The bar I like to use is pretty simple: do you know who represents you in Congress (I am American so this is my bias, but substitute your country's equivalent if there is one)? As in, your state's two Senators and your district's Representative? If not, you probably don't vote or don't pay attention when you do, and you've definitely never called your Congresspeople to complain about their votes, so you probably don't really care that much about whatever it is you say you care about, since you haven't done the easiest thing you can do to make a change.
It's not perfect, and no criteria will be, but there are tons of people who can rattle off "executive, legislative, judiciary" who nevertheless don't know ball.
Or, you know, you haven't lived at the same address for twenty years. In your imagined world where every single citizen either has something so pressing to call their representatives about or is just ignorant, you're still basically filtering out everybody who moved for a job/college/SO/whatever recently. I guess in your mind it's only fitting that they're disqualified from having an opinion? For reference about 12% of Americans change residence each year.
That is not due to age or illness, it is due to enshittification. Not by the admin but by the populace.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I’d throw in for free that when you’re done at a party… say goodbye to your friends and leave. The party in general doesn’t need an announcement of your dissatisfaction and departure. Safe travels.
I've never called anyone about anything political, and I also haven't lived at the same address (or even in the same state) for 20 years but I still know at least who my senators are and some of my representatives. State elections are every two years; you have to almost actively not pay attention to not know anything about yours.
Feels disingenuous to ignore the fact that what I said applies to the rest of the comment too, don't you think? If it isn't obvious: typically the first year after a move - likely more, at least until House elections - most people will have zero reason to know their representatives' names, let alone keep remembering it for years. Who ever forgets a name they learned during a campaign a couple years ago, right?
For starters, something like almost ~half of students move away from their families to attend college. And then look at moves for jobs and retirement and everything else. And then when an incumbent leaves, all of their constituents end up in a similar boat as someone who just moved. And I'm not even beginning to touch the fact that a lot of people's unawareness of politics is (spoiler, I know) due to them not having the luxury to be able to devote as much bandwidth to it as HNers do. All these people shouldn't have any political opinions whatsoever until they figure out their representatives because... some wise guy on HN thinks knowing your representative's name is a good litmus test for whether you can tell good from bad? Do you expect any other response than "screw you"?
> I've never called anyone about anything political
Quite a confession given the side you're standing on. You'd think such a model citizen would've at least cared to contact their rep one damn time to suggest something about such a serious issue. Like maybe helping educate people about the government and politics better so they become as enlightened as the others.
If you (and/or parent, whoever feels this way) genuinely want a good outcome for something so serious instead of standing on a high horse and looking down on the uneducated, maybe actually go campaign to put your lovely literacy tests in the constitution, or whatever else would advance your cause forward. If you have some integrity, perhaps also campaign to fund the education system better and make it easier for citizens to vote in the same amendment, so that you're actually helping the people you presumably care about. Until you actually do something meaningful about this, I hope you can understand that your opinions about who should have opinions really won't come across the way you'd presumably hope they do.
Then quote the whole thing your responding to, otherwise your response seems disproportionately overreacting.
> For starters, something like almost ~half of students move away from their families to attend college. And then look at moves for jobs and retirement and everything else. And then when an incumbent leaves, all of their constituents end up in a similar boat as someone who just moved. And I'm not even beginning to touch the fact that a lot of people's unawareness of politics is (spoiler, I know) due to them not having the luxury to be able to devote as much bandwidth to it as HNers do.
I am very aware of that situation. I moved away from my home town and state for school, I moved cities post college three times, and I am now quite literally in the middle of a move to another state. While I won't pretend that I'll immediately get into the weeds of local city politics, I've still participated in local politics and I will participate in politics in my new city/state come this fall.
>All these people shouldn't have any political opinions whatsoever until they figure out their representatives because... some wise guy on HN thinks knowing your representative's name is a good litmus test for whether you can tell good from bad? Do you expect any other response than "screw you"?
Consider the context of the comment: "do you know who represents you in Congress [...]. If not, you probably don't vote or don't pay attention when you do, and you've definitely never called your Congresspeople to complain about their votes, so you probably don't really care that much about whatever it is you say you care about, since you haven't done the easiest thing you can do to make a change."
If you don't know the names of your representatives you can't vote for them. Seems pretty straight forward to me. I think it's pretty fair to say if you're complaining about a political situation but haven't even voted about it you probably haven't tried that hard.
> Quite a confession given the side you're standing on. You'd think such a model citizen would've at least cared to contact their rep one damn time to suggest something about such a serious issue. Like maybe helping educate people about the government and politics better so they become as enlightened as the others.
To be clear, I've contacted my representatives plenty of times, I just haven't called them. I hate phone calls. But I have written emails, physical letters, and on several occasions spoke to them in person at events to express my issues.
