“The low expected turnout in the upcoming elections reflects a popular rejection of the…political system, which is suffering from a legitimacy crisis and the absence of real opposition forces to vie with the parties in power…”
We have no problem identifying low voter turnout as a consequence of political illegitimacy. People decline to vote because they recognize that voting will not produce meaningful change, because it’s not worth it and because they don’t want to participate in a corrupt system…
…as long as we’re talking about countries other than the US. When US voters withhold their participation, they’re almost certainly going to hear about how they personally want fascism to win. Haven’t you heard that this is The Most Important Election in Our Lifetime? All systemic analysis goes out the window and all we can talk about is personal failure.
“The low expected turnout in the upcoming elections reflects a popular rejection of the…political system, which is suffering from a legitimacy crisis and the absence of real opposition forces to vie with the parties in power…”
People decline to vote because they recognize that voting will not produce meaningful change, because it’s not worth it and because they don’t want to participate in a corrupt system…
You are only highlighting political apathy. That may not be the only reason in India. In mega cities of India, including Bengaluru, the calculation of low voter turnout percentage is wrong due to:
Out-of-sync voter lists in mega cities that have a lot of migration and inter-city movement. It may require significant effort to get the name added in the electoral roll after migrating to another city.
Duplicate entries and improper deletions, during an effort to clean up the electoral rolls, leading to the disenfranchisement of genuine voters.
The above does not necessarily mean that citizens can be absolved. Indian political parties must introspect why their election manifestos and candidates are failing to motivate voters to come out and vote enthusiastically.
@HeavenlyPossum i was thinking, not now, but let’s say two or three elections from now. When people notice that third party votes are increasing, then maybe they would be inclined to vote third party themselves.
First-past-the-post elections with single-member districts are about as perfectly designed as one might hope to prevent the emergence of anything but two really broad coalitions. Any additional party competing for 50%+1 of the vote in any district has a competitive advantage if it merged with another party to push it past that threshold, creating a race towards two parties.
@HeavenlyPossum No, in a government 'of the people, by the people, for the people' it reflects a degradation of the people, us, You and me.
You apparently wonder why the lame people win. Because they participate. Not just 1 day every 4 years. Civil rights? Cause they marched, fundraised, voted, volunteered, practically sainted leaders that supported their movement. Anti-abortion (unfortunately) the same.
The lack of expected voting is a reflection of a deeply lazy and entitled populace.
@HeavenlyPossum Civil rights leaders not the lame people btw, just running out of room there to say it all together. Thats an example of when people got some stuff right followed by an example of when people got things extraordinarily wrong by just handwaving at abortion rights for 50 years think Roe V Wade would magically take care of it all while the other side feverishly worked to kill it.
“Our basic human rights are subject to the whims of people who demonstrably hate us and want to murder us” seems like a bad argument against electoralism.
This government was NEVER "of the people by the people for the people". From day 1, "all men are created equal" actually meant "rich white landowning males are more equal than others"-- that shit was built by genocidal slaveowners, lest we forget. You know, the kinds of people who believe a lot of people are degenerates too stupid and weak to be allowed to control their own lives. Why buy into that victim-blaming narrative when the numbers prove what the people want only affects 10% of our legislation?
Obama promised to codify Roe v Wade, which would have protected us from the current nightmare over abortion. He had the majority and opportunity to do it. Then he said it was "not a priority" and just didn't fucking BOTHER. He may as well have handed it (and the Supreme Court) to Republicans with a bow on top, to make sure we're too busy trying to desperately defend our crotches to complain about corruption in the DNC.
This is so true. The mechanism of messaging for a campaign is "vote to save Democracy", and the part that is always left out is the numerous campaigns in the past with the same messaging and little to no result.
The election process is a stuck cycle that the candidates continue to promote. Those locked into the cycle will parrot the message and those who want real change/reform will continue to be blamed for remaining true to their individual values.
Calling out the process as a whole, calling out the DNC and RNC as complicit in propagating this mess is our only choice.
It's all just drudgery. We're plugging the dam that is the economy with band-aids and duct-tape and pretending that no flood is coming. It's actually akin to climate denial.
@HeavenlyPossum Bangladesh had 80% turnout in 2008 but apparently it's been collapsing ever since. I assume this is a preferred outcome for the Awamis, and may well be for a lot of the opposition as well.
