Not necessary in actual democracies where you have 10+ different parties.
There, abstaining is just an other party. One with a powerful voice telling the politicians that if enough people not vote, it is a big sign that something is wrong with the system and things will need to change to prevent riots.
It is not the same as voting blank, which is also possible. Then your vote gets added to the most popular vote. In a way of saying that you are content with any.
That’s BS. Removing yourself just removes yourself, nothing more. 70% of the population not voting just means 16% get to decide - there’s no redo.
After all, you not voting because you didn’t like the options is indistinguishable from you not voting because you didn’t care.
In order to protest you need to participate in the process. Even invalidating your ballot is a stronger sign than not voting.
I live in Switzerland where low voter turnout is common, yet the population prides itself for its direct democracy. This discussion comes up every election cycle and it’s always the same. Nothing happens because of low turnout and nobody thinks twice about why.
Here, voting blank is the same as not voting, btw. It’s the way to correctly Not Care in cantons that mandate voting.
Well there’s also a different mindset behind voting, if you can directly weigh in on important issues every few months. It’s not like in other countries where direct ballot measures are much more rare. But yes, I wished more people would try to participate in a responsible manner.
Not necessary in actual democracies where you have 10+ different parties.
There, abstaining is just an other party. One with a powerful voice telling the politicians that if enough people not vote, it is a big sign that something is wrong with the system and things will need to change to prevent riots.
It is not the same as voting blank, which is also possible. Then your vote gets added to the most popular vote. In a way of saying that you are content with any.
Exactly! Having “ice cream” and “death” as the only options doesn’t exactly foster a great discourse…
That’s BS. Removing yourself just removes yourself, nothing more. 70% of the population not voting just means 16% get to decide - there’s no redo.
After all, you not voting because you didn’t like the options is indistinguishable from you not voting because you didn’t care.
In order to protest you need to participate in the process. Even invalidating your ballot is a stronger sign than not voting.
I live in Switzerland where low voter turnout is common, yet the population prides itself for its direct democracy. This discussion comes up every election cycle and it’s always the same. Nothing happens because of low turnout and nobody thinks twice about why.
Here, voting blank is the same as not voting, btw. It’s the way to correctly Not Care in cantons that mandate voting.
Well there’s also a different mindset behind voting, if you can directly weigh in on important issues every few months. It’s not like in other countries where direct ballot measures are much more rare. But yes, I wished more people would try to participate in a responsible manner.
here it’s reversed. blank votes are counted separately, meaning that you want to participate but no option is good. abstaining means you don’t care.
I feel like even a protest party would be a louder statement than abstaining, but yes, this is most applicable to ultra-fucked two-party FPTP systems.