change it. That's a counterbalancing impetus to vote away from the status quo. Hard to quantify which way that would fall.

Furthermore, outlawing lobbying would encourage the contrary behaviour for candidates to keep their seats: the representatives visiting their constituents to hear their views. Lobbyists can voice their opinion at these town hall meetings, and I think it's clear that this makes it much harder to game the votes away from constituent interests.

The significant expansion of meetings to cover to stack the deck makes lobbying considerably more expensive, and probably not worth it unless it's a seriously important issue that would make or break a market.

>You mean not explain complicated technical matters to congressmen at all, so they will be making decisions in complete ignorance?

So the options are either

1. Get a biased source of information (along with donations $$$) from Comcast

2. Just throw your hands up in the air and declare that the problem is unknowable. Nope, Wikipedia doesn't exist. Neither does the library, your staff, or the actual bill itself. Comcast's lobbyist only. A person elected into one of the highest positions in the US is too incompetent to do their own research.

3. Require all meetings with lobbyists to be public- with video and transcript documentation. Mandatory jail time for those who don't comply.

What constitutes a lobbyist? Must a congressman record every discussion he has with every person he meets, just in case the topic of conversation turns to public policy?

Here's a start:

https://www.tripsavvy.com/faqs-about-lobbying-1039165

Example: https://lobbyingdisclosure.house.gov/register.html

There will certainly be attempts to end-run the disclosure, but in principle it's a regulated industry.

We could broadcast the video on Bravo and call it "Real Senators of the US"! It would be like a better CSPAN.

Edit: also we could call in votes like it's American Idol. I think we should try it, it couldn't be worse than what we have now

There was something like this in California, public meetings law, called Brown Act. As I heard, it's not exactly working as intended http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/03/23/californias-ope...

All human sources of information are biased. That's why we have democracy - to duke it out in a market of ideas and find some common denominator that somehow summarizes people's opinions. True, this system is not perfect. But removing inputs would not make it more perfect - unless by some magic you imagine that the only inputs left are optimal ones. But finding the optimal ones is the problem with started with! If we knew that, there would be no need for the rest - it's because there's no definite obvious way to know what is right is that we have democracy, otherwise we'd just have one law: "always do what's right" and that's it, no need for congress, elections, etc.

> America's problems

Every democracies problems. The problem with lobbies is that they allow "deeper pockets" to have "more influence", which is exactly what democracies should prevent. Thus big lobbies (especially the corporate funded ones, which ar by far teh larger part) are undermining the democratic process.

We see the results of this all over the world.

> then went on define net neutrality as the exact opposite of the commonly accepted meaning.

[Regarding Obama Administration]

"Then there was the 'fairness doctrine,' designed to limit opposing voices in radio and on television; 'net neutrality,' which promised to regulate the Internet so as to prevent, ultimately, individuals from frequenting Web sites that might disagree with an administration;"

- Larry Schweikart (What Would the Founders Say?)

[Endorsed by Glenn Beck and read by Tea Party supporters all over.]

I think if you just give them the correct definition of Net Neutrality and explain how it works and why they would be for it. But people frequently leave out the "how it works and why" part of an argument so it just defaults to polarized scream matches. If people took the time to explain things to people, IE: "speak truth to stupid", we would be much better off.

To be fair, Larry Schweikart is incredibly intelligent and well read on history.

"Mr 'Buckley' - well-spoken, intelligent, curious - had heard virtually nothing of modern science. He had a natural appetite for the wonders of the Universe. He wanted to know about science. It’s just that all the science had gotten filtered out before it reached him. Our cultural motifs, our educational system, our communications media had failed this man. What society permitted to trickle through was mainly pretence and confusion. It had never taught him how to distinguish real science from the cheap imitation. He knew nothing about how science works."

- Carl Sagan (Demon Haunted World)

That it was a non-issue for them, and that they deal with dozens of "real problems" that their constituents face every day.

How is this "straight up bond villain"? This sounds like a legitimate disagreement about the order of priorities.

What’s priority have to do with voting on the issue.” Look it’s low on my priority list I’m going to vote other way without understanding” Let’s call it as is, low priority I’ll trade my vote in exchange for something higher importance to me.

