1596
rating
42
debates
63.1%
won
Topic
#478
Mandatory Voting
Status
Finished
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
Winner & statistics
After 7 votes and with 3 points ahead, the winner is...
Alec
Parameters
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 3
- Time for argument
- Two days
- Max argument characters
- 5,000
- Voting period
- One week
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
1702
rating
574
debates
67.86%
won
Description
The rules are:
1: The BoP is on Pro since he wants it to be mandatory.
2: I will waive the 1st round and my opponent will waive the last round. They must signify this in the round. Violation is an automatic loss of the conduct point.
3: A forfeit is an automatic loss unless apologized for in the comments.
Round 1
I waive the round because of the rules.
What is democracy supposed to do, like what exactly is it?
We can think of democracy as a system of government with four key elements:
- A political system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections.
- The active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life.
- Protection of the human rights of all citizens.
- A rule of law, in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens.
Hmm, okay... So what makes it better than say an outright dictatorship or, alternatively to PURE democracy (mob rule without proportional representation to help rural areas have a say despite lower populations)?
So, let's see why (ignoring morality) that democracy is better than tyranny/dictatorship in a pragmatic way:
A significant strength of democracy as a form of government is that it makes political dissent less probable. An elected government will have been voted into power by a majority, meaning that a majority should be satisfied. This cannot compare to any other form of government: the only way to ensure majority approval is by hearing from the public, and shaping a government based on their expressed needs. Even if a dictatorship would be in the interest of the majority, this would only be an assumption, since elections are the best way to gauge what the public wants/needs. On the other hand, a democratic government leaves out the needs of minorities, which might leave them feeling unconsidered, resulting in dissatisfaction. However, there is no form of government that can appease all people, and only with democracy can majority satisfaction be assured.
This excerpt explains that while democracy can have the drawback of the uninformed masses voting wrongly, it undeniably is going to stop revolts and revolutions in the long run because (by default) the people in power can constantly defend their authority saying 'you chose us'. In history you will rarely find democratic nations or regimes ever having been successfully overthrown or broken unless it was so blatant that terms were either too long or elections too blatantly rigged such that the people felt the democracy was a lie and it really was oligarchy or, worse, dictatorship. If you're going to leave your populace constantly dissatisfied with who is in charge, it is still worse than having bad choices as leaders that you can blame the populace for. So, pragmatically, if Con defends dictatorship or any variant of it that is less than 70% democratic or such in how it chooses its leaders, I'm going to have a fairly solid defence that ignores morality which I will keep referring back to in order to cover that base.
So why mandatory voting? Also, I still have to explain why democracy itself, especially with proportional representation, is wiser than just mob rule. The reason why this is actually necessary for Pro to elaborate upon is that the basis of mandatory voting is identical to the basis of proportional representation, if anything it is a purer form of that reasoning.
See, if you have a group of people who decide who rules a chunk of land, the first issue (which leads to proportional representation) is that the denser populated areas would have an undemocratically huge say in the democratically-run process of electing leaders who would then be encouraged to make policies that benefit the urban areas at the sake of the rural ones (due to population density and say in the leadership). This, then, leads us to realise that if you also have only the voters who have enough spare time that day due to work and how tired they are or due to lack of knowing there even is an election or how to vote (let alone who to vote on and why), you have an oligarchic formation within the democracy. The oligarchic formation is first assumed to be 'people who give a damn about the nation' but if you look at most democratic nations that lack mandatory voting, there is no blatant or provable increase in the level that voters care about and appreciate the leaders. Instead, what happens is that everyone begins to care less and less as the game begins to revolve around manipulating the media such that most who are easy enough to persuade begin to care about issues that matter so little or only a medium amount and then to make those same people be the only ones who care to vote as the smarter ones begin to realise the best option is to protest by not voting or even if they do vote, they realise that democracy and even proportional representation has begun to backfire as they already know their vote isn't going to the final result unless the people in their allocated area care enough in large enough a quantity to high enough a quality to vote for the actual least of the evils.]
