JWs are gonna flip if they do this.
Awesome.
Tony Abbott is the kinda man Cameron coulda have been if he had some degree of human intelligence and a fucking soul. Why the hate Wasted?
Last time we had a real president he got shot in the head.
Many people don’t vote because their vote doesn’t matter. Presidents are not elected fair and square by the voters. They are selected by those in power.
Even if the people manage to vote for a 3rd party, not controlled by the Secret Societies, if the 3rd party candidate gets elected, he’d just get JFK’d if he refuses to follow orders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxsQ7jJJcEA
A bunch of people in Quebec actually voted Conservative. Now that shit’s erratic, lol. Ontario has this weird habit of feeling like votes from the province don’t matter, even though Ontario votes can potentially make the most difference.
Race joke goes here
I’m not completely knowledgeable on how the voting system works, but I’ve heard many times that as long as we have electoral college, the system is skewed and our votes don’t mean shit. This is part of the reason why I didn’t vote last time, amongst that I would vote 3rd party and it seems like 3rd party never get’s even close to reality of running the US besides at a smaller level i.e. Ventura that was the Governor for Minnesota.
Cant be much of a race joke if he has admited to knowing how to read.
Independent candidates exist all throughout the government. if I’m not mistaken there are two independent Senators and a handful of independent representatives. And many states have laws dictating how the electoral college gives out its vote so it’s not like they’re completely independent and the popular vote means shit. If that were the case a lot of Republican-led states that have a heavily democratic base (Massachusetts, New Jersey, etc.) would have GOP members sneaked into the EC so they vote that way.
why is American democracy the biggest fucking scam of all time, and why should there be a national movement to completly boycott the voting process in America.
Because in other countries, when somebody of great wealth gives a shit ton of money to politicians we call it corruption, buying of the politician. When we do it in America, we call it free speech.
Yeah, this is bullshit, left or right, it’s all bullshit meant to keep the $$$ flowing up.
your vote means jack shit, don’t hype it up.
no it doesn’t, it just means that the party that can front the most money for ad revenue is still going to win. Ask a random person to google search. Most people do not dig past the first 2-3 pages unless their looking for porn.
AMERICA’S POLITICAL SYSTEM ISN’T EVEN A DEMOCRACY YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!!!
Yes, I am absolutely yelling at you. All of you.
Democracy is mob rule without representatives.
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ wrong
A bunch of rich dudes own us all. We’re all slaves.
fists bumps his SRK brothers
We aren’t that though, we stopped being that a long time ago. There is nothing represenative about our system now in days. Politicians are screened and filtered for us by the powers that be so that we may vote for the most charming one. My friends voted for Obama as their first president because they where charmed by his charisma and smokescreens. It’s all a fucking sham designed to keep $$$ flowing, all else is secondary.
Don’t use “intelligence”, “soul” and “Tony Abbott” in the same boat. Cameron is a step up from Abbott and we would be glad to have him.
Quoting the above because it’s the first post that kinda touches on it, but there are a few others. I’m from Australia, have worked in a polling station before and just wanted to clear one thing up. I think it’s relevant because Australia will probably get brought up a lot and will probably be the model that people will judge its effectiveness against.
Compulsory voting (at least the way it’s implemented in Australia) doesn’t actually mean that you have to vote in the way that most people use the term. On election day (always a Saturday that is chosen to avoid religious conflicts, etc.) everybody of voting age has to turn up to a voting booth and get their name marked off of a list of all votes in that electorate. You’re then given two sheets or paper to vote for each of the houses of parliament, which you have to place in the ballot box before you leave (obviously you can’t just walk out with it because then you could sell your tickets or be coerced out of them, etc.). There are booths with pencils and stuff for you to mark down your preferences before placing your papers in the box, but there’s nothing that says you have to even use them. If you don’t care, you can just put the blank papers in the box in which case they’ll be discarded during the count, or you could go into the booth and scribble over the papers, draw obscene pictures or whatever, in which case the vote will be considered invalid. So long as you put the papers in the box, nobody cares, and there’s nobody looking over your shoulder to see that you’ve voted ‘correctly’ (for obvious reasons). One option I actually wish we had was a box for “no vote”/“don’t care”/etc., - the reason that’s not there is due more to how our voting system works than because it’s a bad idea.
Not turning up to vote carries a small fine (like $18 iirc?) but preventing someone from turning up to vote naturally carries a much heavier punishment (I believe it’s a criminal charge, but I’m not sure). At the last election just over 5% of the vote for the lower house (the one that selects the Prime Minister) was informal or invalid (EDIT: also that 5% was a record high, fwiw). If ever the issue of removing compulsory voting is brought up (which happens every election but I get the impression that it’s by a very small minority), the main issues aren’t that it’s “wrong” to make people vote, but that people who don’t care are presumably more likely to “donkey vote” (put numbers in at random without actually caring about who they’re voting for) and the way that is affects political rhetoric (the favouring populist soundbites for those who don’t follow politics, etc.).