Because its not an issue about order of priorities at all. Not to mention some of the responses I've seen basically said "we know better." 80% of americans supported NN at some point, and so any one politician who votes against it is basically voting for himself.

I have hard time to believe response said "we know better". Could you quote one? I am seeing that legitimate "we have different priorities" (which is always the case - it is not humanly possible to accommodate all preferences of all voters in a way that satisfies everybody) interpreted as "bond villain" so I am suspecting there's a bunch of distortion going on here.

Having other priorities isn't a problem, meaning it's fine if they spend their time working on other issues.

But at some point they'll spend an hour or so voting, and at that point your "priorities" doesn't factor in anymore, as you should just represent your constituents. Unless you have an incredibly good reason not to. "Different priorities" isn't one, it's straight up misdirection.

> your "priorities" doesn't factor in anymore, as you should just represent your constituents

Who said they don't? We just heard from one person so far, which disagreed with the elected representative's priorities. Since they are still elected, clearly many people do agree with their priorities. Presenting this - completely routine and normal - policy disagreement as "straight up bond villain" implies that there is only one constituent that matters and only one order of priorities that is legitimate, and any disagreement is not just difference in opinion, but supreme villainy. By a weird coincidence it turns out the only legitimate priorities are exactly the ones of the author of the comment, what are the chances!

> Who said they don't?

Polling says they don't. [1]

> Since they are still elected, clearly many people do agree with their priorities.

That's not accurate. Since they are still elected, clearly enough people agree with enough of their priorities (or perceived priorities). That's not to say that they couldn't better represent their voters, when that representation is clear.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/12...

I've received a "we know better" answer before, in 2014 regarding Net Neutrality from Roy Blunt.

Thank you for contacting me regarding net neutrality.

As you know, in 2010, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) established rules to regulate the Internet. The FCC claimed it could regulate the Internet under the authority of its traditional telephone regulations developed during the monopoly-era. A DC Circuit Court recently struck down certain parts of these rules and decided the FCC does not have jurisdiction over broadband providers to implement regulations in this manner.

The Internet should certainly be free and open to those who legally provide content to consumers. This principle does not necessitate additional government regulation, particularly given the innovative and highly competitive broadband marketplace. Attempts to preemptively implement industry-wide regulations may inadvertently harm consumers by stifling competition and innovation. As a member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, I intend to remain fully engaged on this issue to ensure the rules governing broadband service providers maintain the flexibility needed to evolve as rapidly as the technology they provide.

Again, thank you for contacting me. I look forward to continuing our conversation on Facebook (www.facebook.com/SenatorBlunt) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/RoyBlunt) about the important issues facing Missouri and the country. I also encourage you to visit my website (blunt.senate.gov) to learn more about where I stand on the issues and sign-up for my e-newsletter.

Sincere regards,

Roy Blunt United States Senator

You're replying to a different person. The person who said "straight up bond villain" isn't the person you responded to.

My friend use to intern in a Senators office. All the responses are written by staff and not the member of congress.

I'm presuming purple (being red + blue) means a district that could either way?

Lucky you. Here we don't have elections that matter because thanks to redistricting and gerrymandering, the outcome (along party lines) is well established.

> Here we don't have elections that matter because thanks to redistricting and gerrymandering, the outcome (along party lines) is well established.

All that means is that the general election doesn't matter, and so you need to move your vote to whatever comes before the general election in your district to make it matter.

1. Register for the party that the redistricting and gerrymandering favors.

2. Vote in that party's primaries or participate in their caucuses to support candidates who are closer to center.

Some will object that step #1 is dishonest. I might agree in districts where the district boundaries are actually sensible based on economics and other demographics factors other than party. In districts where one party has redrawn the boundaries to give itself a major structural advantage, they have stolen your vote. Joining their party is simply taking it back. If they do not like that, then they can fix the district boundaries.

I’d like to hear an argument for why #1 might be dishonest. There is no definition of “registered Democrat” except for “someone who is registered as a Democrat.” I’m pretty sure you don’t have to sign anything claiming to believe in certain principles. I’m struggling to think of any way this could be considered dishonest.

