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Those Turnout Blues
After nearly every election, there’s a wringing of hands over voter turnout, and this past week’s contests were no exceptions. Unlike Argentina and Brazil, for example, America does not require its eligible citizens to vote. As a result, presidential elections in our country generally feature voter turnout in the 50-60% range (sometimes a bit higher or lower), and off-year elections are typically significantly lower. Hence, we are getting the usual post-election moaning about how the results would have been different if only more [fill in the blanks] had turned up at the polls. In other words, we would have won if more people had voted for us. Duh!
I, for one, don’t worry too much about turnout. For example, Democrats whine that their natural constituencies are less likely to vote in off-year elections. So what does that mean? They haven’t heard about them? It’s hard enough to vote every four years, much less every two? They can’t find their polling places? Whatever the reasons, if someone doesn’t care to vote, that’s his business. If someone doesn’t care enough about the process or the candidates or the office to cast a ballot, does it really weaken us? Would we be better off to find ways to coerce or demand electoral participation?
In the last presidential election, some Conservatives expressed their disdain for Mitt Romney by staying home and, in essence, expressing their opinion by not voting. It may have been cutting off a nose to spite a face, but the noses were theirs, and they exercised their right to sit on the sidelines. I, for one, have never participated in any “Get Out the Vote” TV ad campaigns. My personal opinion is that, if a game show host has to tell you to vote, you probably shouldn’t.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for teaching young people the important connection between good citizenship and voting. We certainly should not impede anyone’s right to vote. (By the way, I don’t consider having to identify oneself to be an impediment.) And more power to the parties and their efforts to energize their bases. In a more perfect world, I suppose, everyone would study the issues and the candidates and take the time and make the effort to participate in elections. However, if some choose not to, so be it. It doesn’t make the results any less valid nor the country any less democratic. Want more of your “natural constituencies” to vote for you? Then give them some reasons to do so.
Published in General
Well, Wikipedia just cites to a book by Sir Ian Kershaw, Oxford historian and member of the Royal Historical Society who has published a whole library on the history of the Nazi movement. If I wanted to get sucked up into the Rapture, I might look first to Mr. LaHaye, but if the question is one of Nazi history, I submit Sir Ian might be a better bet.
Dude, you cited to a book written by a guy best known for his predictions that half the world is going to suddenly vanish into the sky some day soon. You’ve got no business mocking me for a citation to an imperfect, but generally credible online source.
Well read it. When your done, read the footnotes. While your at it, explain to me when he said half the world was going to vanish into the sky. You Libertarians are a real treat.
Yeah, it leads you to Dear Abby post that says Hitler was elected by one vote. Then proceeds to tell you why she’s wrong. Dude, you gotta scroll down the page a bit.
Dude, read the book. When you’ve done that, come back and we can have a realistic discussion.
According to the website of his Pre-Trib Research Center the Center “was conceived by Dr. LaHaye for the purpose of encouraging the research, teaching, propagation and defense of the pretribulational rapture and related Bible prophecy doctrines.”
At this point I’m just trying to figure out if a) you just don’t know who this guy is; b) you just don’t know how big a paper trail he has; or c) you’re just such a true believer in his primary work that you’ll believe just about any piece of hokum that comes out of his pen regardless of how obvious it is that it’s something he knows nothing about.
By the way, are we ever going to come back to the lone scholarly cite on this question that’s been mentioned on this thread (see item #31)?
So in three minutes you have determined that Ray Comfort and Tim LaHaye are nut jobs, the book is fictitious, even though it cites its sources, and that your source from wikipedia wasn’t a close ally to Hitler or a pedophile? See I can Google too.
Sorry Pat. I didn’t mean to derail your conversation. It’s an important topic and one I agree with you on.
This might be my last response if your next response is as deranged as this one. Sir Ian Kershaw was born in 1943. Hitler killed himself in 1945. How, exactly, did the two year old Kershaw aid Hitler? And pedophile? What the heck is up with that? What would that charge (even assuming, arguendo, that it were true) have to do with his historical scholarship? And by the way, has he even been accused of it? Or did you just make it up? I haven’t found it, but haven’t looked that hard.
As to Mr. LaHaye, I’ve read a slew of his books and been familiar with him for 30+ years. I didn’t just stick his name in Google. I knew what I was looking for and knew what I’d find.