Voting is a joke. For small time voting where there is no electoral like local representatives, mayors, stuff like that, you have some control, but no one gives a fuck. Advertising for these shmucks is awful and does anyone know their locals? No. Why would we vote for them? No idea.
For presidential elections? Electoral college. Who gives a fuck then if some old assholes warming their own seats year after year are going to be the ones voting anyway? A president doesn’t matter, it’s a feel good way of making people think they have a say in things, when really, they don’t.
2 party system. All the money for advertising, campaigning, touring, and so on, is given to one or the other. Third, fourth, fifth, or whatever other parties who don’t ascribe to either side and remain independent, will never win because they’ll never have enough money to do all that. On top of that, they’ll never have enough money to battle the disgusting smear campaigns from both sides, so they’re fucked anyway. You have no choice in the matter. One side isn’t any better than the other, and it’s always going to be one side or the other.
Slander and tons of misinformation and misrepresentation of people running for office. No one knows who the fuck they’re voting for. Media has everyone so fucked up with smear campaigns, that no one is making an informed choice. What’s the point? You might as well put blind folds on everyone and a pencil in their hand to play pin the tail on the ballot.
So it basically boils down to rich mother fuckers, money, money, money, money, and more money, and people not knowing who the fuck they’re voting for. How on earth anyone thinks voting is a good idea in the USA, I can’t fathom. I just don’t get it. If it was a legitimate process, sure, but no.
IMO, what would really need to happen to make voting matter is that political offices are 100% volunteer like enlisting in the military. You get a small house provided for you, your basic utilities, your benefits like medical and dental covered for you. Your bank account is watched and reported on publicly to avoid mass amounts of money all of a sudden popping up in them. You get a small, meager salary that allows you to buy some luxuries, which should be more than enough considering housing and utilities is all covered for. None of this rich motherfucker shit. You want to be a politician? Be prepared to make no money and just scrape by. Then, you actually have to want to make a difference and actually want to do good for your country. Not get rich through special interests. The 2 party system goes away, no more electoral college, and fair objective reporting checked by a science committee is the only way politics gets covered. What you do matters and factual reporting on your actions goes public, not slandered ones. You also get 4 years, and then you have to run again, for all seats in the government. None of this life term shit. If say, one of these people were to take a donation from a special interest group to help their campaign, they’re deported from their country for corruption. If the media reporting runs a hit piece, they’re fined $1 million and the editors at large are fired and black listed from ever going into media again.
But wait, no one would actually want to get into politics then if there was no money involved! Well no shit, the only people who would, would be the ones who want to!
Of course, there is no guarantee someone wouldn’t use banks under different names or whatever to take money from, or make funds that they pull in 10 years down the line, but at least there wouldn’t be the huge, corrupt pot of gold behind every politician running for a spot in office that people actually know the names of. Of course, nothing like that will ever happen, so politics is always going to be about money and corruption. They don’t care about you, not at all.
The best reason I’ve come across is that if it isn’t communicated clearly that people have a way to choose “none of the above” (either by invalidating their vote or having a box specifically for that), and they think that by law they have to vote for A or B, then you’re more likely to get people say “Fuck it, I choose A” without really thinking or caring.
Well the argument would be that you (the country as a whole) DID get what they wanted, because more people who cared turned up to vote one way than the other.
[citation needed]. Asylum seekers have become an unnecesarily political issue recently, but even among the side of politics that wants to get rid of them actually blowing up a vessel with people on board would be political suicide. The military is dispatched to deal with the boats when they’re found because they’re best equipped, and there have been instances of the asylum seekers setting fire to the boats when a navy ship is nearby so that they can’t be sent back to their place of origin under the current government’s rules. I haven’t hear anything about the special forces being sent out to nuke a boat full of refugees, and I follow politics here pretty closely.
To be fair, Abbott didn’t win because he convinced the public but because the government (now opposition) was being so hopeless at the time that all Abbott had to say was “Look! I’m not the other guy!”.
Better stated as “people who have something to gain out of it”, the counterargument being that if people in power are low-paid, then they are more likely to react to incentives from those who want to influence them (a corporation offering them a high-paid job after they leave politics, etc.).
The money politicians make from their actual salary is farcically small compared to what they gain from all the contacts and favors coming to them once they leave office.
The salary of my state Premier (equivalent to a US Governor), is higher than Obama’s.
Labor was doing fine, all things considered. Abbott DID convince the public. He convinced the public that:
- Asylum seekers are taking over the country, and that seeking asylum is illegal
- National debt is equivalent to household debt, and
- The mining tax actually affected households (despite it being a neutral tax and having effectively no impact on the public whatsoever).
Yeah, all the contracts and crap. Can you imagine how different our politics would be if there wasn’t a bunch of shady in the corner dealings and promises once they leave office weren’t going on?