In Britain, the government has just introduced Police and Crime Commissioners, who are elected to provide civilian oversight of the local police force—like an American sheriff. Turnout for these elections was very low—just 15%, which has led to the media describing the PCCs as a failure.
I am not so sure. Voter ignorance has been repeatedly demonstrated, but it has also been shown that voters in low-turnout elections are much higher information. This is intuitively plausible—the person who can be bothered to vote in the local council election is much more politically engaged than the person who only votes in the general election. I’m not aware of any study about voter ignorance in the PCC elections, but I don’t doubt that (1) the electorate is much better-informed than members of the general public and (2) much more likely to be civically virtuous—i.e. hard-working, homeowners, not divorced, not on benefits, etc. Therefore it seems to me that a low turnout is a good thing, and at first I thought that Britain should have other unglamorous elected positions which would also take advantage of this better electorate to improve standards of governance.
However, I am also aware that something like this exists in America, and my understanding is that these municipal posts are often quite corrupt and elections frequently uncontested, so my naive theory is wrong. Possible explanations:
The better electorate is more than cancelled out by the obscurity of the election—i.e. the typical clueless moderate nevertheless knows much more about Barack Obama than the high-information voter does about his local sanitation commissioner.
Lack of a proper demos (i.e. people vote for their preferred party’s candidate for a local election to send a national message).
The stories I hear are limited to the big cities, and things are much better in suburbs and the countryside.
The UK would get a good short-term effect from this move, but in the long-term it would move to a new equilibrium where corrupt voters would see how much sense it made for them to vote for sanitation commissioner.
Other?
Your thoughts would be particularly appreciated if there are unglamorous low-level elections where you live.
This may be too far off topic (sorry), but I’m curious what you mean by this:
civically virtuous—i.e. hard-working, homeowners, not divorced, not on benefits, etc
To me those are an odd set of traits to put together, and I think you imply that people with such traits are somehow more entitled to their vote. Is this what you meant? Would you mind explaining why if so?
I think you imply that people with such traits are somehow more entitled to their vote. Is this what you meant?
I can’t speak for OP, but I can give my reason to think such a thing.
First off, democracy isn’t a terminal good. People having a say in how the government is run is supposed to produce better goverment, not be an end in itself. As such, words like “entitled” are the wrong ones to use here I think. Better to ask what is the value, from a consequentialist perspective, of certain people having or not having the vote. The vote is a trust that you place in people to select good government on your behalf, not a right that they deserve.
If you can agree with that (which I’ll admit is rather radical), then the interesting question becomes whether civic-minded responsible homeowners would make a better decision than the population at large. It some sense, it seems likely. In another sense, the sanity waterline is so low that even the political opinions of most responsible 10% of the population are unlikely to be correllated with what would actually be good.
I somewhat agree with you. Actually my view used to be quite similar, but I changed some of my opinions to become much more in favour of democracy, if not as a terminal good then as a best choice out of a bad set of choices, mainly because the potential for abuse by any system that disenfranchises any minority group (under a broad definition of minority) is just too great. That’s the reasoning behind my admittedly loaded use of “entitled” here: I believe we have a responsibility to make sure everyone gets a say, because otherwise we end up abusing the ones who don’t. That’s just how people seem to work.
So your position is that the least harmful government we know of is democracy with no one left out of the process. That’s reasonable. My history and poli-sci knowledge isn’t good enough to say what might be lurking in “that we know of”. However, there seems to be rather strong mechanisms by which especially democracy becomes disfunctional and corrupt.
That’s the reasoning behind my admittedly loaded use of “entitled” here: I believe we have a responsibility to make sure everyone gets a say, because otherwise we end up abusing the ones who don’t.
Ok, but it’s confusing to mix normative and empirical/instrumental discussion together. Mixing them signals muddled thought, which makes it harder for people to interpret charitably. Try to seperate them as much as possible.
