Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by oolongCat 3518 days ago
This is just asking people to spam their users. If someone lives in a truly democratic nation then they have the right to choose not vote, yes it surely would be nice to have everyone make a valid vote. Sometimes you just do not want to vote because you have to choose between two horrible choices and it doesn't matter at the end of the day because you seriously do not agree with either of the two choices.

Southpark did an amazing episode on this exact issue once. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douche_and_Turd )

3 comments

The right to choose not to vote is not really hurt by people reminding you to vote.
I don't think it's a defining feature of a democracy that people can choose not to vote. That aside, there's more than one election on a ballot. Many of them have more than two people, or no people at all, just Yes or No.
I just don't agree. In a democracy, you have the right to hold any opinion, but not to stop participating. Everyone should vote. If all of the choices are terrible, turn in an empty ballot. It's really that simple. If people did that, at least we'd get some metrics about how dissatisfied people are.

But even if you think all of the candidates for all of the offices are too terrible to vote for, that doesn't excuse you from voting on the dozens of initiatives on the ballot.

It is not democracy if it doesn't have a none of the above option.
That's what writing in is.