| > Yet voter turnout often is quite low. Why? The idea is that only the knowledgeable vote. If you do not feel confident that you have a good grasp on political issues, your vote dilutes the signal sent by those less ignorant. Encouraging ignorant voters to vote is often the visible part of the propaganda iceberg, the kind of politics we have increasingly witnessed in most of the Western world in the last two decades and that used to be the preserve of third world dictatorships. You then see elections via mud-slinging and highly visible non-issues taking on most of the mindshare, and the media is captured by interest groups who need it to hijack a larger percentage of the vote. It is harmful to the fabric of society as all sides of the political debate become vote harvesting machines and the citizenry is radicalised and encouraged not to reason about issues [1] [2]. "A free society gives its citizens the right to vote but that right should come with the responsibility to not abuse that right by voting ignorantly." [3] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1qffh9/vot... [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-me-care/ - "the research [...] found that college students’ self-reported empathy has declined since 1980, with an especially steep drop in the past 10 years. [...] during this same period students’ self-reported narcissism has reached new heights" [3] https://www.quora.com/Is-this-reason-for-not-voting-valid-or... |