Did not vote includes a significant number of disenfranchised people who were denied the ability to vote through having the right to vote taken from them, voting suppression barriers such as lines that were 8+ hours long, removal from voter registries, bullshit ID requirements, and other malicious actions.
Democracy!
People don’t understand that high numbers of people not voting is a symptom of a problem, not a problem itself.
It’s such a good metric to have and unless you’re a fan of authoritarian governments then I don’t see why you would want mandatory voting. “Everything is fine in our country. Look at all of this engagement in our elections that we forced.” That’s what you sound like if you full on back mandatory voting.
We reallyyyy need ranked choice voting
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Hey there, Mr. Glass Houseman.
Votes don’t magically give someone the power to rule you. The only thing that rules you is what you are willing or not willing to sacrifice. After you voted against Trump, and your team lost, did you put your body upon the gears and upon the wheels, did you stop the machine from working?
Or did you throw up your hands, donate a pittance to the party that lost? Did you wait patiently for four years for another chance, all the while being a well-oiled cog in the Orphan Crushing Machine with Trump now at the lead? If the people who didn’t vote caused Trump to be elected, then it must also be true that everyone who continued to cooperate with the government after January 20 are complicit in everything that Trump did while in office. Do you feel shame for all the fucked up shit you enabled?
What a childish take.
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wait wth are you even saying… if people who didn’t vote helped TFG to win, then people who did vote against him were complicit in what he did? wtf kind of logic is that?
TIL 21st century has actually improved participation in comparation with late 20th century
Clinton/Gore was the first election I was eligible to vote but I was not yet responsible enough to register and actually figure out voting. I never voted until W’s second term, I disliked him enough to finally vote and have not missed an election since.
Same
I regret it but what can you do. We were young and dumb.
I’m not from the US and don’t know much about your politics, please explain to me how the party with less votes can win.
I’m not from the US, either. But from what i understand, the issues comes from the US having a “first past the post” voting system on a state level. The President is not elected by the percentage of votes, but each of the 50 states gets assigned a number of electors, based on their population. When a party/candidate has won the majority of votes within a state, they will receive all the electoral votes of that state.
Here’s a simplified example of how that works: Let’s assume 3 states with an equal ammount of inhabitants (let pop=1 million) and an equal ammount of electoral votes (let el=10)
State 1 has:
600.000 votes for candidate A (60%)
400.000 votes for candidate B (40%)State 2 has:
200.000 votes for candidate A (20%)
800.000 votes for candidate B (80%)State 3 has:
510.000 votes for candidate A (51%)
490.000 votes for candidate B (49%)candidate A has received a total of 1.310.000 votes (~44%)
candidate B has received a total of 1.690.000 votes (~56%)
candidate B has won the popular vote, because most people voted for them.However, candidate A won the majority in States 1 and 3. So candidate A will receive all 20 electoral votes of those states (which they won by only a comparitively small margin), whereas candidate B will receive only 10 from State 2 (which they won by a landslide).
As a result, candidate A will become the next president.Thats sad…
The U.S. was founded by slavers, and in order to preserve the rights of white men to own slaves, they built several anti-democratic institutions into the constitution of the new country. Northern states had fewer slaves and more voters, while southern states has more people but most of them weren’t allowed to vote. A one-person one-vote system that included slaves would result in the end of slavery. A one-person one-vote system that excluded slaves would give most of the political power to the north, and would probably end slavery. So to make sure people could continue to be deprived of their humanity, the electoral college was invented.
All states were given votes in the college proportional to their population, with slaves counting as 3/5 of a person. This gave greater power to the plantation owning whites who were responsible for ratifying the constitution, and insured nothing short of a civil war could end their reign of terror.
After the civil war the electoral college remained, and continues to distort the popular vote.
I’m not from the US either, but I’ve seen enough to attempt answering this.
They have two voting systems
- popular vote
- electoral college vote
Popular vote is the easily corruptible people going out and voting after a long period of politicians lying their teeth off face to face.
Electoral college vote is a bunch of easily corruptible fuckwits who vote with whoever pays best, regardless of popular voting.
Electoral college vote seems to matter more than popular vote. Not sure how or why. So less popular candidates can win because fuck the people, I guess.
Needs to be a National holiday
It doesn’t, really. It just needs to be easier to vote, and for a longer period of time. Here in Sweden it’s not a national holiday, but you can vote up to like a month in advance all over the place and it takes like 5 minutes if you do that. You can stop by on your way home from work or to the grocery store no problem, or on your lunch break. If you go on election day it might take you up to 30 minutes if there’s a line.
Then poor people would have 1 more holiday to work.
I don’t get the hate for non-voters. Mandatory voting is a dangerous practice due to the existence of the “donkey” vote.
Imagine if even 2/3s of the people who didn’t vote in 2020 just voted for DT because he was the current sitting president and they had no interest in voting but were forced into doing so.
The only people I’m really upset with are the ones who have a clear viewpoint and understanding of the circumstances but didn’t vote out of laziness or out of the belief that we’d win anyways. Those are the people that cost us 2016 and those are the ones that could potential cost us this election if they don’t get out there.
As someone who comes from a country where voting is mandatory is just baffles me that someone wouldn’t vote. Those in Australia who avoid voting and get their $20 fine are considered on the same level as those uncles who hoard silver “because it’s the only legal tender” and then get arrested for exposing themselves to a high school student.
Unfortunately, I am a disenfranchised voter. I live in a very red state with very red history, and even our blue is significantly more purple. When my best case scenario is being gerrymandered into a district, where I vote for someone with no obligation to their position that are at least 51% against my interest for a slightly better scenario, that with high certainty will not flip for at least 12 more years. It’s the hope that kills you, I’m anticipating down votes but consider this objectively and demand something better!
Perot. So much potential. Imagine having a 3 party system…
… On the other hand. He sounds like the Trump of his day.
Now I wonder how many votes Trump would get if he ran as an independent
No, it didn’t. Not voting isn’t “against all” it’s “idgaf, even if the Nazi wins I’m cool with that”.
I feel there’s also a difference between the people who didn’t want to vote intentionally, and the people who just don’t care to vote but pretend they do.
I see a lot of people talking shit about governments but then don’t know when election day is / aren’t signed up.
TIL: there was a third group you could vote in the us.
That’s so disappointing. As a citizen it is your right and duty to vote. You cannot complain about the state of your country if you didn’t vote, as you aren’t doing anything to change it
