Will voting become obsolete?

Time to be real: representative democracy has always been muddy. Public opinion is easily manipulated by the press, and even if you overlook that, campaign finance ensures that a politician must sell out to one of the Great lobbies in order to survive even a term.

Now, corporations have virtual veto power over candidates and their policies. And since they can donate unlimited funds, we have ceased to be a "base". We're now demoted...well, spear-carriers is an ugly term.

Voting is a wasteful, cynical farce. Even I, an naive idealist with a rote, faint-hearted allegiance to democracy, cannot deny this fact.

So I was just wondering, is there any point to us spinning our wheels like this every November?

Pretending we have power.

I have an option though...random selection. Why not put Congress up for a Lottery?

Shit, it already is.

That's a good idea. I'd advocate an Athens-style lottery, except most Americans can't be trusted to find their state on a map, let alone balance the budget. Lottery amongst who? Yale graduates?

Hell no, graduating from college should exclude you.

Let's make it kindergarten students.

Nursery students? No! You can't bring the intelligence of the rulers up too much without causing massive governmental problems.

Look, I've got some goldfish here, you can borrow them for a bit.

I believe in Chief Justice Fish.

Well... at least with this system you have the option of voting someone out if they really do something terrible. I mean, its not much but at least its there. Nothing worse than a situation where not only is your leadership corrupt, incompetent, and with his claws in just about every facet of the nation, but you don't even have the legal means to peacefully remove him.

Democracy at least gives peace a chance. Its essentially a guard against civil war.

I voted for President Pet Rock.

Voting will be obsolete if people don't actually vote. Voting will remain if people do actually vote. Voting will become more efficient if people are educated about this stuff but I figure that's asking a lot.

Long story short, reconfigure the values of the people.

BTW, if anybody wants a story to read, Ministry of Disturbance is how H. Beam Piper covered it.

Compulsory voting, plus a move towards more direct democracy would be ideal. [1] Much more than this. We need direct democracy in our communities and workplaces too ideally.

Let's make voting required for those who can.

Try a Ministry for Enabling Extrapolitical Activism. A government ministry devoted to telling people how:

• to organize strikes and large scale boycotts of business interests with too much influence over government.
• to find out which business interests have too much influence over government, with handy databases.
• to set up, judge, and use reliable sources of alternative media.

along with as much other stuff and support such a department could give them. Make it nonpartisan, and only allowed to deny its services to violent movements. Democratic voting is not the only way to give a populace power over the political system.

In my country it's possible you will be fined $20 AUS for not voting, because voting is mandatory here.

You'd be amazed how effective this is in getting people to vote, I mean, when it comes to choosing between voting and not having $20, it's not a hard choice to make, only the choices of electable candidates are.

What...why do you think that will help? If they didn't want to vote, why would they make a good decision when they were forced to? I prefer the US and our lousy voter turnout to this.

I still think we should elect our officials via trial by combat.

Democracy at gunpoint.

But wouldn't that also force those who shouldn't vote, like those who would otherwise vote uninformed?

Of course, most people don't even realize they don't know what they're voting for, which is the biggest danger of democracy, so it would hardly change anything on that part.

"Democracy at gunpoint."

Except not. Nobody is going to force you into the voting booth.

Increased information for voters and compulsory voting do help democracy a lot.

It works even better with a wide range of choice, of course, not just two parties, but...

Technically, Australians don't have to vote.

What we have to do is turn up to a polling place, get our named ticked off the electoral roll, pick up the ballots and put them in the ballot box.

You don't actually have to write anything on the ballots, let alone anything that would constitute a legitimate vote. But people typically do because if you've gone that far, you may as well.

So conscientiously objecting from voting in Australia is still possible. It's just a little more convoluted than normal.

That's what we call, in France, the difference between blank votes and abstentions.

The problem is, none of them have any influence on the final vote (which makes "protest abstention" or blank votes an absurdity that put a megalomaniac tyrant-wannabe in power here).

What happens if you don't gp and refuse to pay?

Think it through.