Voting without responsibility
rzwitserloot posted in politics on February 25th, 2006
It’s time to elect local municipality members in about two weeks here in The Netherlands. Traditionally, dutch people tend not to give a rats ass about it, instead focussing on the national elections.
Strange - local politicians tend to have a far larger effect on your daily affairs, and your slice of the decision making pie on the local level is far, far larger compared to national elections.
As has been going on for years now, there’s bunches of tax-euros-sponsered advertising on TV, in papers, and in the roll of ads preceding movies in theatres, urging you to vote. They all have the same message: “Vote, just vote”. That’s it.
This entire idea of ‘just vote’ is very common in the netherlands, and in my experience, in every other democracy. Why, though? An uninformed vote can only be harmful - influenced by populism, pretty faces, or press opinion instead of actual past track record or intention.
Why aren’t there advertisements urging people to actually go read some sites about what each party is planning? Perhaps even advertisements which first explain some sort of relevant issue, then briefly shows the opinion on the issue by all major local players. Now that would be useful expenditure of my tax money.
February 26th, 2006 at 23:54
There is no such thing as an uninformed vote and that is exactly the premise of The Wisdom of Crowds. People need not have proven expertise on a subject (however you choose to define or prove that expertise) to be able to collectively infer good judgement about it.
They only need some bits of information upon which to judge. Information such as prior experiences, news reports and other stuff picked up on the street or talking to friends and family. Every person is tasked to make a sum aggregate of a very complex and contradictory body of knowledge. They show their interest and involvement by voting.
Not withstanding that more information to judge on would probably only improve the result. Efforts such as the one you are talking about are already being done.
Political parties campaigning do most of that supported by taxpayers. Sites such as stemwijzer and the like are subsidized and do exactly that: show where all the major players stand on certain issues.
One of recent initiatives (I think I read it in Republic.com) was the concept “Deliberation Day” on which citizens should come together to discuss issues with each other. Too utopian maybe, but also very necessary.
The real problems are lack of independence and cascade effects which are caused mainly by the media frenzy preceding most elections. To mitigate problems such as those in some countries (Germany?) polls are banned a couple of days before the elections. Strange but it does make sense.
(Some sort of preview function would be nice to have on this blog of yours.)
February 27th, 2006 at 15:04
I’d love a deliberation day. But loads of cash is being thrown at ‘just vote’-style ads. I don’t see an ad about stemwijzer.nl on TV or at the movies.
I’ll look into some more blog logistics after 1st of march.