We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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What people vote for I occasionally come across comments, usually expressed with a sort of “how terrible!” undertone, that more people recently voted in the X-Factor singing talent show on the ITV station in the UK than voted in the 2005 General Election. But there is another way of looking at it: the fact that more people care to vote for their favourite singer than the various types of authoritarian statist twerp in fact shows that the Great British public have a healthy set of priorities.
In case any commenter sniffs at my possibly making nice comments about the X-Factor, I don’t like the show, although I find that there is something gruesomely compelling about Simon Cowell and some of the acts.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
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You’re probably right. But if it was as easy to vote for politicians as the TV companies make it to vote for contestants, maybe there would be more who vote?
Certainly the politicians would like the greater opportunities for rigging and fraud. And if you told them that they got a share of the takings from all those phone charges…
It’s one of those things people say in pubs and it’s not really true. 27 million people voted in the last general election. There were 10 million votes for the X Factor final (and some people vote more than once).
If you add up all the votes over the course of a series I suppose it would exceed 27 million, but that be comparing apples with oranges.
At least you won’t get fined if you don’t vote. Our Australian system compels attendance at a polling booth. They make it a Saturday for convenience, but that’s all that can be said for it. I wonder how much of a carbon footprint they could reduce by making attendance non compulsory?
Nuke: do you know of anyone (in Oz) who refused to vote, refused to pay the fine, challenged the law in court and went to jail?
I understand you have to pay to vote on the X-factor – something like 50p-£1.00 Can you imagine the outcry if you had to pay £1.00 to vote in a general election?
I think one or two people have gone to prison briefly for contempt of court over not voting, but only after actively courting this as an attempt to make an example of themselves. If you don’t vote, you receive a letter a few weeks later stating that you have been fined. (For federal elections the fine is $20. In state and local elections it varies depending on the jurisdiction, but it is always small). Alternately you can return the enclosed form, giving a reason why you did not vote. Generally they will accept almost any reason. “I was travelling”, and “I was sick” are the most common reasons, but “I forgot” is also accepted, I believe. “I am ideologically opposed to compulsory voting” no doubt happens, and they probably accept that, too.
If you just ignore the letter, they “may” prosecute you and drag you to court and increase the fine, but in practice they don’t. If this was to happen and you then refused to pay the fine, you could theoretically be sent to prison, but it would require a lot of insistence on your part, as the government would repeatedly try to drop the matter along the way.
It’s a common practice in Australia for state governments to withdraw the driver’s licences of people who refuse to pay fines for minor offences rather than sending them to prison. This could theoretically happen for not voting and then refusing to pay the fine. Again, though, I have not evidence that this has actually happened to anyone.
And if you are not on the electoral roll in the first place, nothing happens other than you receive a few letters saying you are required to be on the electoral roll.
One can easily go through your whole life in Australia without voting and suffering no consequences. Voting is theoretically compulsory, but little if any force is used to back up that compulsion.
I still think that compulsory voting is wrong – it does increase the participation level in elections and Australian governments like high participation rates because it increases their view of their own legitimacy. I wouldn’t say I get that worked up about it though, at least not in the form it takes in Australia.
Michael Jennings: “Voting is theoretically compulsory, but little if any force is used to back up that compulsion.”
No, Michael. Voting is not compulsory; but attendance at the polling place is. (If you think about it, you cannot have compulsory voting AND a secret ballot.)
Your comment about taking drivers’ licences away was echoed the other day here in Perth on the ABC when a fellow from the Electoral Commission was asked about the large number of voters who refused to turn up for the referendum on daylight saving. His view was that it is a means of last resort … but he did not deny that it could be used (though to his credit, he seemed opposed to the notion).
The real implication:
What are the composition and motivations of the electorate to BE the electorate.
Why do those who do vote, vote?
Can we tell why from analysis of the how?
We certainly have nothing like that to go by on thsoe who could but don’t vote.
The root of the problems about “statism,” “government,” “nannyism.” and the general trends toward preferences of collectivisms with supposed (but ineffectual) relief from personal responsibilities probably lies in the type of representation that those who do vote think they want and think they will get.
It is universal, even in tribal-based societies whose forms of “voting” (more often bullets than ballots) differ.
Thank you Michael. I think of the examples of King and Ghandi – people on mass breaking the law on clear moral purpose and communicating this effectively.
For a libertarian to choose to vote is – if not quite a contradiction in terms – still a very poor method of cutting back state interference.
For libertarians to hold organized street protests with police approval totally misses the point and in any case we’re all productive people with jobs who don’t want to be slapped across the telly at tea time.
For libertarians to write and persuade others is good but, in the scale of things, small.
King and Ghandi – whatever else may be said about their politics – both offer historical precedents for a method of defeating government. Of course, neither of these men were dealing with utter monsters as would have been the case of the people in Eastern Europe, China and elsewhere (e.g. US under the Joker?). Moreover, neither men led mass movements of the relatively well off middle classes – none of their supporters had a pot to piss in and that was by and large why they were on their feet in the first place.
I wonder whether the example of King and Ghandi is repeatable in western countries today, or whether, as I suspect, things will become a lot worse before people will be willing to run the risks required.
The latter.
Frank Devine refused to pay, and then he died. I’m sure there’s a lesson for us all in that, somewhere.
Yes, indeed. He refused to pay, and then died of cancer at age 77. These things are related, obviously.
Yes of course Alisa – what gnaws at me is the thought that Ghandi was opposed to the British whilst King was opposed to the Americans (the two most civilized – and perhaps crucially, still largely Christian, nations in the world, not counting Oz, NZ and two or three other places). Things have changed since then, and are changing faster still. Ghandi must have known the British would be very unlikely to just shoot him and his following thousands on their salt march, but how unlikely will the British and American governments be to resort to force in the future when confronted with a mass movement breaking their laws? How much would cameras and the internet be worth then? Would a future confrontation be best led by a Ghandi? Or will it have to be a modern way of Washington, i.e. we kill you in your sleep after your Christmas party?
But my version sounds better, Michael!
The figures are skewed because, outside of Northern Ireland, one is only allowed to vote once.
Perhaps people would take voting seriously if there was a direct price tag associated with it.
I’m thinking somewhere in the order of $500 / EUR 300.
Perhaps we’d have a more involved electorate that’d be more willing to (figuratively only of course) hang the politicians who weren’t working for the country’s best interest.
With the no-cost of voting, we have an uninterested electorate that votes for whomever looks best on tv.
Oh, to make it truly effective, the monies collected should be used to pay for the election costs, and whatever was left over would be used for the salaries and expenses of those who were elected, amortized over five years
Now *there* are some powerful motivators…
–GJ–