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Comment by visakanv | Hacker News Reader

> Do people really think like this? All you have to do is "pay your dues" and you "deserve" it instead of voting on issues, track record & potential to make real change?

Yes. Source: Click around the Facebook comments of any substantially large digital publication. Tonnes of people don't even vote. Of those that do, most vote for the parties they're already loyal to. Of the few that are in the middle, most decide according to whatever is fashionable. It's a vanishingly small few that bother to evaluate issues, track records, etc.

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I get voting on party - what scares me is voting on someone because they "paid their dues" - which is especially mind boggling when you look at people's approval ratings of those same candidates in their previous jobs (typically congress - which is hanging out at around 16%).

Voting on party scares me - especially in a system where there are only two.

Sorry - that also scares me. What is even worse (in my opinion) is people voting on candidates based on last names (which seems to be the trend lately) - especially when that's seen or used as a positive aspect.

Or voting against candidates based on their last names. Let's be intellectually consistent here..

You can be consistently against dynastic tendencies of an institution.

I think the "paid their dues" thing is meant to be necessary but not sufficient. That is, a lot of people would be cautious of voting for someone who had no significant political experience.

Except for our current president, when he ran in 2008?

He was a state senator for 7 years, and a US senator for 4.

why the downvotes? Most people wouldn't consider half a term in congress significant experience. I can't think of many presidents with less. That doesn't mean he did a terrible job or was completely unqualified or anything of the sort. It's just a statement of fact that he didn't have very much experience at the time. Frankly, even though I disagree with his views on most things, I don't think he's actually done that badly. He hasn't done great IMO mind you, but I'm mostly content with how things have gone the last 6 years.

Congress as an institution has an approval rating of 16%. The average Senator or Representative has a much higher approval rating.

Congress has a shitty approval rating, but the most representatives get voted into office by a decent margin. People hate everybody else's reps.

Yes, because their reps bring pork from D.C. back to their district. Who does not like a new school built/paid for by Fed money? Voters don't realize that the money is actually the tax money that they themselves paid into the system.

It is all very calculated, and in my opinion, is the epicenter of what's broken in the US political system.

I don't know how calculated it is, it seems it's one of those things that developed and people smart enough to realise what's happening decided it's a-ok with them.

But, yeah, the disconnect is huge. I've seen Americans on the internet brag about not taking advantage of unemployment benefits, completely ignoring that they spent years paying into them for that exact reason. And, to be honest, ever since I've started looking at the government as an entity that I've outsourced a lot of my needs/wants to (roads, physical safety, parks, etc), I've been a lot happier paying taxes.

People disapprove of Congress as a whole, but tend to like their individual Representatives and Senators. You don't vote your guy out of office just because the other 532 jerks in Congress you can't vote for or against don't let things run your way.

Wouldn't you like Alexis Tsipras a little better if he'd spent more time wearing out chairs in Brussels, eating canapés and learning what leads to results and what leads to nothing worthwhile? I mean, before he started attending really serious meetings where failure is serious?

Most people are becoming desensitized to the power of their vote to actually do the research as to who is the better candidate. Nobody seems to care as long as they are not directly affected in their day to day life. Reactions flare up for issues which become popular in the social domain, the issue settles and everybody forgets and moves on

We are all terrible at decision making especially on complex issues. I would guess that people doing deep 'research' are still making shortcuts as well (they just don't realize it). The key here is that the aggregate of terrible individual decisions should point to a better overall decision. Which is why increasing turnout is really important

Obligatory plug for "isidewith." It's the one thing I've seen make people actually vote for the candidate that represents their views:

http://www.isidewith.com/political-quiz

I agree. I believe this site is excellent.

It's very sad that people only vote their party. People need to learn to cross the line when it makes sense to. We are nearly perfectly split down the middle. This is a weak position to be in.

Well, it looks to me like people rarely vote for a candidate. More often, they're voting against a candidate because they believe that the other team is evil and must be stopped.

And it should be obvious that we're already in the end game for this strategy: if you vote against the other guy because he's evil, then your guy doesn't need to be good, he just needs to be perceived as slightly less evil. So it becomes a race to the bottom.

The cause of this seems to me to be the forced gerrymandering of voting districts so we don't get a meaningful voice in politics (other than as implied by the color of our skin, which is what the voting rights act requires).

But I think that, while getting rid of gerrymandering is a necessary part of any solution, the ultimate fix is to do away with the institutionalized two-party system. If today's problem is that the decision is binary (if I hate A then I must choose B), then offering three or more choices forces some thought and decision (at the very least: I know I hate A, but is B or C a better alternative?).

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