“The majority will tyrannize any minority without political clout, therefore we should make sure nobody is lacking in political power” is a much more useful statement than anything involving “responsibility” “rights” “enitled” etc. (mind you I think it’s wrong, but it’s at least composed of empirical predictions and instrumental suggestions that can be interrogated cleanly.)
It has nothing to do with being “entitled” to a vote. My post is not concerned with the moral status of voting, but rather the outputs.
My prediction (and experience) is that a population high in traits like that—basically, conscientiousness—will result in better decision-making for everyone than a population with the opposite traits.
Ah, I see. You’re probably right that there is some correlation between those traits and conscientiousness. (Not divorced is the one that would surprise me.) However, I imagine that you don’t catch many more conscientious people by including any of these sets over and above the set of well-informed voters, which you already mentioned. (Plus, if someone is conscientious but poorly informed, does that help?)
5-Among those informed few who vote in smaller elections, especially local ones, are those who stand to benefit materially from one outcome or another. This could be a large enough number to sway otherwise similarly matched candidates, such that whoever wins will owe favors to one group or another.
Around here, school bonds almost never lose, and school board members are often very friendly with school unions.
Living in the UK, my impression (at least in my bubble) is that the low turnout wasn’t due to ignorance/apathy, but due to many people being opposed to the creation of the PCC post.
Opposition to PCCs may have been part of it, but my understanding is that very large numbers of people weren’t even aware that there was an election being held, and that many more felt they had no information about the role. Certainly that was the impression in my bubble, but you could well be right—unfortunately I haven’t been able to find hard data on this. But I think the point holds regardless—local elections generally only get around mid-30s in turnout, unless they coincide with a general election, and I don’t think people are opposed to having local councillors.
Yeah, I think it was partly that. Personally, I put a blank ballot paper in the box because I don’t see the sense in this being an elected position. They should hire someone with the requisite qualifications and experience! The candidates in my area, to the extent that I heard anything about them, seemed to be running on platforms involving “keeping politics out of policing”… from which I infer that putting politics in policing is perceived as unpopular.
In Britain, the government has just introduced Police and Crime Commissioners, who are elected to provide civilian oversight of the local police force—like an American sheriff. Turnout for these elections was very low—just 15%, which has led to the media describing the PCCs as a failure.
I am not so sure. Voter ignorance has been repeatedly demonstrated, but it has also been shown that voters in low-turnout elections are much higher information. This is intuitively plausible—the person who can be bothered to vote in the local council election is much more politically engaged than the person who only votes in the general election. I’m not aware of any study about voter ignorance in the PCC elections, but I don’t doubt that (1) the electorate is much better-informed than members of the general public and (2) much more likely to be civically virtuous—i.e. hard-working, homeowners, not divorced, not on benefits, etc. Therefore it seems to me that a low turnout is a good thing, and at first I thought that Britain should have other unglamorous elected positions which would also take advantage of this better electorate to improve standards of governance.
However, I am also aware that something like this exists in America, and my understanding is that these municipal posts are often quite corrupt and elections frequently uncontested, so my naive theory is wrong. Possible explanations:
The better electorate is more than cancelled out by the obscurity of the election—i.e. the typical clueless moderate nevertheless knows much more about Barack Obama than the high-information voter does about his local sanitation commissioner.
Lack of a proper demos (i.e. people vote for their preferred party’s candidate for a local election to send a national message).
The stories I hear are limited to the big cities, and things are much better in suburbs and the countryside.
The UK would get a good short-term effect from this move, but in the long-term it would move to a new equilibrium where corrupt voters would see how much sense it made for them to vote for sanitation commissioner.
Other?
Your thoughts would be particularly appreciated if there are unglamorous low-level elections where you live.
This may be too far off topic (sorry), but I’m curious what you mean by this:
To me those are an odd set of traits to put together, and I think you imply that people with such traits are somehow more entitled to their vote. Is this what you meant? Would you mind explaining why if so?
I can’t speak for OP, but I can give my reason to think such a thing.