@HeavenlyPossum
People rejecting voting signifies a recognition that electoral participation reinforces our flawed structures, lacking the power (or refusing) to challenge them. Voting is finally being viewed as an inadequate means for meaningful change that operates within biased frameworks. The emphasis will hopefully shift to direct action, community organizing, and dismantling oppressive hierarchies, prioritizing collective empowerment over having faith in the "democratic" electoral system.
@Radical_EgoCom@HeavenlyPossum
Hank green has a way of explaining voting that I liked. It's the wiping your ass of politics. It's the bare minimum. Like, you gotta wash your ass eventually, and America has a real dirty ass.
it seems to generally be the nonvoters that are the bulk of the electorate – abdication of democracy
perhaps because we don’t emphasize that voting is the minimum duty of citizens in a democracy
@HeavenlyPossum@Radical_EgoCom
voting does not constitute democracy -- it is one possible aspect of democracy
but in the US system (as well as others), it is an important aspect
@libramoon@HeavenlyPossum
America isn't a country where decisions are made by the people, it's a country where all decisions are ultimately made by the ruling class, the wealthy capitalist class, i.e. an oligarchy.
except that is abdicating what democracy we have fought so hard for to those who vote cynically to destroy it
if a protest, it will not be heard, or misinterpreted to fit the hearers' bias
if you think it useless, irrelevant, make that change, take more power rather than giving up what little you have
@libramoon@HeavenlyPossum
Yeah, it is abdicating democracy, but it's abdicating it in exchange for a far more effective tool that doesn't reinforce the very system we're trying to abolish, those tools being direct action, mutual aid, and community organization/defense.
@Radical_EgoCom@HeavenlyPossum
but what you suggest as an alternative is actual democracy
we really NEED true civic education from the earliest grades that emphasizes personal responsibility for our communities and governance, and how to effectively get things done in that direction
I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean, but the victims in this case are the American public who are systematically denied self-governance by wealthy elites backed by powerful institutions of violence.
Ascribing that situation to some imaginary decision by millions of people who supposedly decided, all at the same time, to be “lazy” about democracy is consumate victim blaming.
@HeavenlyPossum@Radical_EgoCom
do you think wealthy elites are going to hand power back?
the only way for the people to have power is to take it -- but most people are not interested in politics because most people have very difficult lives to navigate
that's not victim blaming
that's just reporting what I see
I do not think they are going to hand over power, and that’s why I do not think you could ever vote your way out of the status quo.
It is victim blaming to assign responsibility for the status quo to imagined personal failings by millions of people who lack the institutional capacity to change the status quo.
Any time you suddenly see millions of people doing the same thing, it’s very rarely the case that they all simply coincidentally made the same bad choice, and very often the case that institutional power is at work.
@libramoon@HeavenlyPossum
They've abandoned democracy because they've realized that it doesn't help them. They vote election after election, yet everything stays the same, and the politicians of all parties tell them that if they vote for them then this time it'll be different, but the people have heard that before. More and more people are finally abandoning governmental politics. The next step is for them to realize the value in direct action and community organizing.
@Radical_EgoCom@HeavenlyPossum
people have been given wrong ideas about government -- how it works, what it can do, what processes are necessary to get appropriate action, how to find and promote the people who would best do the jobs we want done, ...
YES, direct action, community organizing -- if we actually put our energy and commitment into these we can get the government we want
"re·pub·lic
/rəˈpəblik/
noun
a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch."
“The power is held by the people” is question begging. If there is a state apart from the rest of society, then the state, not the people, holds power.
If there is some segment of society called “the state” that holds power over the everyone else who isn’t part of the state, then we can’t say that “the people hold power.”
When we define a republic as a system in which “the state” and “the people” hold power, we’re begging the question that this is even possible. We’ve baked a paradox into the very definition of the word.
if I am part of that state, it most certainly does include me
a state, a government, a mob -- these are not some autonomous edifice -- they are people doing the work or not to keep the thing part of the social fabric
You are not part of the state if your only involvement is casting a periodic and mathematically insignificant ballot for one of two candidates chosen from among our wealthy elites, neither of whom will pursue your interests or preferences.
we are part of the state if we live here
we are part of the communities that create the state
the state is not so much a thing as an idea, and it certainly isn't a thing that can do on its own, that takes people
that some people treat others badly is not a state doing anything, it is people acting poorly (generally to amass wealth)
You might be a subject of the state based on where you live, but that does not make you a part of the institution of the state.
