In the lib brain - American civil religion is the most important thing in the universe and voting is a sacred covenant. The typical r/politics redditor the night of election day will unironically say…
Look, if people had turned out - Biden would have won and our democracy would have saved. But they didn’t so we fucking get Trump again.
I’ll want to say - I dunno - isn’t the super-low turnout Biden’s fault?
It’s wild how there’s so much entitlement inherent to that attitude:
“Um Sweaty, don’t you realise that you’re morally obligated to vote or else you will get my disapproval?”
“Um Sweaty, don’t you realise that you’re morally obligated to vote for Our Guy™ or else you will get my disapproval?”
“…gosh, why are all these people so out of touch??”
There’s a non-insignificant chance that if they managed to scold everyone into voting that people might actually vote Trump in protest and they’d need to reckon with that instead of, you know, chastising people even more. I don’t think it would be likely enough to happen but the fact is that it’s not completely off the cards. It’s more likely that you’d see a swing towards third party candidates and spoilt votes that they’d get infuriated over people “ruining democracy” by not adhering to the demands that these voters play by their arbitrary rules and they’d lament how the Dems “could have” won that swing state if only that 0.5% of spoilt votes had actually gone to Biden.
In a broader sense this is why countries like Israel play with shorter sentences for refusing conscription and why there’s a lot of leniency built into how long you are imprisoned for and why imprisoning conscientious objectors for short-ish periods serves a structural function that supports the state; if you jail conscientious objectors for like 10+ years then you turn those very disaffected non-participants mostly into bitterly disaffected recruits who then start resorting to becoming Chelsea Manning figures or they start a culture of the ol’ classic Vietnam War fragging of commanding officers (tyfys to those brave Vietnam War veterans unironically btw) , either of which is far more disruptive than having the government put a tiny percentage of resistors into a temporary time-out.
(Not shitting on any conscientious objectors here tho. I have nothing but love and support for them and I support their committment and personal sacrifices they make on ethical and political grounds. Just speaking about how the government structures and mitigates the threat these people are capable of posing.)
In a similar sense, if you’re “conscripting” people into being compelled to vote then you risk blowback from that. And I’m not talking like countries that have “compulsory” voting where the government sends you stern letters or they make you pay small fines for not voting here.
In the lib brain - American civil religion is the most important thing in the universe and voting is a sacred covenant. The typical r/politics redditor the night of election day will unironically say…
I’ll want to say - I dunno - isn’t the super-low turnout Biden’s fault?
And then we’ll see these same types salivating at the thought of Trump’s policies hurting minorities because “They should’ve voted for Biden.”
It’s wild how there’s so much entitlement inherent to that attitude:
“Um Sweaty, don’t you realise that you’re morally obligated to vote or else you will get my disapproval?”
“Um Sweaty, don’t you realise that you’re morally obligated to vote for Our Guy™ or else you will get my disapproval?”
“…gosh, why are all these people so out of touch??”
There’s a non-insignificant chance that if they managed to scold everyone into voting that people might actually vote Trump in protest and they’d need to reckon with that instead of, you know, chastising people even more. I don’t think it would be likely enough to happen but the fact is that it’s not completely off the cards. It’s more likely that you’d see a swing towards third party candidates and spoilt votes that they’d get infuriated over people “ruining democracy” by not adhering to the demands that these voters play by their arbitrary rules and they’d lament how the Dems “could have” won that swing state if only that 0.5% of spoilt votes had actually gone to Biden.
In a broader sense this is why countries like Israel play with shorter sentences for refusing conscription and why there’s a lot of leniency built into how long you are imprisoned for and why imprisoning conscientious objectors for short-ish periods serves a structural function that supports the state; if you jail conscientious objectors for like 10+ years then you turn those very disaffected non-participants mostly into bitterly disaffected recruits who then start resorting to becoming Chelsea Manning figures or they start a culture of the ol’ classic Vietnam War fragging of commanding officers (tyfys to those brave Vietnam War veterans unironically btw) , either of which is far more disruptive than having the government put a tiny percentage of resistors into a temporary time-out.
(Not shitting on any conscientious objectors here tho. I have nothing but love and support for them and I support their committment and personal sacrifices they make on ethical and political grounds. Just speaking about how the government structures and mitigates the threat these people are capable of posing.)
In a similar sense, if you’re “conscripting” people into being compelled to vote then you risk blowback from that. And I’m not talking like countries that have “compulsory” voting where the government sends you stern letters or they make you pay small fines for not voting here.