Goodnight Cato. Get your rest. I’ve heard that your third period history teacher is brutal.
Its too easy to vote.
First, no early voting, no mail voting, no absentee voting unless you are out of the country or traveling for business, or infirm. Show up on election day.
Second, ballots in English only. Sorry, no speaka the English, you aren’t trying to be a citizen.
Third, a simple constitutional and history test from a few basic questions like:
” What are the three branches of government?’
“How many justices on the Supreme Court?”
” Where do tax bills need to originate?”
“What are the first 10 amendments to the Constitution known as?”
” What year was the Declaration of Independence signed?”
If you can’t speak the common language, don’t understand the basic rules of the country, and can’t get off your dead arse one day to vote, your input is neither useful nor wanted.
Well he was there in spirit wherever Democrats were seeking office…
Cato Rand: As to how I got the gig, I was recruited by a Republican lawyer group who explained to me that it was a real challenge to get enough Republican judges to have one in each of the precincts in Chicago, and that the precincts that lacked Republican judges had a funny tendency to produce near 100% turnouts. They said just having a Republican present would tend to prevent the Democrat judges from just running through straight (D) ballots for all the no shows registered in the precinct. In other words, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Sigh. I grew up in the “Ukrainian Village” neighborhood of Chicago, although at the time we referred to it as “the Ghetto”. My parents HAD to register as Democrats although they loathed them with a burning passion ( Roosevelt and the sellout at Yalta for starters). We owned a 6 flat and unless my parents toed the Party line we would have had endless building inspectors condemning the property ( Chicago has building codes which are impossible to comply with for that reason) and no garbage pickup.
Every election “Johnny”, the local Precinct Captain, aka Kommisar, would come around and tell my parents exactly how to vote. Johnny’s city job was “bridge tender” on the Western Ave Chicago River bridge. Of course, the motors on the bridge had been removed in 1942 to send to a shipyard on the West coast, so Johnny had a lot of free time. The only time it really mattered was in the primaries when he would spell out the Machine Ticket for them, since in the general election a good old Straight Democrat pull sufficed. They would nod, agree, thank Johnny, and them go vote for the opposite. That did not stop them from asking ol Johnny for favors from the Alderman, they felt no shame since they had lived in both Stalins Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, so they understood one party dictatorships.
My older sister was recruited to be the token Republican judge in the neighborhood ( little did they know…). She would come home and tell us how they would get to work on election day and the voting machines would already have a thousand votes recorded on them, or how Johnny would show up, enter a machine and just pull the lever back and forth recording some more votes.
Seems like things haven’t changed much in the last 40 years…..
For what it’s worth, we’re now very clearly instructed to check the machines to make sure there at 0 first thing, and at least in my precinct they were. I think that old trick might have gone out of fashion as too easy to detect.
Feds don’t get the whole day off, by law. They get either up to 3 hours off in the morning via “late reporting” OR 3 hours off at the end of work based upon poll open and closing time and require the federal employee to choose the one that impacts work less. So for example, polls open at 0700 and close at 1900, and the employee has duty hours of 0800-1700 – then the employee would be compelled to choose to leave work at 1600 (1 hour off) as opposed to late reporting at 1000 (which would be 2 hours off.)
Now they just have the machines “accidentally” record R votes for D as “calibration errors”….LOL
I did hear a claim that that occurred, though it was from a friend, not in my precinct.
Actually, the vote was 543 to 1. Only one person voted AGAINST him.
http://ww2timelines.com/germany/rise/rise1921.htm
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/leader.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_rise_to_power
http://www.factasy.com/world_war/early_year_of_the_nazi_party.shtml
There is a classic Archibald Cox quote that is applicable here:
“Not to decide IS to decide”
Let it go. I have no idea why, but Cal is wedded to this claim.
According to CNN, Republican candidates were heavily favored over their Democratic opponents among full-time workers, most college-educated Americans, and most married people:
Other interesting statistical tidbits here:
http://www.cnn.com/election/2014/results/race/house#exit-polls
Yeah, he said so himself. Not many Democratic candidates were affirming the assertion, though.
The proof of this pudding will be whether the Democratic presidential candidate in 2016 asks BHO to campaign in 2016.