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Voting
or How I Learned To Stop Worrying Until Once Every Few Years.
It annoys me that people think voting is the only way to ever change anything in government, especially considering corporations sink plenty of money into lobbying and influencing decision making. And there's only so much you can change when you let other people make decisions for you. In this aspect, I have to give Occupy Wall Street credit; despite the media's best efforts to discredit the movement, they're making themselves heard.
That's not even getting into the whole "wasted vote" bullshit, which is incidentally what made me interested in the "Don't vote, organize" slogan. SOPA also inspired this thread, for the obvious reason that it's a prime example of government not giving a damn about what others think.
Comments
In any event, I think that telling anyone who is eligible to not vote is a really bad idea. Even if some votes might be worth more than others in the sense that some elections are closer than others, I believe that voting is about more than just the actual results of an election. I feel like casting a ballot also is a kind of civic duty and that it is a direct way of expressing your opinion.
Yeah, I guess that sounds pretty lame, but it bugs me when I hear about people not voting because they think it is a hassle, because they are not wild about any of the candidates, or because they are just super cynical about the process itself. As far as I can tell, the best way to avoid getting your voice heard is to not vote. For evidence of that phenomenon, I would look no further than how much government stuff goes towards the elderly, a group that (from what I have read) tends to vote in large numbers.
I think what people fail to realize are that there are not two basic states to opinion but three. Sure, you can be yes or no on an issue, but the more subtle third option is actually "no response", and this is basically what you get when you don't pester a politician for a position on an issue, or if the issue does not come up in a vote, or if you don't go vote yourself.
Thing is, while legislatures in the United States typically have quorum requirements for getting stuff passed (e.g. have to have at least 60% attendance, or something like that), there is no similar requirement for voters getting people elected, ballot items passed, or something like that. For one, having a voter registration system seems pretty popular, so there's a drop-off from total number of voting-eligible citizens to total number of registered voters. (The exception is North Dakota where there is no voter registration.) Then you get another drop-off from registered voters to actual voters.
That said, what successes has Switzerland demonstrated?
And, uh, you know Switzerland - very prosperous, stable, peaceful, neutral, contacts everywhere...?
Or maybe that last one was the Caribbean bank account.
And besides - I never claimed direct democracy makes anything super-efficient. Switzerland just shows you can have it without everything crushing down. Direct democracy would IMO be an end all in itself.
(No pun intended.)