The state is an institution. It might be socially constructed, but it has facticity in your life. If you don’t think this is the case, I encourage you to try acting as if the state is just an idea and see what happens to you.
The state is certainly composed of people. To pretend that the state does not act as an institution, though, is absurd.
So Nazi German was just an idea, not an institution capable of acting as an institution, and the Holocaust was just a series of individual choices by individual people who all chose industrialized genocide by coincidental happenstance?
@HeavenlyPossum@Radical_EgoCom@gentrifiedrose
exactly -- though not just individuals, but groups of people and those they were able to convince to play along
not by happenstance -- by well developed plans
“Nazi Germany wasn’t an institution, just tens of millions of sadists in a trenchcoat” sure is a new one.
No, the state acts as an institution through replicable and predictable patterns of behavior by members and agents of the state made possible with mechanisms designed to coerce .
If you commit a “crime,” the state will dispatch a cop to arrest you. If that cop declines to arrest you, that cop might be fired and replaced by another cop willing to obey, or even be arrested by other cops. If you defend yourself against that cop, who then calls for backup, those cops will all predictably endorse the actions of the first cop (or become adversaries of the state) and act violently to defeat you.
not new at all -- what it was, what it is in all these authoritarian countries today -- pathetic people granted far too much power
the state does nothing -- you commit a crime and the victim or witness or detective who figures it out gets a cop to arrest you. Any employee who declines to follow their employer's orders faces being fired. Cops are not the state -- they are employees who often have bad attitudes and do bad jobs (or not)
I’m afraid your understanding of the world is too different from mine if you believe the problems of institutional power are the fault of “pathetic people” victimized by those institutions, or that the cop is not an agent of the state, for this to be a useful exchange.
I’ll just note—and then I’m done engaging this nonsense—that when you talk about “bad people being given too much power by pathetic people,” that the power you’re talking about is the institutional power of the state. If we’re all just atomized individuals and there is no institutional authority, then no president, no king, no dictator could ever “be given power.”
These people hold power because of their positions in institutional hierarchies, because other people subordinate to them will predictably follow the commands of their leaders, and predictably punish defectors from within their ranks who do not obey orders. You’ve baked “the state” as a cohesive institutional actor into your own worldview without being able to admit it, because you’re committed to the idea of discrete individual responsibility for everything, up to and including the literal Nazi war machine.
Just total silliness that I don’t have time to unpack and piece back together for you tonight.
ok, I will redefine "state" for this moment to mean an overarching system created and maintained to impose the will of the ruling class, thus that it overtakes the common understandings of social good and creates monstrous institutions for social harm.
Happy?
I’m not really sure what you hope to get from this exchange based on this sort of begrudging bad faith, but that’s not a terrible definition of the state.
@HeavenlyPossum@Radical_EgoCom@gentrifiedrose
you seem to want a malicious state excuse when thereby there is no useful recourse
if we understand the individuals involved, their weaknesses, the ways we can counter them, we have a state, a structure, within which we can act as we prefer
but that only happens with people organizing and learning best ways to go forward
You told me the state doesn’t exist as an institution that acts cohesively in the world. There is no “the top” if we live in a world of methodological individualism; there’s only countless discrete interactions between individuals with no meaningful or predictable pattern of behavior.
did I say that? doesn't sound like me. The state cannot act, anywhere, it has no substance. People act in coherence to promote and maintain a system -- but the system can only respond to those human actions
how is this so hard to understand?
I said your wording, didn't sound like mine. The state can't act, anywhere. Not being able to act is not the same as not existing. The states exist as institutions, as ideas, not as actors.
It's a country where all decisions are ultimately made by the ruling class, the wealthy capitalist class, i.e. an oligarchy.
Can you name a few countries where decisions are ultimately not made by the ruling class except when the citizens get an opportunity to cast their respective vote during elections?
@srijit@HeavenlyPossum@libramoon
Well, there's The Rebel Zapatistas Autonomous Municipalities, but besides that, no, I can't think of any. So what? The lack of real freedom in the world in no way justifies the current state of the world.
@Radical_EgoCom@HeavenlyPossum Maybe this is a dumb question, but how do any of these things become easier under fascism?
