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Politics, religion, psychology, economics. In other words: how the human world works and why it works as it does is what fascinates me. Sometimes I post about such ideas here. Often I expand on such ideas to suggest how I think the world should work and why I think so. Sometimes, however, I just post pretty, shiny content I've found while sifting through the internet. Ask me anything Submit

November 19, 2011

“if you do decide to vote, you have a duty to not reduce the quality of the median vote.”

Making the informed choice is what democracy should be about, as opposed to merely ticking boxes for the sake of it. Don’t vote unless you’ve put some serious thought into it. That doesn’t mean picking a party or local politician because you identify with their branding. It means looking at the policies and thinking about the potential effects they are likely to have. It means looking at what the local politician you vote for is going to do for your area. It means raising the standard of discourse to that which has substance. It means holding the elected representatives accountable after they are elected, regardless as to whether you voted for them, because they (at least ostensibly) represent your interests.

If you aren’t going to do this, don’t vote. You are the problem with democracy. You lower the standard of discourse, policies, representatives and accountability. You are the problem.

If after putting serious thought into the policy options bundled amongst the parties and candidates you find the least worst is bad or even worse, don’t vote. If you vote for bad policy, you will get bad policy.

Bad policy can have significant impacts and if you vote for it, you will be giving it an implicit endorsement. You will forfeit your right to complain. And by “will forfeit”, I mean you can still complain, but I see no reason to care about your specific complaints because by voting for bad policy you are the problem.

As well as this, without a gap in the vote market indicated with a non-vote, the likelihood of good policy being used to capture votes in the future remains extremely minimal because the parties don’t have to work for the vote. You need to make the parties work. Correspondingly, if you don’t vote, you should also get your view out there as to why you haven’t and promote what you want to see from the people who claim to represent you. If you’re not proactive, you won’t see change.

Relevant:

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/11/political-puzzles.html
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/01/rulers-are-far.html
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9464.html
http://twitter.com/#!/CanMedianVoter