Political apathy comes from the political party that would most benefit from low turnout.
If you are disappointed with politics that is a reason to vote. If you don't care, that's a valid reason not to vote
If you are disappointed with politics that is a reason to vote. If you don't care, that's a valid reason not to vote
Would you tell people in China, "if you are disappointed with politics, vote in your People's Congress elections?"
If you have a one-party system, then all it means that the actual policy choices are made not by parties, but rather by factions or individuals within the one party, so if you want to change things, then the levers of change are obtained not by being a voter (or candidate) and having your party gain positions in the country but by being a party member (or official) and having your faction supporters gain positions in the party.
Why not vote? What is the advantage of that?
If you disagree with both of those things, voting has no positive and results only in negatives.
Also any changes that come from those institutions follow the real progress that gets made by common people.
"A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote." - Henry David Thoreau
Simpsons did it: "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos"
Counter In europe many elections have extremely low turnout but governments are considered legitimate
I mean even in the DPRK, you can vote for whoever you want. Its what happens afterwards..
This is like saying 'yeah but what if the car turns out to be electric" if I told you to change your oil every 5k miles
Does giving legitimacy to voting accomplish anytime? What about protesting the system by not voting, does that do anything?
What do you mean by this? If I (a dictator) were to hold an election but require 90% approval to unseat me, that would be a "legitimate" process because it includes voting?
Do you not understand what I am saying?
> What about protesting the system by not voting, does that do anything?
Arguably yes. Afghanistan's state legitimacy collapsed as basically fewer than 10% of people voted in any of it's elections and then the government fell.
Counter is that participation in European country elections is also low, though probably higher than 10 percent, but that didn't cause them to fall
The people in charge are the ones who pick the two almost identical candidates. There will be no change in economic or foreign policy regardless of winner.
(Edited, the other way is to push hard core identity politics where demographic groups are owned by certain parties, so voting has all the legitimacy of a mere census. The only way to influence policy would be having (or not having) children)
This is very reductive, you've lost sight of the trees and only see the forest. Politically apathetic people have a wide array of personal reasons for being the way they are. You don't know what's going on in all of their lives, you can't reduce all of their life experiences and feelings into one big conspiracy.
the whole system is broken. the parties waste most of their energy to fight each other instead of cooperating to actually solve problems. i want to throw out the whole lot and replace it with a system that is actually representative of the communities. is there any party anywhere that can achieve that?
Maybe the Swiss with their voting on all issues system, are a step in the right direction.