Yes, voting is weaksauce, but don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Vote for the lesser of evils so that the system can be reformed/dismantled/refactored/whatever. Sitting out the election "on principle" is just giving an almighty fuck-you to everyone who will be living with (and to those who will very likely be dying from) the consequences.
@HeavenlyPossum@Radical_EgoCom@magitweeter@phil_stevens I mean... Yeah? If someone has, for example, HIV and has to take meds every day to prevent it from turning into AIDS, the smart thing to do would be to keep taking the meds over and over until a better option becomes accessible. Refusing to treat the symptoms until you have a cure when the symptoms stand to make a cure moot by just ending you, that's not an advisable position to take
I don’t think this metaphor is particularly useful if the thing we’re told to do over and over again—voting—doesn’t have a demonstrable relationship to the things we’re told it’s going to prevent (ie, Donald Trump becoming president despite losing)
@HeavenlyPossum@magitweeter@Radical_EgoCom@phil_stevens there is though, the upset at the midterms showed that. Will it be enough? Don't know. But that doesn't make it not worth trying.
I'm a huge advocate for harm reduction. As much as I wish that holding your nose and voting didn't have to be a thing, the fact is that marginalized communities will face far more violence the more right-wingers get into office. If not by bills, then by emboldened ideologues
In 2016, people voted against Trump and he still became president. In 2020, people voted against Trump and still ended up with, among other things, Trump’s immigration policy and Trump’s policy on Roe v Wade. Maybe some people have learned from experience?
I get the sense that you want my original post to have meant something that it didn’t, so you can be mad at me in the face of fascism for which I am not responsible and against which electoralism has been inadequate.
@phil_stevens@HeavenlyPossum
Participating in a flawed electoral system perpetuates and legitimizes our fundamentally unjust institutions. Voting for the lesser evil still supports the system. Meaningful change requires direct action and grassroots movements, not relying on compromised political processes. Abstaining from voting is a refusal to validate a system that is fundamentally flawed.
@Radical_EgoCom@HeavenlyPossum Good luck with your grassroots movements and direct action when everyone is being disappeared and extrajudicially murdered. JFC
Like in 2016 when people voted against Trump but he became president anyway and had people disappeared and ordered at least one extrajudicial murder of an American in the US.
People have repeatedly voted against them and it hasn’t mattered, as when Trump became president despite losing or when Biden either implemented or was helpless to sto Trump’s policies despite winning. This is perhaps why many Americans don’t feel it’s worthwhile to vote.
But it's also simply not true to that terminal extreme. A very small bit of help is not the same thing as no help at all. So when the cost is also small, do it!
Do big shit when you can, but recognize that little shit adds up too and seize those little opportunities. Thus: momentum.
@HeavenlyPossum@moondog548@Radical_EgoCom In the US, to use what I think is a relevant example, you have a corrupt and compromised party beholden to oligarchs, but at least believes in the rule of law. Then you have the other corrupt and compromised party beholden to oligarchs, who are led by someone who openly plans to revoke the rule of law and hunt people for sport.
Under which option do you have a better chance of making substantive change? Because this is literally what is at stake.
I don’t think substantive change has been or will be allowed by either faction of the oligarch elites, and I don’t think electoralism has had any effect on that dynamic.
I’m old enough to remember when liberals were warning that Americans had to vote for Joe Biden or they’d lose abortion rights.
Again, you are saying #RealShit. The only thing we seem to disagree on is perhaps a semantic hair-splitting on "substantive"
Well, that and your apparent defacto position that voting for harm reduction (in addition to other more substantial work for revolution) is actually worse than not.
I've belabored my argument against that position, but I've yet to see anyone's argument for it.
I haven’t told anyone not to vote, once, in all of these posts. I’ve simply explained why people might not vote, and argued that most people critical of non-voters in the US would probably be sympathetic to the same process in other countries.
You mean, like the laws that say it's a war crime to bomb hospitals and drive millions of civilians out of their homes?
The DNC helped turn the GOP into the monstrosity it is today, just to make themselves look better next to it. They pick and choose which laws they feel like pretending to care about, while stripping out the parts that were supposed to protect us from corporate rule, and while protecting the people destroying the planet.
If they were going to allow substantive change to take place from within the system, it would've happened in the 60s.
