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Comment by tomcooks | Hacker News Reader

Please stop voting dumbasses in the US, it affects everyone living in countries who have commercial agreements with then

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It also affects countries that don't have trade agreements with the US. Lots of countries use whatever the US and Europe are doing as inspiration for their own policies. My country introduced a GDPR-style law shortly after watching Europe do the same.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I don't think we should encourage people to vote as much as we do. Voting is an opportunity to make your voice heard. If you have nothing to say about the issues facing a particular office, don't vote.

I do not vote for candidates who I am not informed about, but many people do. Those uninformed votes just drown out the voice of the informed voters and reinforce the party-line tribalism that seems to be slowly taking over the nation. In an ideal world, I would be informed about the issues surrounding all of the offices for whom I'm asked to vote. Unfortunately, I simply do not have time to concern myself with more than a handful of offices.

> Those uninformed votes just drown out the voice of the informed voters

I've always been a fan of general election ballots showing names, in a randomized order, with no reference to party.

Taiwan lists the candidates in a random order but includes their picture and their number in that order on the ballot. The candidates know their number from the beginning of their campaigns and wear the number on their clothing.

Have you tried absentee voting? It's honestly pretty great. I spend maybe three hours at my computer googling the people I don't know, then send it back.

Not sure if it makes a difference in the end but it's cool to know who's claiming they represent you.

I mean, I basically do the same with the sample ballot that gets mailed to me.

You might want to check other countries too.

Unfortunately only dumbasses vote. Smart people won't vote away their souvereignty to others who are then going to make far reaching decisions about their life. Basically it's choosing to become a slave.

Sounds like the "dumbasses" are right here given that not voting doesn't give them any sovereignty and the ones making far reaching decisions actually have to worry about them voting for the other guy. Compared to the "smart people" who give up a small but very real role as a kingmaker for nothing.

Everyone is born with souvereignty, but tricked into giving it away to others who will rule over them by voting. Tricked again and again and most never learn, unfortunately.

We need to just start with getting rid of being ruled by ridiculously old people.

Bill Pascrell almost certainly remembers where he was as a kid when he found out Hitler had been killed lol. Are you kidding me?

If you don't like the idiots in Congress... then run for office. Engage in the civic process. Why aren't there more nerds and programmers in Congress? We should be there

People won't vote for them.

Everyone complains about how politicians behave, but the truth is that they won't vote for you unless you behave like a politician. Voters are just as two-faced as the representatives they complain about.

Not true. We have a pirate party that has like 20% of the mandates in the capital city leadership (won the last election), and 11% in the parliament. Currently it polls around 17% for the parilamentary elections (second place) https://www.ceske-volby.cz/2020/06/14/preference-kantar-cz-c...

You also have a parliamentary system and a non-first past the poll system which is more open to coalition building to claim a majority. While it is well and good for you here it isn't viable under the political "meta" established by the rules.

We are. We just aren't americans, so we are counting on Americans to vote (or engage in the process). Thanks in advance!

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