First off, democracy isn’t a terminal good. People having a say in how the government is run is supposed to produce better goverment, not be an end in itself. As such, words like “entitled” are the wrong ones to use here I think. Better to ask what is the value, from a consequentialist perspective, of certain people having or not having the vote. The vote is a trust that you place in people to select good government on your behalf, not a right that they deserve.
If you can agree with that (which I’ll admit is rather radical), then the interesting question becomes whether civic-minded responsible homeowners would make a better decision than the population at large. It some sense, it seems likely. In another sense, the sanity waterline is so low that even the political opinions of most responsible 10% of the population are unlikely to be correllated with what would actually be good.
For various reasons I no longer believe in democracy.
I somewhat agree with you. Actually my view used to be quite similar, but I changed some of my opinions to become much more in favour of democracy, if not as a terminal good then as a best choice out of a bad set of choices, mainly because the potential for abuse by any system that disenfranchises any minority group (under a broad definition of minority) is just too great. That’s the reasoning behind my admittedly loaded use of “entitled” here: I believe we have a responsibility to make sure everyone gets a say, because otherwise we end up abusing the ones who don’t. That’s just how people seem to work.
So your position is that the least harmful government we know of is democracy with no one left out of the process. That’s reasonable. My history and poli-sci knowledge isn’t good enough to say what might be lurking in “that we know of”. However, there seems to be rather strong mechanisms by which especially democracy becomes disfunctional and corrupt.
Ok, but it’s confusing to mix normative and empirical/instrumental discussion together. Mixing them signals muddled thought, which makes it harder for people to interpret charitably. Try to seperate them as much as possible.
“The majority will tyrannize any minority without political clout, therefore we should make sure nobody is lacking in political power” is a much more useful statement than anything involving “responsibility” “rights” “enitled” etc. (mind you I think it’s wrong, but it’s at least composed of empirical predictions and instrumental suggestions that can be interrogated cleanly.)
Agreed, that is a better way of stating what I meant.
It has nothing to do with being “entitled” to a vote. My post is not concerned with the moral status of voting, but rather the outputs.
My prediction (and experience) is that a population high in traits like that—basically, conscientiousness—will result in better decision-making for everyone than a population with the opposite traits.
Ah, I see. You’re probably right that there is some correlation between those traits and conscientiousness. (Not divorced is the one that would surprise me.) However, I imagine that you don’t catch many more conscientious people by including any of these sets over and above the set of well-informed voters, which you already mentioned. (Plus, if someone is conscientious but poorly informed, does that help?)
5-Among those informed few who vote in smaller elections, especially local ones, are those who stand to benefit materially from one outcome or another. This could be a large enough number to sway otherwise similarly matched candidates, such that whoever wins will owe favors to one group or another.
Around here, school bonds almost never lose, and school board members are often very friendly with school unions.
Interesting. This is basically what I meant by (4).
Is this the case with all such low-level elected officials, or just school board members?
Ah, yes, I see that now. (And to answer your question, I could only guess. Or try and look it up, but no time for that.)
Living in the UK, my impression (at least in my bubble) is that the low turnout wasn’t due to ignorance/apathy, but due to many people being opposed to the creation of the PCC post.
Opposition to PCCs may have been part of it, but my understanding is that very large numbers of people weren’t even aware that there was an election being held, and that many more felt they had no information about the role. Certainly that was the impression in my bubble, but you could well be right—unfortunately I haven’t been able to find hard data on this. But I think the point holds regardless—local elections generally only get around mid-30s in turnout, unless they coincide with a general election, and I don’t think people are opposed to having local councillors.
Yeah, I think it was partly that. Personally, I put a blank ballot paper in the box because I don’t see the sense in this being an elected position. They should hire someone with the requisite qualifications and experience! The candidates in my area, to the extent that I heard anything about them, seemed to be running on platforms involving “keeping politics out of policing”… from which I infer that putting politics in policing is perceived as unpopular.