@moondog548@violetmadder@phil_stevens@HeavenlyPossum@Radical_EgoCom for nearly a century at this point, people have been saying ‘we can do both!’ referring to engaging in electoral politics and so-called grassroots efforts, but it’s never amounted to anything substantial because the electoral efforts rob us of all of our energy and spirit. and they know it.
it’s not about extrajudicial assasinations or despair, it’s just plain and simple: we can’t ‘do both’ and electoralism isn’t harm reduction—we’re either perpetuating the status quo, or changing it.
the fact is that grassroots / community-led efforts and political dissidents are the real threat to democrats—not republicans—and when we study the work of Hannah Arendt, Robert Paxton, David Graeber, Angela Davis, Astra Taylor… we find that they’d faster cozy up with their politically and financially-powerful counterparts before they ever fought for us if it comes down to it.
@moondog548@violetmadder@phil_stevens@HeavenlyPossum@Radical_EgoCom sure, if it was only checking a box and then heading home, then maybe you’d be onto something, but there’s pressure to phone bank and text and tweet and register friends and door knock and chip in our hard earned money and rally and ‘keep making noise so ppl don’t forget’ and keep up with the debates and watch the polls and pull your hair out because it’s so close so we should just make sure ppl are registered “one more time” and…
the fact is it’s never just checking a box.
and with what Biden has done that’s worse than Trump in every way, there’s reason enough to opt out entirely.
I wonder if asking people to check a box (and nothing more) doesn’t have the same effect as a “raising awareness” post shared on facebook—ie, a placebo effect for meaningful action. “Hey, I did a thing!”
All this tells us is that voting is strategically important to our elites, not that it’s strategically important for us. Habsburg archdukes once had to bribe the prince-electors of the Holy Roman Empire astronomical sums to secure their elections as emperor. Intra-elite jockeying is important to elites, but not as much to the people ruled by those elites.
Hmm... I need to ponder this and hope I remember to. It's an important higher-level concept for sure.
Right now, I'm just too preoccupied with the immediate threat of unbridled fascism rendering the matter of further societal progress moot for the next few generations.
Keeping us preoccupied with that threat, is why the DNC buys ads for the worst Republicans they can find. This is why they helped elevate Trump to a serious candidate in the first place.
They are feeding the monsters we pay them to fight. Do you see?
@Radical_EgoCom
Isn't refusing to vote giving up power? Wouldn't you rather vote for yourself than not vote at all?
It seems like low voter turnout hasn't made these systems any less legitimate overall, but why does voting conflict with direct action and grassroots movements? Seems like an arrow in the quiver. @phil_stevens@HeavenlyPossum
But then if you need to be told why voting is an exercise in power, you either are trolling or really have something else going on that I don't understand.
I can think of some reasons why voting is not an exercise in power!
Structurally, votes are relevant in inverse proportion to the total number of votes cast. In a country the size of the US, your vote is individually irrelevant.
Institutionally, the US political system is structured to make your vote even more irrelevant. A person who lives in Wyoming or New York plays effectively no role at all in a US presidential election.
The US first past the post system encourages large, bland coalitions with few policy distinctions between them. Obama’s signature legislative achievement was his Republican rival’s healthcare plan.
The US system was established with redundant veto points precisely to make it nearly impossible to oppose the interests of the wealthy conservative elite. Americans were told for years that they had to vote for Democrats or lose Roe and then they voted for Joe Biden and still lost Roe, because he’s powerless to do anything about it.
American politics reflect elite interests, not voter desires. Americans consistently express mass majority support for policies that neither party has any interest in pursuing because they would challenge the prerogatives of wealthy elites for whom the state actually works.
You showed up in my mentions to be condescending and dismissive and I still engaged you extensively and in good faith. Then I asked you a question in response to yet another contentless and condescending post and…I am somehow the troll?
@phil_stevens@jonquass@HeavenlyPossum@Radical_EgoCom All of this is true. At the same time, giving up the only power we have is self-defeating. If nothing else, voting is the bare minimum for organizing. If we can't get people to show up for a poll, then nothing else that we imagine or dream will happen.
It is a small power, yet it matters. If it didn't, conservatives would not have been working to undermine voting rights for the last four years.
