Because the GOP strategy is working?

Gee, I wonder.

We will have to wait till people like Romney can bleed the poor and middle class even drier. Right now many people believe both sides are bad so don't vote.

Too bad it's the wrong generation.

Because we feel like we're being given a shiat deal.

We are.

We just can't let that stop us from turning it into something great again.

/i didn't vote when Bush 2 got elected the first time
//i have learned from my mistakes

Because it's hard motivating millions of people when they just don't care that much about arugula or spicy mustard.

Because it's a rigged game, but now it's not the only one in town.

I don't want to my vote to be for only 3/5ths of a person.

Headso: We will have to wait till people like Romney can bleed the poor and middle class even drier. Right now many people believe both sides are bad so don't vote.

No. Even when those tards are starving in the streets, it will still be the fault of liberals. Nothing, NOTHING, will convince conservatives to give up their deluded cocksuckery.

Um, they're local elections. People tend to run unopposed.

I mean, most of the people running are fine, but even if they weren't there's nothing I could do without running for office myself, here. Also, most municipalities actively avoid having elections in a presidential election year, which means there aren't many runs going on in the first place.

I would like to welcome the article's writer to political science 10farking1.

//State ballot has some interesting races this year, though. And obviously there's the national stuff, though the US senate election for TX is kinda predetermined at the moment too.

Because of THIS:




We're scared about what's in the box!

ryandee: Because the GOP strategy is working?

TFA is about Britain.

Because Thebes got their heads on straight.

DGS: Because you're an evil commie fascist pink libtard lamestream MSM media follower that does evil every moment and you obviously want to destroy America.

And by that, I mean you intend to vote for someone that's center-right politically, but he's not so far in the red that neon would look like pastels.

TFA is about Britain

golly gee, could it be that the only time individual votes mattered, it was only in one state and when that state attempted to count individual votes, the supreme court put a stop to it??

nah... people would never be disenchanted after seeing something like that happen.

the electoral college is retarded and so are most voters. if you have half a mind, your vote is diluted among those that made their minds up only a week before the election.

so what's the point anyway??

Headso: We will have to wait till people like Romney can bleed the poor and middle class even drier. Right now many people believe both sides are bad so don't vote.

TFA is about Britain

Jim_Callahan: Um, they're local elections. People tend to run unopposed.

I mean, most of the people running are fine, but even if they weren't there's nothing I could do without running for office myself, here. Also, most municipalities actively avoid having elections in a presidential election year, which means there aren't many runs going on in the first place.

I would like to welcome the article's writer to political science 10farking1.

//State ballot has some interesting races this year, though. And obviously there's the national stuff, though the US senate election for TX is kinda predetermined at the moment too.

TFA is about Britain

The article answers its own headline in the second sentence.

ryandee: Because the GOP strategy is working?

Know how I know you drtfa?

hungryhungryhorus: TFA is about Britain

and it's two months old

James F. Campbell: Headso: We will have to wait till people like Romney can bleed the poor and middle class even drier. Right now many people believe both sides are bad so don't vote.

No. Even when those tards are starving in the streets, it will still be the fault of liberals. Nothing, NOTHING, will convince conservatives to give up their deluded cocksuckery.

I'm talking about all the people that don't bother voting at all not the kool-aid drunkards.

Because there's no "NONE OF THE ABOVE!" selection!

It's a choice between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. There's no difference, they're all out for their own ego maniacal power trip, and the only reason they're running is to further their own ends. Power for the sake of power, and screw the people. When there is a candidate that has the potential to be different, he's run out of the conventions and never even makes it to the ballot. Only millionaires can run for office, and of those, only the ones that kiss the most ass can make it to the presidency. And people wonder why there's nobody voting?

Charles.

JesusJuice: ryandee: Because the GOP strategy is working?

Know how I know you drtfa?

THE GOP ARE IN BRITAIN NOW?

OMGZZZERZ!

Young people generally do not vote because the candidates running generally do not appeal to them. Obama captured some of that appeal in '08, and it won him the election, though he's lost it since.

Gyrfalcon: Because those under 30 are always underrepresented at the ballot box?

/drtfa

It wasn't generation as in age, it was generation as in "Voter turnout for local elections in 2012 were pathetically low nationwide, with less than a third of eligible voters turning out to vote." It also appears to be about the UK not the US.

People of Fark. You know me. I'm your neighbor. I'm just a technical writer working in Los Angeles.

When I started farking, I told myself I would never be that guy. The one that just talks nonsense with no backup. Just spewing things that have this weird, biased illusions of truth without reading TFA. I honestly felt, in my heart, that it could never be me.

Today, I became that guy. I'm sorry. It won't happen again.

-ryandee

They thought they would get Hope and Change.

Now they dig into their pockets and hope for change.

0bama let the country down. He had the House, the Senate, the Press, the world wide community, a huge favor-ability rating, a new teleprompter, low gas prices and a farking Nobel Prize.

All squandered.

