| ▲ | ty6853 17 hours ago |
| I mean yes? Democracy is a pretty poor model for governance. IMO peak enlightenment happened circa the 17th or 18th century when classical liberalism decided government should be based on individual liberties and anything outside of that is decided democratically not because it is a good system but because votes are roughly a tally of who would win if we all pull knives on each other because we didn't like the vote. |
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| ▲ | makeitdouble 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Democracy is not 2 parties doing voter suppression and gerrymandering as a filter to pass the result to an electoral college. The US system was never designed to be fair to individuals in the first place, pointing at it as a failure of democracy is IMHO pulling the actual issues under the rug. |
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| ▲ | rayiner 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | It’s basically impossible to engage in meaningful voter suppression in a country where election results can be cross-checked against high-quality polling. “Gerrymandering” also has no effect on Presidential elections. And in 2024, Republicans won a larger share of the House popular vote than their share of House seats. | | |
| ▲ | makeitdouble 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | Voter suppression is the act of limiting the pool of voters. That includes putting large swaths of the population behind bars or flagged as non eligible to voting, putting barriers to voter registration etc. It can never be 0 and every country will have a minimum requirement, but the degree to which it is done in the US is far ahead of most western country. Gerrymandering has an effect on the criteria for voter eligibility, the voting rules in the state etc. It's not direct but who's in power has a sizeable effect on who will have an easier time voting. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | No, “voter suppression” is the act of preventing legitimate voters from voting. Society determining that categories of people shouldn’t vote (children, felons, non-citizens, etc.) isn’t voter suppression, it’s simply establishing qualifications for voting. The goal isn’t to get to 0 or try to get as close to 0 as possible. People who should vote should be able to vote, while people who shouldn’t vote shouldn’t be able to vote. In the modern era, we should probably narrow the franchise, instituting civics tests and restricting voting to natural born citizens. Statistically, both of these would have hurt my party in 2024, so this isn’t self-interest speaking. | | |
| ▲ | makeitdouble 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Voter suppression is suppressing voters one way or the other. Your idea of restricting by birth rights is of course another form of it. It's fascinating to look at that proposition for a country that mostly got rid of its indigenous population. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Words have meaning. Setting qualifications is different than “suppression.” The former determines who are legitimate voters. The latter is an effort to keep legitimate voters from voting. Conflating legitimate qualification rules with “suppression” is fuzzy thinking in service of propaganda. Restricting by birth right is simply an extension of the universal practice of restricting voting by citizenship. Every democracy decides who has sufficient stake in and familiarity with the society to be able to vote. | | |
| ▲ | makeitdouble 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Words have meaning Well, yes. At this point we could as well get back to Wikipedia for at least a common interpretation of the concept: > The disenfranchisement of voters due to age, residence, citizenship, or criminal record are among the more recent examples of ways that elections can be subverted by changing who is allowed to vote. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression > universal practice of restricting voting by citizenship Citizenship restriction is not universal BTW, and going from a civil status (can be acquired) to a physical one is an incredibly huge leap that is nothing simple. | | |
| ▲ | xyzzyz an hour ago | parent [-] | | Look, if you insist on using this term like this, it will make conversation and mutual understanding more difficult. If banning toddlers from voting is "voter suppression", then now we must distinguish between "good voter suppression", like banning votes from toddlers, and "bad voter suppression", like for example tactics to mendaciously make it harder to vote for people who are otherwise eligible. The result is that "voter suppression" is no longer understood to be a bad thing. You lose the ability to drop this phrase and expect people to pick up that the implication is negative. For example, you said above: > Democracy is not 2 parties doing voter suppression and gerrymandering as a filter to pass the result to an electoral college. If "voter suppression" as a term now include things that are universally understood as good, like banning toddlers from voting, this sounds incoherent. Democracy very much is about doing voter suppression, and everybody agrees it to be a good thing! If you don't like how it sounds, you need to stop including good and proper things under the "voter suppression" label. Rayiner tried to help you with that, by distinguishing between mendacious voter suppression, and good and proper setting of voter qualifications, but you rejected that. |