Under the old rules, the "dishonest" thing to do is register for the party who's beliefs you least agree with, and then in the primary, vote for the candidate less likely to win in the general, in order for your actual preferred candidate to have a better chance at winning.

That is to say, game the system by looking at the rules and vote for someone you don't actually believe in. (In the primary.) Whether or not that rises to the level of being dishonest is up to you to decide.

(The "new" rules are that the "less likely to win" candidate may be harder to determine in the current political climate.)

Oh noes! The representatives are dealing with dishonest constituents? How ironic.

Genuine question: is there anything (technically effective) to prevent someone from registering as both a democrat and a republican? And if not, are there any existing how-to guides I could signal-boost?

In general, your registered party is part of your state voter registration. Some states use that to determine which primary you can vote in (“closed primary”), while others let you choose a party at the time of voting (“open primary”). Either way, though, voting in both parties’ primaries is operated by the state as part of a unified process, at the same location; so it shouldn’t be possible to vote more than once.

If you’re in a caucus state, that process might be different; I’m not sure.

You 'register' as one, the other, or something different (L, Green, etc.) typically at the DMV or something like it. The selection there is a radio button, not a checkbox.

Of course, nothing prevents you from being a member of whatever party you want, though there are sometimes laws prohibiting when you can change your registration. Oftentimes, you're prohibited from changing your registered party affiliation within a month or so of the primaries.

Your voter registration record says which party you're in. The election official would likely make some inquiries if yours said "all of them" on it.

State dependent. In Texas, you don’t register for a party. You just vote in the primary you want (but you can’t vote in both primaries.)

Shouldn’t who you vote for be confidential and you can change your mind till the day? And why can’t a person vote one way for local and another for state ? I don’t get the system

The party registration isn't counted as a vote for that party - when you show up on election day you can vote for whoever you want.

What it affects is which parties' primaries you can vote in.

The primaries aren't official US elections. They're unofficial elections set up by each political party (which are private, non-government entities).

You can vote however you want in official elections.

I would be careful about asserting that. In PA there can be referendums on the primary ballots. And the results can be binding (sore loser laws, etc.). They're pretty official looking around here.

This definitely differs between countries. Where I'm from, I'm a registered member of all political parties. No rules against it.

You can't be registered for multiple parties.

I did that - then I researched all the candidates and they are trying to one up each other on who is more conservative. The guy trailing behind for government just started a "Deportation Bus" and driving it around for publicity. It's amusingly sad.

You're in my state then. There is the one guy that's.. somewhat centrist, but he's pretty well back in the polling. SO now I'm figuring out what's the lesser of 3 evils that are competitively polling.

We really need Ranked Choice Voting, I really think these polls affect the actual vote tallies at the end of the day.

Couldn't the opposite work as well... choose a candidate so extreme even voters of his own party don't want to support him? Isn't that what happened with Roy Moore and Alabama? The US voting system just seems incredible bad.

In Missouri, Claire McCaskill (Democrate Senator) ran campaign ads during a Republican Primary supporting (in effect) the worst possible republican candidate. This massive spend on campaign advertising by McCaskill during the primary led to this weak Republican winning the nomination, and thus an easy victory for McCaskill during the General Election. A pretty good strategy from McCaskill, but also very underhanded.

Not quite true.

If there is a wave election in November, gerrymandering backfires and ends up losing you more seats than you hope to gain through it. You pack the districts so that you win with 55% to 45%, except for a district here or there which will go 10% to 90%.

In a wave election, it only takes a shift of 5-6% in those gerrymandered districts for them to be lost.

You are pretending that a 'wave election' is a thing that people decide to do, instead of a label applied after the fact as a descriptive aid after the occurrence of the circumstances you describe. In other words, this is circular logic.

In practice, heavily-gerrymandered districts rarely swing parties, and when they do, they almost always swing back.

You are pretending that there aren't circumstances that have an observed relation to systematic deviations from median election results that people can observe to understand that a wave election is more likely to happen in a particular election.

I'm not pretending it: I'm asserting it.

And if it doesn't hold, let there be runtime errors!

As it was written, so shall it be! Go with Root, my son.

