Hacker News Reader

Comment by tehjoker | Hacker News Reader

Just saying, only ~1/3 of the population votes. These elections are already illegitimate if you believe that they're supposed to express some kind of will of the majority. Additionally, the only areas of real contestation are suburban areas filled with reactionaries and relatively wealthy people. Dems have a lock on cities, Rs have a lock on rural areas.

EDIT: Those of you downvoting, I think it's amusing that you think that clicking a button on a website will make this idea disappear, because I'm just stating reality. Try thinking about why America is so messed up if you're scared by de-legitimizing the elections system.

View on HN

> Just saying, only ~1/3 of the population votes.

It's a little over 1/2 for presidential elections (over 2/3 in some states). Midterm elections are what's around 1/3.

http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/voter-turnout...

Thanks!

EDIT: I would point out that this means that every four years, about 25% of the population picks the president. Ideally, we would be somewhere north of 40%. This bare majority participation occurs admist one of the biggest extended and hyped media events in the world. Other countries routinely get above 60-70% participation with far less nonsense.

I live in California. My preferred candidates win the vote almost 100% of the time no matter if I vote or not.

That's true in many, many states.

Not voting is pretty rational for most people. (I still vote anyway, mostly out of habit, even though I know it makes no earthly difference whatever to the outcome.)

Why does low voter participation de-legitimize the election?

Separately, if you're in a city, and are a D, why vote? Similarly in rural for an R?

> [...] if you're in a city, and are a D, why vote?

Good point. No reason voting in CA, NY, or other states since your vote is basically meaningless.

> Similarly in rural for an R?

Same as above.

Maybe the electoral college isn't really that democratic if millions more people end up voting for the "loser" of an election.

> Maybe the electoral college isn't really that democratic

Presumably you know this, but it's not supposed to be democratic. That's literally why it exists, to curb majority rule by cities at the expense of rural voters, who occupy the majority of the land and—more importantly—are cannon-fodder for our military and thus need a seat at the table if we city-goers hope to continue sending them off to die.

> Presumably you know this, but it's not supposed to be democratic.

Yes, that's why it's bad.

I don't think occupying a lot of land or joining the army at a higher rate entitles rural voters to more power than anyone else. If we're going down the route of determining whose vote should count for more, those two qualities seem to be near the bottom of the list.

And yet, we wouldn't have formed a nation at all without that compromise. Still, it's hard to know if the founders made the right decision.

We could just go back on our agreement. After all, people in flyover country are just a minority with little economic power and very little representation. I doubt anyone that matters would care if they have what little power they do have reduced.

All of these presume low shifts in the Overton window, which may or may not currently hold true.

Further, 1/3 of the population voting may be "rational" (folks figure their individual votes don't sway things or are uninformed and don't care to take the time), may be due to suppression (gerrymandering, ID hurdles for non-evident potential problems), or other factors.

You're right that anything can happen in this election, but reduced participation is a long term trend.

If people think their votes don't matter in an alleged democratic system, that's a huge problem for its legitimacy. If they're uninformed, it's because they probably think that their vote doesn't matter or there's no good information for them. Both are troubling.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com