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miriam_eI've been thinking about why democracy doesn't seem to work the way we all feel it should. It occurred to me that one of the central obstacles is the fact that we are usually given an impossible choice at election time: vote for one of two liars.
In Australia this approach is very clearly wrong. It is well known that in Australia we tend to vote governments out not in. Yet each time a new government gets power it believes its own bullshit and says that it won and that it now has a mandate to bring in certain changes. In Australia this is a big mistake. Generally we have actually voted a government out and the new government is there only because they didn't lose as badly.
So how can this be fixed? If we have another choice on voting forms, "None of the above", then we can ensure that we don't have to vote a liar in accidentally. It means that they can just keep holding elections till a candidate is found who genuinely reflects what the people want. Yes this would be incredibly expensive (especially in USA, where the cost of elections has spiralled way beyond sane limits) but that would help correct the process that currently selects self-serving corrupt liars. Investing billions on a pair of "opposing" easily manipulated morons would be less likely if people could simply say "no".
At the moment in Australia, where voting is compulsory, we have the "donkey" vote or the "informal" vote where people can attempt to display their disgust at the candidates, but these end up being simply discarded. We have no genuine way to have our contempt for bad candidates to be recorded. In the USA it is even worse. People think they can protest by simply not voting, but that doesn't work either, as Reagan's "landslide victory" where he was elected by only 27% of the population shows.
We need true democracy, not a choice between which liar will screw us over.
Additional: I've become unsure of my "27%" figure. I keep thinking it was less, like 12%... but I have big problems remembering numbers. I searched on the net to try and find out what it was, but the truth has been so distorted by the politicians all I can find are figures on the way the votes split, with feverish babble about what a great victory it was, ignoring that it was really a new low point, with so few people voting. Reagan was elected by a pitiful minority and I think it has been the case for every election since, made worse in recent years by the theft of what few votes were actually cast.
In Australia this approach is very clearly wrong. It is well known that in Australia we tend to vote governments out not in. Yet each time a new government gets power it believes its own bullshit and says that it won and that it now has a mandate to bring in certain changes. In Australia this is a big mistake. Generally we have actually voted a government out and the new government is there only because they didn't lose as badly.
So how can this be fixed? If we have another choice on voting forms, "None of the above", then we can ensure that we don't have to vote a liar in accidentally. It means that they can just keep holding elections till a candidate is found who genuinely reflects what the people want. Yes this would be incredibly expensive (especially in USA, where the cost of elections has spiralled way beyond sane limits) but that would help correct the process that currently selects self-serving corrupt liars. Investing billions on a pair of "opposing" easily manipulated morons would be less likely if people could simply say "no".
At the moment in Australia, where voting is compulsory, we have the "donkey" vote or the "informal" vote where people can attempt to display their disgust at the candidates, but these end up being simply discarded. We have no genuine way to have our contempt for bad candidates to be recorded. In the USA it is even worse. People think they can protest by simply not voting, but that doesn't work either, as Reagan's "landslide victory" where he was elected by only 27% of the population shows.
We need true democracy, not a choice between which liar will screw us over.
Additional: I've become unsure of my "27%" figure. I keep thinking it was less, like 12%... but I have big problems remembering numbers. I searched on the net to try and find out what it was, but the truth has been so distorted by the politicians all I can find are figures on the way the votes split, with feverish babble about what a great victory it was, ignoring that it was really a new low point, with so few people voting. Reagan was elected by a pitiful minority and I think it has been the case for every election since, made worse in recent years by the theft of what few votes were actually cast.