You can still have an impact. Make noise in favor of things like open primaries, proportional representation, and instant-runoff/score/range voting.

Imo one of the biggest problems with our current system (single winner FPTP) is it results in two parties, with various side effects such as extremist candidates in primaries, complete lack of representation for minority voters, and gerrymandered districts. Moving towards better systems would help a great deal.

I fully agree with your last point. In fairly exciting news Maine has adopted Ranked Choice Voting as of the last election cycle. It was tested in the courts and survived, so they'll be using RCV for their upcoming elections (both primary and general).

If things go well, that can be an example for the rest of the country. More states should follow the Maine example!

I also live in a purple district (in a very blue state), and while my Republican Congressman has made it clear he's against Net Neutrality, he voted against the repeal of the Internet privacy regulations, so he can't be counted out entirely.

However, I'm still not all too sure whether Net Neutrality is worth promising support to existing Republicans. There are so many other issues on the table this election cycle and they next Congress is likely to be as, or more, supportive on this.

I find it useful, in politics, to keep a list of issues in respect of which I would, singularly, disregard party affiliation for. (The same with a black list. I won’t vote for a candidate on the wrong side of certain issues.)

Putting it on paper is valuable. It clarifies your thoughts. And it makes it clear how draconian these red lines are. (I constantly re-evaluate them, with the goal of talking myself out of them.)

What do you do if none of the candidates qualifies after applying white and black lists? Or, if the candidate both promises something on the while list and on the black list? Not a theoretical question, I don't have the right to vote in US, but if I did, I'd be in this situation for the most elections in the most places where I cared reading about candidates.

You tell others to make a list.

Enough people make such a list, change happens.

Provided their lists are similar. Otherwise you just get Brownian motion.

I have this problem, I usually write in some fictional characters (or someone one who isn't running or who isn't qualified to run) name in protest. For example, during our last city election, I wrote in Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump for Aldermen. I also wrote in my mother for the school board.

There are a lot of issues on the front burner right now that would fall in that bracket and net neutrality isn't the most pressing one by a very long shot so why would you let your vote hinge on that one issue?

It is not because you say to your congressman that you are a one-issue voter that you really are. Elected officials keep lying about their promises, I don't see why this should be a one-way street.

Except that they are in this game for years, and probably can play it much better than you do. But by devaluing citizens input by injecting obvious deception into it, you make it harder for others to make a difference when it does genuinely matter for them. Because on the input side, there's no way to know the difference between somebody who genuinely passionately cares for the issue and somebody who strategically lies about it. And since lying is cheaper than genuinely caring, the optimal strategy would be to assume purported one-issue voter is lying. So what exactly did you achieve by that?

I won't question the fact that they are very good at it and indeed, a lot of elected officials forget their promises immediately after that.

And yes, voters cold-calling senators is an incredibly unreliable way to know who cares about what. I am astounded that it is still that efficient. I guess many candidates haven't figured yet that a lot of people can lie.

Personally I wouldn't say "I will vote for you if you do X or Y". Given the current political climate, I would present myself as a republican voter who has doubts "and really, this net neutrality things really makes it hard for me. I don't really see why I should go vote for either side now."

They wont believe someone who pretends they can switch on a single issue but their current fear is that their base won't come on election day.

> Elected officials keep lying about their promises, I don't see why this should be a one-way street.

It's not a one way street, and never has been. Of course, neither is the disregard of what people say that isn't the supported by concrete, substantive action that it engenders.

Why do you presume that net neutrality isn’t among the most pressing for OP? There are few issues where a majority of both Republicans and Democrats both agree. It seems like a worthy issue to hinge a vote on.

I would believe it when I see a million people marching in DC for it. This issue is tiny and insignificant compared to major ones in US politics, however you personally and your peer group feel about it. And the "majority" is just a sleight of hand - you ask people "do you want to access all sites on the internet for free", people enthusiastically say "yes" and you interpret it as overwhelming support for a specific highly technical policy decision that these people never heard of, have no opinion of and probably couldn't distinguish pre-2015 internet regulations from post-2015 internet regulations even if their life depended on it. Which it most certainly doesn't, so they wouldn't really care either way.