The punishment should be a fine proportional to the person's income in percentage. This doesn't hurt the poor worse, if anything it is the best way to ensure the poor have the most say possible in the nation's leadership. I will wait to see what Con brings to the table.
Round 2
My opponent basically says that a democracy is superior to a dictatorship. However, this is off topic to the debate topic on why voting should be mandatory.
https://www.accuratedemocracy.com/d_datac.htm states the voting rate among various democracies. As you can see, in no country is the voter turnout at 100% and only 3 countries have a voter turnout of 90% or higher. Because of this, it is safe to say that in most if not all democracies in the world require voting.
https://www.bustle.com/articles/192629-how-many-people-voted-in-the-2016-election-donald-trump-attracted-a-lot-of-attention states that 119 million people voted for Hillary or Trump. Add in some 3rd party votes, you may get 130 million. https://www.reference.com/government-politics/many-adults-live-usa-b830ecdfb6047660 states that there are around 250 million adults in the US. This means that about 1/2 American adults did not vote. You suggested fining everyone who didn't vote. How are you going to propose fining 120 million adults? You have failed to even state how much of a percent you want to take from people as a punishment for refusing to vote. What if that money that you take from them was their food money? Now, they are starving and will have to live like Africans for a day because you decided to force your will upon them to vote for something they don't care about. Can't we simply have the freedom to not vote as well as the freedom to vote?
Not all people are politically aware. Should people who are not even aware of political information be required to vote? No. They might pick a random guess as to who they like. They might pick someone because of how they look, or how their name sounds. I met a few people who are like that. They would vote for someone because they liked the name. This is dangerous because it is like allowing 8 year olds to vote. They have no idea what is going on. Neither do some adult Americans. Should people be forced to vote on something that they don't know what is going on? No.
Should voting be mandatory? No, because some people simply aren't interested in politics and they should not be required to vote on something that they simply don't care about. Forcing them to vote will cause the votes of the people who aren't interested in politics to simply guess which politician they like best.
Sources:
I await Rational Madman's response.
It is quite confusing to me what Con is doing. This debate, as Con, as far as I know, can be won in one of two ways:
1. To support dictatorship
2. To support democracy and show that forcing people to vote (or at least proportionally fining them for not doing so relative to their income) is less democratic than the system of fully optional voting (or somehow to make an in-between system that I don't know of).
What it seems like Con is doing is somehow trying to do 1 by doing 2. This is impossible to achieve and if you argue that voters are too ill-informed, the solution always is, has been and forevermore will be to inform them. It is logically unsound to accuse the deceived or ill-informed for not informing themselves if you then don't let them work out the 'hard way' (by voting in bad candidates and living under their regime) that they need to get informed and do so fast. In other words, either you take your harsh approach and allow the stupid masses to vote the poorly-constructed-manifesto-candidate into presidency/prime-ministership (depending if the nation has a Royal family) and suffer or you fully encourage reform to the media whereby the public-funded media available to all for 'free' (paid by tax) informs the people well. This is why, at the end of my Round 1, I clearly stated that the issue with optional voting is that the media cannot afford to waste time and effort informing in detail or giving elaborate reports when they first need to encourage you to get out and vote in the first place. People often blame sensationalised media in and of itself as being what brainwashes people but this is something I long ago worked out is false-blaming of the wrong kind of Illuminati. The flaw is in the system and that you, as a citizen, need first to be manipulated and emotionally incentivised to vote at all. This requires even collaboration between media sources to focus on the same 'hot issues' that seem to grab enough people's attention to make them feel the urge to even vote in the first place. The low turnouts Con provides us with in the majority of nations is evidence completely of how much more entertaining and sensationalising the Media will have to become if it wants to push that percentage higher. If people already have massive motive to go and vote, then if the Media stays sensationalising that would be because of a profit-motive and needing many to purchase it. This then leads us to realise that everything revolves around the 'oh so 1984 corrupt idea' of a centralised non-profit-motivated broadcast agency.