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| ▲ | myvoiceismypass 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > No, “voter suppression” is the act of preventing legitimate voters from voting. Next you will tell us all how easy it is for all Americans to get drivers ids / similar licensing right? > Statistically, both of these would have hurt my party in 2024, so this isn’t self-interest speaking. Ah. There it is. | | |
| ▲ | xyzzyz an hour ago | parent [-] | | This "IDs are hard to get by in US" narrative is really funny to anyone who lived in Europe, where IDs are harder to get by than in US, while being required for more purposes and activities. I have yet to see anyone saying that voter ID requirements are voter suppression to also bite the bullet and say that Europe is a totalitarian hellhole compared to the US, the land of the free. |
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| ▲ | sapphicsnail 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| How can someone talk about democracy peaking when the franchise was extended to a tiny minority of the population. You don't give a damn about individual liberties, you only care that the "right" people have liberty. |
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| ▲ | edgyquant 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | That poster is specifically arguing against democracy | | |
| ▲ | sapphicsnail 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | Your right. I stand corrected. They don't give a damn about democracy or individual liberties. | | |
| ▲ | A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Hmm. What if I told you that the parent was clearly in favor of the republic? Would that change your disposition? If not, why not. |
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| ▲ | 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| [deleted] |
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| ▲ | timeon 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Seems like US-centric view. Many countries had several iterations since then. |
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| ▲ | tsimionescu 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Ah yes, the wonderful time of enlightenment when all straight white Christian land-owning men's rights became recognized, not just the nobility's. Just a few short centuries from there, the rights of poorer white men, children, women, people of any other skin color, non-Christian, and LGBT people would be recognized too. |
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| ▲ | A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | You jest, but skin in the game is argument is not irrelevant. It is called a franchise for a reason after all. You want a slice of the pie, you should be able to prove that you know what you are doing. Owning land was a good enough proxy then. We can argue what would be a good proxy now. | | |
| ▲ | tsimionescu 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Having the laws of the nation apply to you means you have skin in the game when it comes to deciding what those laws are. Owning something, land or whatever else, doesn't give you even one iota more "skin the game" than those that don't. | | |
| ▲ | A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I disagree, but lets for the sake of argument assume that I buy into your premise. In terms of degrees, do people who own land and have the laws of the nation apply to you ( which is a fascinating distinction by the way, which you may have not fully thought through, but I will leave it as a tangent unless you want to explore it further here ) have more skin in the game than those who only have laws of the nation apply to them? |
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| ▲ | keybored 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You’re saying that people who owned land (and humans) as property had skin in the game while everyone else did not. Just stop. | | |
| ▲ | A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | There is no reason to conflate the two. To be frank, I explicitly stated land ( and not property as a more generic term ), which makes me question how much of a good faith of a conversation this is. My point stands on its own merits, but you seem to want to rely on cheap rhetorical theatrics a good chunk of the audience here can see through. | | |
| ▲ | keybored 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Okay, owning land then. My bad. All humans existing in the nation have skin in the game by the fact that they exist there. How do landowners have more of a stake? | | |
| ▲ | ty6853 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | They have land that can be taken or voted away. I don't think only land owners should be able to vote, but it's worth noting worldwide having significant property is one of the most common ways for immigrants to qualify for a resident visa (other two common ways is job or business investment). Right or not it signifies enough skin in the game to many if not most societies to reflect reciprocated integration the community. Remember in the early days there was almost no immigration control as well, so finding proxies for skin in the game might have been more challenging than today, when emigrating is almost impossible for the poor so they are stuck with their skin in America whether they like it or not. |
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| ▲ | watwut 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Whatbexactly are values you consider enlightened and did you ever bother to read history, specifically the parts about how society functions not just where armies went? I assure you French prior, dueing and after French revolution was not pinacle of great governance. More like, the low. |
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| ▲ | entropicdrifter 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| [flagged] |
