According to a report, the global index for free and fair elections suffered the biggest decline on record in 2023, while disputed elections are becoming a global phenomenon.
A shrinking voter turnout globally and increasingly contested election results are posing a risk to the credibility of democracy, a new report revealed on Tuesday.
The report published by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) said that global voter turnout between 2008 and 2023 plunged by 10 percentage points, going from 65.2 to 55.5.
Maybe, just maybe, liberal democracies need to do a better job solving problems for constituents and less time fellating billionaires.
That might help.
I mean, when I see a right-wing populist telling me they can fix all my problems, I know they’re a lying, opportunistic piece of shit, but I can also see the appeal because at least they’re saying that there’s problems and that they’ll do something, which is more than milquetoast centrists will do.
Then you learn that the “something” they want to do is the exact opposite direction of what solving the problem would look like. It takes 2 seconds of critical thought to realize I’d much rather stick with the “milquetoast centrists” than ever consider voting for regressive conservatives.
Agreed, but those people are totally shooting themselves (and us) in the foot by continuing to act as if certain issues either straight up don’t exist or aren’t that bad at all. That ALLOWS the rightwing demagogues to offer “solutions” which a huge part of (uncritical) people lap up and run with.
Some issues really don’t straight up exist. Outrage TV will always come up with something to stir people up. Other issues are pretty complicated without any promising solutions, so it may just seem like they’re being ignored. Conservatives will focus on those and claim to have the answer, but then their answer is something like “to eradicate poverty we need to put poor people in jail”.
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People are stupid and easily manipulated, it’s that simple. I’m including you or I in this statement as well. We might happen to be paying more attention to politics, but we’re likely fooled or mislead in other areas of our lives without noticing.
No one has the bandwidth to pay attention to everything, so naturally some people autopilot on things they feel are too complicated or are uninteresting. When you autopilot then lots of things are taken at face value without critical thought, and without the historical knowledge to easily spot a trend or lie.
So yeah, were stupid and apathetic when viewed as a large group and that’s unfortunate. Advertising (propaganda) has been fine tuned over the last 70 some years to exploit our weaknesses exceptionally well. Things will have to get really bad and demand the average person’s attention before they will focus it.
Hello there, fellow Ontarian!
In seriousness, Ford is a great example of my point because he talks to how people feel. It doesn’t matter that it’s bullshit at best or whitewashing of his latest grift at worst, he’s at least acknowledging enough voters’ concerns and fears, and while tossing a bauble here or there (eg, booze in corner stores, buck a beer) to look like he’s doing something for the common person.
His opposition doesn’t do this. Stiles gets ignored, and Crombie just seems like a weak Ford impersonator.
The polticial left needs to do better. Yes that would probably mean getting called socialist, but since that’ll happen anyway they may as well own it.
Democratic elections are the modern equivalent of “bread and circuses”. A system cannot fail those it was never meant to function for. The only way to effect real change in the world is through revolution - as peaceful as we can make it. We must end capitalism before it ends us. And that starts with accepting the reality that the absolute best case scenario for democracy is to slightly limit harm.
What’s your alternative to democracy after this “peaceful revolution”? Who’s in charge? You?
Is this revolution anarchist, communist, fascist, or something else?
And what kind of democracy are you talking about? There are many varieties, with some being far better than others.
Sadly, my answer to this quite unsatisfactory: I can’t give you all of the answers, I am but one man, to act like I know the path to a perfect society would be arrogant to the point of excess. I want to start a conversation where we admit that the system we have is so fucking rigged that we have no chance to actually achieve meaningful change through that system, and talk about the alternatives.
Personally, I am an anarchist - so ideally, there would be no one “in charge”. I suppose another way of saying that would be that we would all be in charge. I believe in consensus-based decision making - it’s more or less what democracy should be - you could even consider it a form of democracy, if you like.
The more important part is the abolition of other unequal power structures, the worst of which is capitalism, undoubtedly. The problem with our system as it exists isn’t in the idea that people vote to elect leaders, it’s that we ignore all the other structures of power. Corporations don’t vote, but they have an absolute fuck load more political power than the combined voting power of all of their employees.
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