FTA: "More seriously, policies in the recent budget such as the cut in the top tax rate have done nothing to shift the image of government by the wealthy, for the wealthy. Nadine Dorries's quip that Osbourne and Cameron are "arrogant public school boys who don't know what it's like to go to the supermarket and have to put things back on the shelves because they can't afford it for their children's lunch boxes" is much more than the disgruntled mutterings of a backbencher."

Sound familiar?

ChopperCharles: It's a choice between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. There's no difference, they're all out for their own ego maniacal power trip, and the only reason they're running is to further their own ends. Power for the sake of power, and screw the people. When there is a candidate that has the potential to be different, he's run out of the conventions and never even makes it to the ballot. Only millionaires can run for office, and of those, only the ones that kiss the most ass can make it to the presidency. And people wonder why there's nobody voting?

Charles.

I'm stealing this.

/welcome to the favorites list, there's an open bar in back!

ryandee: Because the GOP strategy is working?

Given that TFA is talking about the UK, the GOP strategy must be fiendishly long-range (temporally and geographically) indeed.

ryandee: JesusJuice: ryandee: Because the GOP strategy is working?

Know how I know you drtfa?

THE GOP ARE IN BRITAIN NOW?

OMGZZZERZ!

It was difficult for the GOP to get a foothold in Britain, as it is to the right of the National Front.

It has already been stuffed with votes for the corporate shill and is overflowing like waste basket in a public rest room.

Can't speak for anyone else but I've become disillusioned with the non-stop campaigning. As soon as they're elected, politicians are already strategizing for the next election cycle. We're in a place right now that requires actual leadership and real decision making. All we've gotten for the last decade or so is a bunch of mincing pussies kicking the can down the road because doing their farking job wouldn't help their reelection chances. The Republicans are the most blatant about it lately. Rather than working to actually fix some of our problems, they hold their breath, stomp their feet and scream "NO" over and over again; creating these false crises that easily sailed through the process before. Why? So they can hurt the reelection chances of the black guy.

Fark it. If they're not going to take this shiat seriously I don't see why I have to.

buddyrtr: Because there's no "NONE OF THE ABOVE!" selection!

This.

ChopperCharles: It's a choice between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. There's no difference, they're all out for their own ego maniacal power trip, and the only reason they're running is to further their own ends. Power for the sake of power, and screw the people. When there is a candidate that has the potential to be different, he's run out of the conventions and never even makes it to the ballot. Only millionaires can run for office, and of those, only the ones that kiss the most ass can make it to the presidency. And people wonder why there's nobody voting?

Charles.

and THIS!

People are sick of this "lesser of two evils" BS. I just don't think they're sick enough of it yet. What has to happen before people decide to raise up and take these farkers down? Do you have to be sick,starving, and dying in the streets before you get up and do something?

buddyrtr: Because there's no "NONE OF THE ABOVE!" selection!

Sure there is. It's the blank, write-in selection at the end of every list of candidates. Nobody said you had to vote for those on the list, so vote for whomever you want.

/won't win the election, but it DOES get counted as an "other", which in sufficient numbers makes a pretty decent "none of the above statement"

Wendy's Chili: Many years ago, conservatives (both here and abroad) discovered they fared better in elections when young people (not to mention women, minorities, and the poor) did not come out to vote. They then began a campaign of discouragement...



I read an article last year (around the time of the debt ceiling debacle) that said basically this. The goal of conservatives is not just to make liberals look bad...but to make government itself look bad. And it works. Congress has horrible approval ratings, but the average voter doesn't really care why they are ineffective...they only care that they are ineffective.

The worse government looks, the more apathetic voters become. Apathy leads to low voter turnout. And as you said...low voter turnout favors conservatives. It's a pretty neat trick they've played, you have to hand it to them. I burn down your house, but instead of blaming me for starting the fire, you blame your house for not being flame resistant.

Because if some dumb as fark, old as dust, ignorant, racist, homosexual hating, environmental hating asshole has the same standing as someone who is not .... then why would I want to be a part of that process?

I do make myself a part of that process because it's the best we have; but the process is broken and needs repaired.

It's not suprising. Government grows only at the expense of the individual - political power is a zero-sum game. Every bit of authority delegated to the State has to come at the expense of some other unit of society, either lower levels of government, voluntary associations, or the people.

In the UK especially, the process of centralization of authority in the central government has gone on for decades.

So, why does that matter?

The more political power is vested into smaller units of government, the more responsive government is. You might shop at the same stores as the mayor of your town, but chances are you don't run into an MP at the market each day, and you're damn sure not likely to have an unsolicited encounter with the Prime Minister or the President. Likewise, your political influence in a mayoral election is much greater than one person's influence in a Parliamentary or Congressional election, and still much less in a Presidential one.

But we keep shifting more and more power upward, which dilutes the political power of the individual more and more. Add to that the rise of the modern administrative state, meaning that your vote is even less important because the people who make the decisions aren't even elected.

The more power we give to centralized government, the more issues are nationalized too. So issues that should be regional in character end up becoming polarized national issues, which makes them harder to resolve.

That's why people are becoming increasingly jaded about government - when you have a system that takes authority away from the people and voluntary organizations and invests it in the State, you create a system where individual votes matter less and less.