Because I follow American politics pretty closely for a foreigner and it would appear to me that if the house is on fire the color of the sidewall isn't top priority.

That is mighty patronizing of you to tell someone that their concerns aren’t worthy enough. A majority of Americans who are registered to vote don't. There is an abundance of apathy in the U.S. toward the political process. Here we have someone willing to go so far as to contact their elected representative and you respond as you did.

Off the top of my head I can’t name another issue that has support by majorties of both parties. This is an issue that is most likely to gain sympathy of Republican senators and most likely to result in an instance of the peoples' interest outwaying corporate interests.

Instead of encouragement we have jaquesm here to let us know that you follow American politics pretty closely and we should all concentrate on something else. I do not subscribe to your patronizing attitude.

I'm not a foreigner and I think the comment you're responding to is spot on.

Are we just supposed to pretend that all issues are equal? People aren't going to die because the nets aren't neutral. People are going to die based on our health care policy, whether we go to war, whether we can prevent nuclear proliferation.

The author of the comment you call patronizing made no statement on whether or not he's happy that people are involved in the political process. I know I'm happy about it, but I also think single issue voting on net neutrality is stupid. These views are not linked.

In summary, net neutrality is important but there are more important issues in America at the moment. It's not patronizing to point that out.

Not all issues are a equal. Clearly not. But what is important changes from person to person. To suggest that your concerns and what constitutes a single voter issue for you is wrong is condescending. Since you think net neutrality is a stupid single voter issue then I suggest it not be one for you. But not everyone has your concerns.

It’s not a big issue for me but I can see why it is for others. People need to get involved and active. I’m not going to discourage anyone from doing this.

There is always a more important issue on the horizon. There’s always some cause that is more important. We don’t all get up in arms over the same things. To me climate change is the most important issue facing humans. I’ll advocate this position but my arrogance is not so great as to belittle someone else's pet cause.

So I’m not going to tell you that health care policy is a stupid issue to get energized about when the climate is changing.

Some people's ideas of what's important are stupid. Everyone has the right to an opinion but that doesn't mean we should treat every opinion as equal.

If someone was going to vote on the single issue of whether or not we should make it illegal to have more than 17,000,000 butterflies in a room smaller than 100'x100' I would have no problem telling them that their pet issue is stupid and there are other things they should care about more.

I don't see why that principle shouldn't hold for other issues. Obviously net neutrality is something we should be concerned about but a single issue voter says it's the only thing we should be concerned about. That's just not true.

If we elect a government who reinstates net neutrality and proceeds to immediately launch a nuclear missile at Moscow, will the 20 minutes that half of the US population got to enjoy net neutrality matter?

Thank you for keeping the discussion in the realm of the plausible and feasible. I'd hate for extreme situations to be brought up. A number of people have given reasons for why they think net neutrality is as important as it is to them.

Thank you for definitively letting me know that

Obviously net neutrality is something we should be concerned about but a single issue voter says it's the only thing we should be concerned about. That's just not true.

Your argument has been convincing. Convincing enough that I'll be sure to consult you on other issues in the penumbra of the hierarchy of human concerns to see if they merit being single voter issue. Perhaps you can make a flier for those of us not in the know.

> To suggest that your concerns and what constitutes a single voter issue for you is wrong is condescending.

> Since you think net neutrality is a stupid single voter issue then I suggest it not be one for you.

This argument seems to have finished on the wrong point.

It isn't that net neutrality or any other issues have more or less value (although they intrinsically do -- that's for the individual to decide). Instead it's that single issue voting is severely short-sighted since the very same politician may support several other policies contradicting your own well-being.

Yes the example above is extreme but this is what it attempts to convey.

Overall I agree with you. I agree that for me net neutrality is not that important. But in a nation with as much voter apathy, with the growing sense of voting being futile I’ll take a single issue voter that gets galvanized. If everyone were a single issue voter it’d be a mess. With a few people not so much.

I suspect very few people are truly single issue voters. There’s a difference between saying “you should only care about issue X” and saying “I will never vote for someone who doesn’t share my position on issue X.” For example, I doubt many people would vote for someone who supports net neutrality but also includes universal forced child labor in their platform.