In direct support of what I suggest, a nation embracing mandatory voting, Switzerland, in its campaign to keep public broadcasting produced this to defend the need for it and to explain how well corruption happens without it:
As the nation is not just having mandatory voting but good standards all round (second in the world for Human Development Index 2017) http://hdr.undp.org/sites/all/themes/hdr_theme/country-notes/CHE.pdf it follows that the entire angle of 'dumb voters voting' is negated as likely since not just in Switzerland where the referendum where 71% voted “no” to public broadcasting being defunded (which is undeniably accurate as this was a referendum with voting on it being mandatory).
The entire remainder and lead-up to the 'dumb voter' and 'disinterested voter' angle which completely ignored what I said at the end of Round 1, actually supports me immensely on the entire point I was making. If you want democracy, which is a system designed to be as fair and free (in the choosing of leaders and policy) as possible for the most amount of citizens in the nation, you cannot then say 'let's deincentivise voting as much as possible without charging people directly for doing so' and expect to be truly democratic in any single vote's outcome at all. Do you honestly believe that there is a single citizen in a nation who is so powerfully neutral they wouldn't go and vote? Just to be crystal clear I am not saying you have to actually fill out someone's name on the form. You can botch the thing if you want or preferably there'd be an 'abstain' box to tick instead. Active abstaining is totally different in results and what you can do with it than people not voting. It is extremely easy for the system to feel unbroken and that it's doing a good job of informing enough people when the voiceless can be assumed to be lazy or stupid with regards to their nation's politics. What kind of regime would want to not only keep the uninformed, uninformed, but be able to actively say 'shame you were too lazy to vote' and then to look at the people with botched ballots and go 'oh how stupid of them, they filled it out wrong' or 'LOL they wrong "NONE OF THESE!!" on their ballot, what morons, xD xD!!!'
The attitude of Con and leaders of regimes that pose as democratic and have not fully incentivised their people to get informed in a humane-enough way (taxing proportional to income) are oligarchs who'd rather a dictatorship posing very carefully as democracy-supporters. There is no way to deny it now Con, you dug your own grave on this one.
Round 3
1. To support dictatorship2. To support democracy and show that forcing people to vote (or at least proportionally fining them for not doing so relative to their income) is less democratic than the system of fully optional voting (or somehow to make an in-between system that I don't know of).
I definitely was not advocating for #1. I also think that voting should be optional and not required.
This is impossible to achieve and if you argue that voters are too ill-informed, the solution always is, has been and forevermore will be to inform them.
Voters can be informed this is fine. But this is moving the goalposts.
In direct support of what I suggest, a nation embracing mandatory voting, Switzerland, in its campaign to keep public broadcasting produced this to defend the need for it and to explain how well corruption happens without it:As the nation is not just having mandatory voting but good standards all round (second in the world for Human Development Index 2017) http://hdr.undp.org/sites/all/themes/hdr_theme/country-notes/CHE.pdf it follows that the entire angle of 'dumb voters voting' is negated as likely since not just in Switzerland where the referendum where 71% voted “no” to public broadcasting being defunded (which is undeniably accurate as this was a referendum with voting on it being mandatory).
Here you state that one country with mandatory Voting has had a good time within it's country. However, this can easily be attributed to other factors. Many countries where voting is mandatory are in Latin America, and they have low standards of living overall (https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/1*KhE-fNACKKe5VLJPOF094A.png). In fact, most areas don't require voting, areas like:
-The US
-Most, if not, then all of the EU
Just to be crystal clear I am not saying you have to actually fill out someone's name on the form. You can botch the thing if you want or preferably there'd be an 'abstain' box to tick instead.
Some people may not have the time for voting. Should the US government round up people to vote in an election they probably don't care about? That sounds tyrannical. If people were interested, they would on their own go to voting stations and vote. Also, many people who aren't involved with politics would merely guess based off of something trivial and this would cause many people who don't deserve the election to win the election.
