Let's say you have a group of people traveling, some wish to go in one direction and some wish to go in another, they either go their separate ways or they agree to a direction they all they can live with. If some decide not to take part in the decision making process, they have little right to bitch about the direction taken by the group.
That doesn't support your position, though, because your position is that the 51% decide for
everybody (that's how our system works). There's no option to go their separate ways, and there is no compromise. The
only option for the minority is subjugation or open rebellion to majority rule. This is because their vote does not matter because they were not the majority opinion.
Your 50% number doesn't hold true on all issues.
It doesn't have to. That's why the word "can" was used. The fact that it
can (and very often
does) is the problem. Better systems (which actually exist, so don't start pretending again that what actually exists is "utopia") minimize the number of useless votes. Our system
maximizes that number. No other democratic system has a greater amount of wasted/ignored votes than ours. None.
That's a very simple fact and very easily seen if one simply opens their eyes.
And what would you expect when only 50% vote
The problem here is that you fail to realize that my statement is still true even when
you only take those who vote into consideration 50% (or more when there are more than 2 candidates) of voters can completely ignored in our system. That's a fact.
, and less than that take to the streets to protest non-violently when needed.
That's because protest is simply another form of majority rule. Taking to the streets is a pointless exercise more often than not. It is only when the majority view is what is being represented by the protesters that anything can happen.
More input is required to get more output.
You seem to have the idea that the 50% voter turnout is what
prevents greater representation when it is actually the exact opposite: The lack of representation in the system is
why there is such a low voter turnout. People
know that their votes don't really count. Remember Gore? He won the popular vote, but lost the election.
How can this happen? Well it has a everything to do with the way our system ignores votes. All votes for the losing candidate in an election are completely ignored. Getting more people out there to vote won't change this cold, hard fact. Since third party candidates almost always lose (in no small part due to gerrymandering), any third party vote is going to be ignored in our system. If you do not have one of the government endorsed political perspectives, you will not receive representation in the government.
Even if you managed to gain a pretty large following nationally, say 25% of the total population, you will
not get any representation in our government.
Look at it this way:
If we hold an election with 3 candidates, 1 Republican, 1 Democrat, and 1 Green, and there are 100 potential voters. Let's say that this area is a "red" area on average, with about 60% of the vote going towards republican candidates usually and 40% going towards democrats.
If the green party candidate gains 25% of that total voter population, it's going to go one of two ways: They gain most of their support (let's say for this scenario 80%) from members of one of the two major parties' supporters or they gain it about evenly from both parties' supporters (about 50/50).
So let's look at each scenario. So in the end we need 25 total green party voters. If 80% (20 of them) comes from the people who traditionally support republicans, the new republican vote total would be 40 of the total. This means 20% (5 votes) comes from the people who traditionally support democrats, making the new democrat vote total 35, and the green party has their 25 votes.
Results of the election: Republican wins.
If we reverse things and take 80% of the green party support from the democrats, the numbers end up being 55 vote republican, 25 vote green party, and 20 vote democrat.
Results of the election: Republican wins.
If the way that support is gained is split is about evenly between the two main parties we get: Republicans with about 47 votes, Democrats with 23 votes, and green party with 25 votes.
Results of the election: Republican wins.
This is the kind of thing that happens in counties across the country. Over and over again. The only thing that changes is that it alternates between democrats winning and republicans winning. The third party supports never get representation. About a third of the country does not consider themselves to be democrats or republicans.
If we had accurate and proportional representation in our government, then our congress would have about 178 total members between the two houses (out of 535) that were not affiliated with one of the two major parties. We have 2. That's about one third of one percent. And one of them was only became an independent
after he lost the democratic primary in his state. He's a former democrat VP candidate. The other is a legit independent, being a socialist.
Even if we assume that 50% of the independents in our country would still end up voting for one of the two dominant parties regularly, it still leaves us about 87 representatives who are not affiliates with either of the two government sponsored parties short.
Why does this happen? Gerrymandering. It's a lovely and legal way that our two-party political system maintains it's stranglehold on our government. You get a place that's getting out of line by building up too much support for a third party to a degree that can threaten this stranglehold? Simply restructure the districts splitting those people up into a nice, healthy minority in their new districts.
The system is broken.
That's why people have become apathetic. Until we fix the system that representatives are chosen, we will never have adequate representation in this country.
But the big question becomes "How do we change it when changing it threatens the power of those
in power?"
There's the clincher. Democrats and republicans won't be giving up their power
willingly. And starting a grassroots movement is pretty pointless because of gerrymandering. Any movement that builds up any steam will be shut down and prevented from having any effect.
And then it gets exacerbated by many people who buy the load of bull**** that voter turnout is the real problem. Or corporate interference. That latter is only possible
because the system is broken. In a system with more proportional representation, such things would have more opposition
in the governmental process. Currently they receive
no opposition because, as I have said and you have actually supported with your comments about how we've never elected a liberal president, the two parties are
fundamentally the same. There are superficial differences, but those distract us from the real problem, which is that our government is not very democratic nor is it very representative.
