Very interesting article about the new film by Michale Moore by The Intercept:
This film.
It makes me think seriously about expatriating to Norway or something.
I really like the graphic in that article, which reiterates the message in the film:
63 million Americans voted for Trump.
66 million Americans voted for Clinton.
…
100 million Americans did not vote at all.
That’s astounding, and ridiculous in a free democracy. It shows clearly that our political system has become deeply flawed when 44% of Americans eligible to vote don’t consider their votes worth casting.
Well, might not be for long, so…
Well and for not a small number of them this decision is not entirely irrational. What is the marginal value of that vote in the Bay Area, or Topeka, or Birmingham, or Boston? For many of these people their votes are entirely irrelevant at any level, gerrymandering and the electoral college make it so. There are only a few places where votes genuinely matter.
Voters in Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin mattered a lot. There a small number of voters could make a difference. But I’d wager that for something like 50% of the population or more, voting has zero impact other than for things like local mayors and stuff.
Add in all the ways some try to make it more difficult and inconvenient for certain groups?
Voting should be like jury duty. I have to go to jury duty, but I don’t have to vote? Ridiculous.
I don’t know, I’d rather those with no interest in voting or what it entails abstain rather than pick a name out of a hat or worse, choose a troll candidate like Trump.
That’s hardly new. There have been been only a handful of elections in the last hundred years where more than 60% of elegibile adults actually voted. Those were in 1916, 1952, and 60/64/68. If 56% voted in 2016, that would make it one of the higher-turnout elections of the past few decades.
I’m not saying it’s good, mind you. I’m saying it is not at all unusual or new, so it has little to do with what our current ‘political system’ has become.
Voter turnout in the modern era, from Wikipedia:
In a free democracy, you’re free to not vote I guess.