June 14, 2004
Disastrous?
The European election thing didn't turn out the numbers of voters the men-in-grey-suits wanted. They called the election a disaster.
No, what's disastrous is that people don't feel that voting will influence anything. What's disastrous is the fact that many people consider their nominal representatives non-representative. What's disastrous is the failure of a pan-European democracy.
Sorry 'bout the News-filter. Wanna buy a hole on the Intarweb? A wedding dress?
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We have this failure of democracy here in North America too - I guess this political learned helplessness is a global thing? I wonder what can be done to get people more engaged.
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I think mandatory voting would be a nice requirement for the U.S. kind of like filing your taxes. The ballot could then have a "None of the Above" option for those who don't like any of the candidates.
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You could take out the words "pan-European" and the general statement would pretty much apply all the way around. Very dark times lay ahead for us all.
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Mandatory voting. They have it here in Oz. Because, being amongst the most laid-back & apathetic humans on the planet, we wouldn't vote at all unless it was mandatory, and I guess the PTB worked that out long ago. Like jury duty. "ok, I gotta go out now and vote for one of these assholes, I suppose. Meet ya back at the pub."
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If it was a disaster, wouldn't've the Euro dropped?
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The economic union and the political union are two different things on many levels. The Euro wasn't so hard to arrange (minus the Brits and their Queen-loving traditionalism) but a European suprastate will be an entirely different matter. The thing is, that phrase "the unwashed masses" rings true for me. Most people don't seem to give a shit (or understand) about democracy and politics. You could have them live in a dictatorship, and as long as things were reasonable enough, they wouldn't care.
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You could have them live in a dictatorship, and as long as things were reasonable enough, they wouldn't care. You mean like the U.S. under Bush? /snark I think part of the problem is the scale involved. When you're trying to make decisions about a government that covers such a large area, it starts to get a little overwhelming and distant. The politicians are going to be somewhere "over there" and their decisions won't have any real effect "over here". On the other hand, local government is easier to work with - the people aren't so distant, the decisions have a more direct impact on your life. You can wrap your mind around the things that they are dealing with (usually) in relation to the other things in your life. This didn't come out quite the way I wanted, and it may be total b.s., but there's my two cents.
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Sooooo..... how much u want for the wedding dress? Got a picture?
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I don't know. Here in Mexico, our current president was declared as elected, even by the former president on national TV. When the voting count still wasn't beyond the 10% of registered votes. And the margin of assistance was of 40% IIRC. With that percentage of vote counts the tendencies were well defined. Having a decent sample of the total population preferences is more than enough to decide the outcome of any voting process. The trick is, of course. obtaining a decent sample. It desn't matter if only one third of the population participites as long as that group is representative of the overall population. And I don't think you can correlate vote participation with any political or idelogical preference. So, I'm positive that poor turnout and an overall carelessness or apathy doesn't imply dark times for any nation. It's actually healthy when people can decide the just don't care because they don't know better. Worse is when people are coerced to make a decision and then be easily influenced by anybody who shows them the easy way.