There is no way to deny it now Con, you dug your own grave on this one.
I would like to cite this as poor conduct. Beyond that, you spent much of your arguing as to why a democracy is good as opposed to why voting should be mandatory. I believe that democracy is good. I simply don't believe that voting should be mandatory. If someone isn't interested in politics, then they shouldn't have to vote. This is America. We value freedom to vote or not to vote.
Unfair to bring so many new points in the last Round...
Sadly I can't rebuke as per debate structure.
I don't know if the issue is you lack IQ, information or both but I am not going to prove to you something that won't matter to you anyway. See, whether it was grudge-voting or not, you are better off either believing it wasn't and priding yourself on this win or knowing that you can rally voters against me.
Either way, I'm worse off so I'm going to stop explaining it to you, I've said my piece.
Debatevoter has no registered friends, so I doubt he would ally with Magic Aint real to vote in my favor. I made some pretty good arguments. You accused me of being a dictatorship supporter, which wasen't accurate. That would be poor conduct.
https://www.debateart.com/participants/DebateVoter
Two are friends IRL or colleagues IRL of Magicaintreal. The account DebateVoter's only activity on the site ever was to make that vote.
Why would they hate you? I mean, to be honest, I don't like you but I don't grudge vote against you. If their votes weren't adequate or too biased, they would have been reported.
All 3 had an agenda to vote against me.
I am telling you a truth, the three people who voted for you stretched point-allocation and the capacity to vote for a non-winner via ignoring arguments to the maximum capacity that they could (or at least 2 did, bifolkal was kinder).
I didn't complain when you beat me in one debate, even though I thought I deserved to win that debate. You win some, you lose some. That's how life works. The voting was pretty competitive. I thought you were going to win this one. Turns out I did. Good debate regardless.
I wouldn't call myself a bystander as I was someone who competed in this big boy debate.
You didn't. You were a bystander who profited from a grudge and rivalry.
I'm glad I won against RM.
Wow, I thought for sure RM had this debate in the bag...oh well, nice bump for Alec.
@RationalMadman
I didn't publicly complain when people voted for you and when I thought I would lose the debate. I expect the same courtesy.
You grudge voted me man
Vote moderating is to blame, a maniac with a grudge is a byproduct of a flawed justice system, not something that's enabled or encouraged in a proper one.
You're excused
Excuse me but I placed a satisfactory and substantial vote.
I won't need to fight back, soon you'll find another to pick on or you'll get banned from voting. I don't care.
Please do expose the vote mods who enable people like you to vote
Good job, great to see.
Conduct
Pro attempted two times to unfairly and rudely sway the voters.
1. Pro got a little testy and said to Con, “There is no way to deny it now Con, you dug your own grave on this one.”
Not only does Con mention that this should be considered bad conduct, I was thinking the exact same thing. Rather than provide a substantial argument, Pro resorted to angrily intimidating his opponent and saying that basically they lost.
I was debating on whether or not to give the conduct point here, but then Pro, in the last round sealed his conduct fate by ignoring the rules instructed to him to follow.
2. Instead of just nicely waiving the round without attempting to influence voters in a last ditch effort, Pro says “Unfair to bring so many new points in the last Round...Sadly I can't rebuke as per debate structure” this is both unfair to Con because it attempts to soften the voters one way AND it goes against the rules which say “my opponent will waive the last round. They must signify this in the round. Violation is an automatic loss of the conduct point” because it’s ultimately not a waiving of the round, but a rude little jab at Con attempting to swing the debate.
Conduct to Con for these reasons.
Con’s sources however referenced the Census Bureau and with these statistics, Con was able to substantiate his case by showing so many people to not have voted speaking to the flaw of the implementation of this mandate. Inspecting Con’s sources on countries’ statistics for mandating voting and for how many people abstained from voting in the last election showed that they were credible and without the sources, Con would not have been able to show such a negative impact of voting, so for solidly supporting a successful negation of the resolution with these inspected-to-be-credible sources and since Pro’s source was less than credible and slightly negated Pro’s intent, Sources to Con.