> Obviously net neutrality is something we should be concerned about but a single issue voter says it's the only thing we should be concerned about. That's just not true.

Yes, it's not true because what you said is wrong. All a single issue voter has said is that single issue determines their vote. They doesn't say that's the only thing "we" should be concerned about. They don't even say that's the only thing they're concerned about.

Voting is not some kind of distilled expression of pure belief or priorities, it's a practical action subject to tactics, strategy, and trade-offs.

>People are going to die based on our health care policy

Yes, and people are going to die based on our self-driving car policies, our affordable housing policies, our food subsidy policies, our energy policies, our alcohol policies, our gambling policies, our foreign aid policies, etc.

The crippling of the Internet via poor net policies could hamper technologies that ultimately would have saved billions.

You are presumptuous to claim your issues are more important than any of these others.

The difference here is that you are guessing as to what might happen.

We know that some people without access to medical care will die. You're saying it's okay to gamble those people's lives on the chance that future lives might be saved. Obviously a balance between spending on research and health care must be struck so this isn't a black and white issue but you would need to put forth a pretty convincing argument that a lack of net neutrality would prevent us from saving billions for me to buy that.

For the record, I do not support single issue voting at all. There is no issue that outweighs the others.

I also think the idea that someone who was going to vote based on a single issue would choose something as trivial as net neutrality is particularly ridiculous when there are so many other issues where life hangs in the balance.

>We know that some people without access to medical care will die. You're saying it's okay to gamble those people's lives on the chance that future lives might be saved.

This happens every time a double-blind medical trial takes place.

> as trivial as net neutrality is particularly ridiculous when there are so many other issues where life hangs in the balance.

Trivial to you.

>is particularly ridiculous when there are so many other issues where life hangs in the balance.

If immediacy of life is the sole thing driving your decision behavior, you should quit your job and go help people in developing nations. Some people need to do this. But others also need to focus on longer-term things that promote a better economy that leads to new technologies and surpluses to advance the quality of human life.

> We know that some people without access to medical care will die.

That actually sounds like an argument for allowing patients the option of a "fast lane" to their hospital for telemedicine and monitoring with higher priority than Netflix and YouTube.

It doesn’t make sense for everyone to focus primarily on the political issue they deem to be the most important, for the same reason that it doesn’t make sense for everyone to choose the career they deem to be the most important. Competitive advantage applies to both of these arenas, and it is perfectly rational and prudent to focus on political issues that you do not believe to be the most important issues facing society, if you have reason to believe that your efforts can make more of a difference in some other political issue.

> Are we just supposed to pretend that all issues are equal? People aren't going to die because the nets aren't neutral.

Probably not very many as a first-order effect, no.

> People are going to die based on our health care policy, whether we go to war, whether we can prevent nuclear proliferation.

And a narrow range of corporations with a fairly tight alignment on policy preferences controlling media access affects long term ability of the public to understand thode issues, organize efforts around them, and achieve positive results.

Which is why a lot wide-view activist organizations that aren't particularly focussed on tech issues have made it a priority, when they do normally focus on the issues you have concerns about make it a priority.

To many peoole, neutrality isn't a color of the sidewalk issue, it's a house on fire issue, because it concerns control of communication content in a major channel of public communication by a narrow band of actors vs. guaranteed freedom for lawful communication on that channel.

To add to that - we already have fake news along ALL political spectrums, and propaganda and lies coming from fake and legit places, to further be told what we can / can't view because of net neutrality, or for corporations to ban content themselves or make you pay to view certain websites moves us further into censorship territory like China. -- We definitely need to ensure that the internet stays as open as possible, if not we may need to create a new decentralized uncensorable internet like in Silicon Valley where net neutrality cannot be revoked.

It is ok for net neutrality to be someone's number 1 issue as long as they recognize that they are likely viewing issues from a position of tremendous privilege.

It's okay even if they don't recognize it.

Every issue in the US is one of tremendous privilege. Recognizing that doesn't change anything.

If you're middle-class or above perhaps. The US is not a country I'd want to be poor in.

China and India are both worse to be poor in, which still makes it a position of privilege compared to a significant portion of the world population. That's why "check your privilege" is such a stupid statement.

