A great deal has been said today about the 1 million who didn't vote.
Would on-line voting engage them? Is more civic education required? I even heard one academic recommend lowering the age to 16 to increase turnout. Proportionately, the younger the voter, the less likely they are to enrol and go to the polls, so that would actually lower the overall vote percentage (although I can find plausible reasons why 16 year-olds should be allowed to vote.)
On Radio Live this morning, Sean Plunket was very angry at non-voters verging on disallowing their reasons why to get a hearing.
I couldn't disagree more. If people aren't politically attuned or aware, if they don't value democracy, if inclement weather is enough to make the task too tough, so be it. Stay away.
I don't get the drama.
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4 comments:
While people like Crim Dot Con are around, I wouldn't trust online voting
I don't vote but its not laziness. I see voting as endorsing a system. I'm intensely private, a social conservative and to the right economically. I think politics is generally a fraud and stage managed by people we never get to vote for. I think fractional reserve banking will bring the west to its broke knees and we will lack the moral fortitude to deal with it. Not one politician will say we have an Islamic problem that needs to be dealt with. So it goes on.
While I'm pleased the left took a pasting who the heck is someone as weird as me going to vote for?
3:16
It is self evident that those who do not concern themselves with politics should not vote.
It is equally as self-evident that those on benefits create a moral hazard by voting: they should not vote either.
Similarly, journalists and "core" civil servants have a conflict of interest --- even 20 years ago, they would voluntarily forego their vote to finesses this conflict of interest. Today it seems we can no longer rely on such restraint, but the conflict of interest remains.
Finally, there is the largest group with moral hazard and conflict of interest - those who benefit from the munificence of NZ's all-to-few taxpayers but who make no contribution themselves. It is again self-evident they do not deserve the privilege of voting.
NO REPRESENTATION WITHOUT TAXATION
I think it's encouraging, I'm delighted!
Public Choice economics has it that voters are mostly rationally ignorant of the vast issues. Rational, because the impact on casting a well-informed vote is close to zero and so is the chance that one's own vote will make a jot of difference. We studied this in class at university.
To vote is merely personally or tribally symbolic. So is not voting, which is what I did and consider a sign of health the same way not watching WWE or Shortland Street or Fight for Life is symbolic.
Sensing what an election is it is far better not to participate.
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