Sources:
Pro provided sources to show the keys to democracy and why democracy is the best.
While the stanford source both seemed credible and supported what Pro was trying to show, Pro's source that linked to "Eva Kooijmans’ essay" from the New College of Humanities is both underwhelming and carries with it very little weight, because Eva Kooijman is merely a student at some college who thinks "democracy is just so awesome" that she had to write about it. Kooijman has no apparent credentials and, since is only a student, has not even graduated from the very source being cited so we have no reason to buy anything from this source, and, perhaps Pro missed it, the source says some damning things about democracy with respects to Pro's case.
It says "In reality, however, democracy is slightly more problematic, because it can be difficult for leaders to satisfy an entire population." This not only shows democracy to be problematic, antithetical to Pro's intent here, it also shows that democracy fails to satisfy the entire population, directly in line with Con’s point that “in no country is the voter turnout at 100% and only 3 countries have a voter turnout of 90% or higher.”
Because of how you spoke to me on Hangouts and treat me in general. You friended me under false pretences and I have had enough of it.
Why did I get blocked by RationalMadman?
Of course I read R1, I would not have voted otherwise.
If you read my R1, I explain how pseudo-democracy is the only time it goes wrong.
For a little entertainment, Iraq used to report having 100% voter turnout. SNL did a nice summery of how democracy worked there: https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/election-night-coverage/2869239
Thanks for the brilliant vote.
5k chars was why I wasn't more epic in this battle. Thanks for the vote.
It might be
Is this you?
Bring what back to life? Unlike you sorry souls, I was always mistreated and built to hate DDO. F*ck Airmax, F*ck Juggle and what they did to me all these years unfairly and without recourse. I did not deserve to be permabanned for having some private flame wars where the other party was not even banned at all. F*ck off and study the history before you preach good about DDO and its moderation. I tell you straight to your face DDO is a pigsty of the Internet, YEAH YOU HEAR ME JUGGLE? WHAT DO I OWE YOU? LOYALTY? REPAYMENT? FOR WHAT? I'M ONLY UNBANNED BECAUSE OF YOU ACCIDENTALLY UNBANNING ME, YOU UTTER MORONS!
A month ago on the DDO forum......
Not a problem. I'm trying to keep on top of the vote reports so that a debate outcome isn't changed by a few bad votes. Also I'm working on my RFD for the debate.
Good response time, ty.
*******************************************************************
>Reported Vote: Defender // Mod action: Removed
>Points Awarded: 4 points to Con for arguments and conduct; 3 points to Pro for sources and grammar
>Reason for Decision:
Very clearly, both side were basically confused of each other's explanation. However, Con did give a more convincing argument as he did rebuke Pro side(rational Madman)'s argument. However, he lacked siting of reliable sources. On the Pro side, he did a wonderful job on how democracy is better than dictatorship, if this debate is with that topic, I will give it to him for sure. However the ultimate point is tied. You guys did both got points. (Next time, RM, don't make decisions so early.)
>Reason for Mod Action: (1) The voter does not survey the main arguments, analyze those arguments to determine who won each, or weigh the main arguments to determine a winner. In order to cast a sufficient ballot, the voter should do all three of these things. (2) the voter fails to sufficiently explain the conduct point. To award a conduct point a debater must be excessively rude or forfeit one or more rounds. (3) the grammar point is unexplained. To award this point one must go through to provide example of poor grammar AND explain why it made it hard to read; (4) the source point is insufficient. To award a source point one must compare the sources between the debaters and explain why their sources were better in quality.
************************************************************************
Idk what you think is tied. Enjoy your vote getting removed. I am losing because of that nonsense vote.
Oh I'll definitely post a vote here...honest engine.
You too please
Your duty to vote on this debate is mandatory!!!
wrote 'none of these' not wrong but 'wrote'*******
One for the 'epic short debate' hall of fame section that will be made just for me. :)
I'm scared of Rational Madman.