Our responsibility is to use as much power we have, even if it is just voting
@HeavenlyPossum@Radical_EgoCom@jonquass@phil_stevens all true. what changes do you propose? i like sortition, ditching the electoral college, and gerrymander is history and those doing it are barred for life from office. also, repeal citizen’s united, return to tax rates of old. break up monopolies, end campaigns. one website has everyone’s platform, with a short video of them and their voting records. free.
I would like to point out there is a relationship between actively being apart of a union and voting.
My position on this is that I want people to be more civically engaged, this looks like: voting more and particicapting in union organizing / voting in said unions.
That being said, I do not believe any analyst that says voter turn is going to be low in the future election. The unlikly voter (18-30) has been far more civically engaged in the past few election than any in the prior 50 years. not to mention 2020 was one of the first years in a while that say an increase in union organizing.
For some reason pollsters have not changed their methods for gathering data. They are still primarly calling land lines. So polling is almost always going to be slanted toward the group of people who still own land lines. They have not accounted for the "unlikely voter" the group which has swung the two prior elections heavily in the dems favor. Not to meantion their is another group of voters being effected by the legitmacy claims by trump who will be disauded from voting for Republicans. We have yet to see the effects of that group will have (they primarly vote in general election for president)
You're absolutely right that electoralism is not the solution, and we need to do other work. Thank you for continuing to spread this message! The mass complacent surrender of our civil agency to elected politicians is the cornerstone of the oligarchs' control over our lives. (1/2)
Yet that still doesn't undo the tiny bit of good that voting against the out-and-proud klepto-fascists can do in addition to all the other stuff. I hear the argument that voting "reinforces" the system, but never any evidence or logic behind it. Even more than they love suckers voting is for the folks wary of their bullshit to not vote at all! (2/2)
@phil_stevens@HeavenlyPossum@Radical_EgoCom This is a popular idea that is flawed. Yes, the system is stacked against us. We work with what we have. Putting our individual needs for ritual purity over the needs of the community is egocentric. If abortion rights are on the line, not voting so that I feel ritually pure are not helping the people whose rights are on the line.
I will say this again: if one can't organize to get people to vote, which is showing up for a poll, one won't organize people for any other type of direct action.
But people did vote for Democrats, over and over and over again. They elected Democrats to the presidency in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020, even though they only were allowed to hold office after 5 of those 7 victories.
It was Democratic presidents who declined to attempt to codify Roe as law (despite promising to do so). It was under a Democratic president that Roe was overturned. People have already been doing what you want them to for years and the result has been the opposite of what you’re suggesting.
Let me preface by laying my cards on the table (though I think it is independent of the small intervention I want to make here) - I am pro-voting because I am pro using any lever of possible power to change things. However, I wouldn't call myself an electoralist in the sense that Hugo and Phil seem to be advocating, because I think direct action and organizing is an indispensable part of political action for real change.
[I've defended this position in print - https://philpapers.org/rec/LOOADO-5]
Anyway what I want to say here is that these arguments continue every election cycle because, it seems to me, neither side takes the other seriously enough.
Those against voting tend to see those in favor of voting as broadly liberal proponents of the status quo, and I think it means they fail to articulate the most nuanced and powerful defenses of their position.
Those in favor of voting often tend to have a narrow conception of which political actions are salient which (and maybe this is unfair!) is driven by liberal democratic propaganda.
Part of the problem here, in my opinion, is that people want a very simple and principled answer, either (a) Never vote in an unjust system or (b) Always vote if you have the chance, no matter what.
Once we think about the variety of historical contexts and cases that we might find ourselves, I think it becomes clear that neither of the simple answers hold true.
So the debate needs to be had at a more particular level: Under what conditions, and despite what risks, is withholding the vote permissible.
To give an analogy, suppose I want to opt out of the capitalist marketplace, but doing so will incur a bunch of burdens on my family. I take it what I should do here depends on a bunch of things about how much of a difference I'd make, how much of a burden it would be on my family, etc. It isn't as simple as 'Never be complicit in a bad system' or 'Always be complicit if you can help your localized (geographically or temporally) situation'
But I have not once in this thread told anyone not to vote. I suspect a lot of people enjoy being really, self-righteously angry at people who don’t vote. It is, after all, easier to be mad at distant and anonymous strangers online than it is to be mad at vast impersonal institutions that can do you actual harm but against which you have few if any defenses!
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