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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   14948 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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I believe voting is a duty and I'm happy it is compulsory in Australia. The simplest argument is that:

  1. The legitimacy of the government is a public good, from which other public goods (safety, unity, prosperity) flow
  2. Democratically elected governments are legitimated through democratic participation and definite mandates across actual majorities in the population
  3. You have a general duty to further the public good in scenarios where one can do so at little cost to oneself
  4. You have a duty to vote

Broader majorities are also better for political operation and discourse. The unactivated voter is less interested in ideological marginalia and more interested in simple material concerns: jobs, crime, schools, security in retirement and so on. Political messaging in high turnout environments must convince the median citizen that his interests are best served by voting in one way or another. A politics of low turnouts is a politics where messaging seeks not to convince the unaligned, but to drive turnout among those nominally on your side already, which means escalating the perceived stakes beyond reason, deference to single-issue groups with GOTV infra, ballooning campaign budgets, and the time spent fundraising to feed them.

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