> If you (and/or parent, whoever feels this way) genuinely want a good outcome for something so serious instead of standing on a high horse and looking down on the uneducated, maybe actually go campaign to put your lovely literacy tests in the constitution, or whatever else would advance your cause forward. If you have some integrity, perhaps also campaign to fund the education system better and make it easier for citizens to vote in the same amendment, so that you're actually helping the people you presumably care about.
1. I have campaigned for better education funding; I used to work in higher education.
2. No one mentioned literacy tests, so I have a suspicion there's a lot of background context in your head that you're imposing here. Either way, I have no interest in them.
The names are printed on the ballot, along with party affiliation. No memorization needed. In a primary there may be a bit of research needed, but even then you get a sample ballot beforehand so you can research the alternatives, but when the final election happens you generally only have two choices in the US per position and you simply vote for your party of choice.
I want to discourage voting blindingly by party affiliation. Personally I think you should at least know the general ideas and policies of the candidate(s) you're choosing, even though given the current political state the US it's foolish to vote for one of the parties, but even besides that how hard is it to remember their name so you can check if they actually follow through with anything? I'm not expecting perfection, but for example I know my senators names so whenever there's a big vote I can at least scan the list of supporters and see if I should be pissed at them or not. That lets me have at least a general vibe towards them come primaries and election season and whether I vote for their re-election.
> In a primary there may be a bit of research needed, but even then you get a sample ballot beforehand so you can research the alternatives,
Technically out of scope from OP's original point, but there's also a variety of local elections that can have multiple candidates per party. But either way, that "bit of research" with a sample ballot is all I'm really asking for out of people. These days they're tons of great voters guides out there too that include short Q&A's with each candidate for each hot topic issue, policy standpoints, etc. Because so many people just vote by party affiliation arguably the primaries and local elections are the most impactful votes you can do.
This seemed wise thirty years ago. I'm in a blue state that never had much of a problem electing republican officials up to and including the governor, and that worked well for us because every politician clearly and obviously put the state ahead of their party.
> given the current political state the US it's foolish to vote for one of the parties
It worked well for us until now. Today your call for ignoring party affiliation asks us to also ignore insurrection and child rape. That's asking too much, and I'm surprised you had the gametes to even float the idea.
> It worked well for us until now. Today your call for ignoring party affiliation asks us to also ignore insurrection and child rape. That's asking too much, and I'm surprised you had the gametes to even float the idea.
You know, I really debated on including that line because I suspected someone would misinterpret it, but I figured it would be a sorta of subtle reference to show I wasn't trying to "both sides are equally bad" type of situation. I guess I was too subtle.
To put it clearly, the party it's foolish to vote for is the Republicans. I thought that was obvious given that broad state of things. However, I also think that people don't pay attention to the primaries or local elections just Vote Blue No Matter Who on election day, then get surprised we've end up with a bunch of milquetoast centralist Democrats instead of people willing to make changes like Mamdani or El-Sayed.
This one for me. I have my own viewpoints and when elections come around I look up the candidates to see who best matches, then once the election is over forget pretty quickly. Unless politics is your entertainment it seems completely normal to not keep their names in mind.
I agree with you on governors and senators but it's very easy not to learn who your other representatives are, because it requires close attention to detailed street by street maps that change every census.
I'm willing to take a softer stance than OP's start and be okay with just knowing basically any of your representatives i.e. some combination of your two senators and one or more representatives.
The general point being that simplistic rules can be great heuristics, but turning them into strict logical conditions is doomed to failure. Even about simple "fizzbuzz" style things.
Imagine a Marxist who refuses to discuss economics with anyone who can't explain dialectic materialism or enclosure.
One simply does not have infinite time and resource to engage with everybody.
Aware what you have filtered and don't treat them like idiot
Turning ideologically crazy sounds like something that would also happen if you only talk to people who have the same extreme beliefs.
This is likely quite a large group.
Note that when I say "talk politics" I really mean "discuss things controlled by politicians", not "discuss politicians". If you mean the latter it is a super fair bar to set!
It's the fizzbuzz of political debate.
I see what you're getting at, but I think you need to refine your test a bit. I don't know who my representatives are off the top of my head, and I actually have contacted them within the last 6 months! It's just not information that has stuck in my brain. Likewise, I both vote and pay attention when I vote - I do some research on candidates' policy positions and (if applicable) their track records on issues that matter to me. But if you asked me to name them, I would still be helpless without looking that info up.
I think what you're trying to get at is "does this person actually engage with representatives and pay attention when voting", but memorizing the names of your representatives is not 1:1 with that. Some people will be engaged and not have the names memorized, and others will have the names memorized but be disengaged.
Just because liberals tend to end up in the in-group doesn’t mean the test is bad. It means liberals are doing better (in this one specific regard, civics knowledge).