> Date sent: Thu, 5 Sep 1996 12:12:32 -0700 (PDT)
> Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mike Lynch)
> Subject: [PEN-L:5968] voter turnout
>
> > The key to the whole issue is that only 40-50 percent of the
> > electorate in the U.S. bothers to vote on election day. In the last
> > elections barely 40 percent voted. The pollsters and the party
> > strategeists know that these are the people that count. Most
> > of these are upper middle class people. When the papers say
> > "center" they mean the center of this minority which in the end
> > decides the elections.
>
> I couldn't agree more. Voter turnout at elections is
> worryingly low.
>
> In Britain, in the last general election (9 April 1992)
> about 3 in 4 adults turned out to vote. The Conservative
> Party was re-elected with 42 percent of the votes compared
> to Labour's 35 percent.
>
> I feel that if the turnout had been higher, say 85-90 percent
> rather than 75%, then Labour would have had a much better
> cahnce of defeating the right-wing Conservative government in the
> election.
>
> When voter turnout is low, then I feel this helps the the right-wing.
> As is quite rightly pointed out in the passage I
> quoted above, those who bother to vote when the turnout is low
> are often the richer segments of society. They will then continue
> to excercise a disproportionate influence in politics because they
> are far more likely to vote than poorer people.
>
> I sometimes feel that to get elected, left-wing politicians
> needn't "move to the centre". Instead, they should encourage
> more working-class voters to turn out to vote and so they will
> be able to win that way.
>
> --
> Michael
Response: And then on the other hand, in addition to those who do not
vote out of shere apathy and laziness, there are those who feel that
a non-vote is a vote because:
a) the option of "none of the above" is not an option that will
register except implicitly in some cases by not voting;
b) the "lesser of evils" is still evil;
c) we do not even have the "lesser of evils" but rather the "evil of
lessers";
d) voting only encourages the politicians to believe they have a
"mandate" and do even worse crimes;
e) voting encourages the spin doctors and manipulators/developers of
sophisticated technologies for mind/soul control and manipulation;
f) As Plato noted "Those who seek power are invariably the least fit
to wield it." and anyone who runs for office automatically indicts
himself/herself as a narcissist, megalomaniac, manipulator, liar,
control freak, suffering from dellusions of grandeur and a
Napoleanic/Messianic complex and/or is a complete fool thinking they
can win without being all of the above and/or is a complete fool
thinking they can make a difference when surrounded by parasites who
possess all of the previously-mentioned traits and impulses;
Jim Craven
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