I see the death of net neutrality as a first step toward extremely effective censorship of electronic media. Media control like what sinclair is doing is already dangerous enough. Restoring net neutrality is close to top priority.

The analogy is closer to the house being on fire, but the landlord 100% won't budge on that, so you might as well ask them for a glass of water, which you have at least some chance of getting.

> so why would you let your vote hinge on that one issue?

Single issue voters make policy, and this is a case where the small weight of my vote could tip a scale and actually accomplish something.

Plus, I hate our current state of extreme polarization, and I value politicians who have the independence to go against their party. If he'll do that, it's another aspect I'd like to reward.

Ok, I see. So this is the local equivalent for voting for a small party in a country with many more parties in the running for a coalition. That makes some sense, but at the same time it would mean that you are also voting for a lot of stuff that is reprehensible and probably against your own interest. Because once the votes are counted your vote will not be counted as a 'single issue' vote but as a total mandate for whatever that party is up to, they'll see their compromise on an issue that probably hardly moves the needle on their end as a clever tactic to get votes like yours.

Republicans are reprehensible? By your logic we can never make any progress unless citizens vote for a platform perfectly aligned with their own values. That degenerates to everyone voting for themselves.

IMO absolutist stances like this miss the entire point of politics which is to strike compromise in the face of disperate ideologies. Sure the two party system is broken, but the way to make progress is to focus on relevant issues one at a time instead of the entire platform.

I'm not sure I follow your logic. First off, he didn't say that Republicans are reprehensible. He said that voting for a Republican implies that you are voting for a lot of reprehensible stuff (by proxy through your Republican representative). Reprehensible doesn't mean "I don't agree with". Over the years I've had disagreements with both parties (and have voted for members of both parties). However, with the increased polarization in Congress, I don't think it is unfair to say that Republican behavior and the Republican platform has largely become reprehensible. That certainly doesn't mean all Republicans politicians have reprehensible views - just that they are too cowardly to vote against their party when they should be doing so.

The OP is suggesting that he wants to use his vote to encourage a Republican to do the right thing on a very narrow issue. The parent is effectively saying this focuses on a single tree instead of the entire forest. In a two-party system you are effectively voting for the entire platform and not for a single issue, so I have no idea why you consider his critique absolutist.

I understand exactly what the parent's point is. I'm just continuing the discussion. The implication (and the sibling comments agree) is that you shouldn't vote for a party if you don't agree with everything about the platform. I'm defending the GP in this case arguing that I wish collectively we would focus more on single issues and less on broad sweeping platform stereotypes (e.g. reprehensible republican). I initially commented because I've put some thought into this recently. I even commented last week here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17028256

> I understand exactly what the parent's point is. I'm just continuing the discussion. The implication (and the sibling comments agree) is that you shouldn't vote for a party if you don't agree with everything about the platform.

No, the implication was that you should maximize your agreement with one of the platforms available (two here). One issue voting most likely doesn't do that.

You are again conflating disagreements with "reprehensible". I disagree with lots of politicians on lots of issues. I find very few of those positions to be actually reprehensible.

I think we actually agree. Or at least that's what I'm saying too. I didn't use reprehensible, the comment I was responding too did. My point is your point, just worded differently.

The original comment said that there are some reprehensible policies.

You then treated "reprehensible" as meaning the same thing as "not perfectly aligned".

Your followup treated "reprehensible" as meaning the same thing as "don't agree with everything".

We might agree on some things, but we clearly do not agree about what jacquesm was saying, because I think the original comment was fine.

Well I am extrapolating based on the way the argument was presented, yes. I don't disagree with the essence of what jacquesm said. I think that's what's not clear. I am quibbling with the idea that we should call the republican platform reprehensible in an academic discussion about single issue voting in the US. Why? Because reprehensible carries an implication of blame and it has clearly distracted from the argument and caused at least me to extrapolate from jacquesm's comment in a way that may not have been intended.

I understand that some people will choose to minimize negatives while some will choose to advocate for positives when stepping up to the poll. We all agree on this idea and this has nothing to do with whether one person diesagrees with or isn't fully aligned with a platform. (This is where I'm losing your argument which seems to be harping on this idea.)

My meta commentary is that viewing the other side's policies (_some_) as reprehensible distracts from the politics and pushes people towards the minimizing negatives game because it inflates the impact of negatives because of the association of blame that comes with a term like reprehensible. "If you are republican and vote for their reprehensible platform then you are to blame." Now it's not just about disagreement, it's about social justice. And for that reason I prefer, of late, when people focus on advocating for positive change rather than voting against negative change. That is where the semantics do come in.

A response to this point would involve asserting that their policies are indeed reprehensible and we should treat the entire platform in such a way.

> Republicans are reprehensible?

Strawman.

You said that the Republican platform has reprehensible policy. You then criticized single issue voting because when you do so you pull in the entire platform, reprehensible policy included, which you suggest ends up being a net negative, despite whether you agree or not. Now consider another person. If they are a republican and vote for their party, even if they disagree with the reprehensible pieces, they still end up having a net negative impact on society because of their platform choice, by your logic.

I'm not sure what other conclusion someone is supposed to draw. That's how the stereotype you used works. I'm not republican, I don't care. But I do know republicans and I know that calling the platform reprehensible isn't helping anything or changing any minds.

I can excuse it if you were only intending to present an academic example supporting your general point about single issue voting in a two party system. I often do the same and have fallen into the same trap before. But if that was your intention it was lost one me. Maybe work on slightly more finessed phasing to avoid the downvotes in the future?

I don't give a fuck about downvotes and you are dishonest in your arguing, effectively you are arguing with yourself.

Stop being rude. I've lost you at this point.

So your solution is what, not vote?

Everyone in America faces this dilemma, it's the problem with our two party system.

Get involved in grassroots politics. Support municipal or state-level candidates who have potential to be federal candidates down the road. Doorknock for candidates who you feel represent you. Tell your friends and family who you're voting for and why. Vote in primaries. Always vote in general elections.

I mean, that's not exactly an either or thing... For the average voter with a family and career you have:

* Two parties

* Candidates to choose from in those parties with slightly different platforms trying to capture appeal based on big-ticket trending issues

* No one person you could possibly agree with on all things unless you are voting for a hardliner and blindly drink the party koolaid

So I mean really, if your vote is all you can offer and you have no hope of getting someone from your preferred party elected, the next best thing is to try to support your preferred candidate.

I mean, so there are two games going on here. The biggest lie is that politicians have convinced the public that they are in the same fight to get their party in control. Except really you have:

* Politicians trying to get their party in control and stay elected

* Citizens trying to get things they care about addressed, improved, whatev

It's the whole "We won't vote for Hillary 'cause Democrats even though we don't like Trump" problem, but it goes both ways..

Vote for the one that matches your interests the best. I don't understand why you would do anything else (unless you're trying to make a symbolic statement). The two-party system is not going to go away tomorrow, and it certainly will not go away because you refused to vote.

Yea... we really need to fix that one of these days with instant runoff voting. It's going to be hard to get done since both primary parties won't be in favor of it, maybe if we get public financing of elections it'll be easier.

I mean, at the end of the day, you're voting for classical liberalism either way.

Would you genuinely choose your vote on this single issue, ignoring all others, whatever may they be? And if, like many of the voters, it is not true, would it be counter-productive to lie about it as Congressmen are probably been around the block a few times and can recognize the deception? Of course, if this is true, then I do not question it, but is it?

This won't get a House vote in a Republican controlled House. But the senate vote gives you an indication on where the Republican party stands. They're not going to change their minds.

This is, after all why they are doing it at all- you should 100% call your representative, not at all because the house will pass it or because Trump is going to sign this into law, but because you are validating that this should be part of the 2018 midterm election platforms to your representative. This is an issue that will get people out to the polls. Let’s prove it to them!

Why are you trying to push your beliefs on whole country? Why not work on changing net neutrality laws in your state. This way in long run we'd have experiment comparing results in states with net neutrality laws (including different flavors) and without them.

All 49 Democratic Senators voted in favor of net neutrality. Why not vote for the Democrat?

Because they knew the vote would have no impact. Had there been real stakes you would see defectors in the re-election swing states.

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