I’m sure lectures of your moral superiority will encourage them 
They’ll make them feel bad at least, I hope, because they should feel bad about it. Being annoyed is an acceptable outcome too.
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Generally I also think things like the EU with its flaws is a good way to go because greater cooperation and unification between countries is a step towards a truly united world and species, not held apart by things like nationalism.
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Winning hearts and minds over here.
I don’t feel the need to win the hearts and minds of people that don’t vote, just like how I don’t feel the need to be nice, understanding, and offer a listening ear to, say, racist people in order to win their hearts and minds. I just need them to feel bad about their awful takes, really.
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I wouldn’t go as far as to say (left-wing) people who don’t vote disgust me, but I definitely disapprove. I can understand why they wouldn’t want to vote, when none of their options will adequately look after their interests, but ultimately they’re only harming themselves (and me).
The US is a good example. Refusing to vote Democrat in order to punish them and Biden for their failings means giving the White House to Trump, who would immediately make things even worse for them.
It’s a broken system there and in the UK. As Elenthas (correctly) said we’re in a managed democracy where it’s basically impossible to overthrow the political orthodoxy, but we’re in a position where not voting is enabling the parties which actively disdain minority demographics.
When someone says they’re refusing to vote because they’re ‘all the same’ it genuinely angers me, because they’re provably not all the same, and usually those people are either fooling themselves on some matter of principle or are coming from a position of privilege where they can afford to skip the vote because the nasty party won’t do much to target them (as opposed to queer people, pocs, etc).
Pragmatism is an unfortunate necessity to ensure our rights and well-being aren’t curtailed by the more actively malicious political groups.
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The way to inspire change is not by shaming people into voting (a futile action to try and inspire mostly futile action) but by encouraging them to get involved in things that will actually matter, building local community and organising
calling them racists is definitely not it
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I’m not calling them racist, I’m comparing them with another group I think we can actually all collectively agree on on being terrible.
I don’t feel the need to play nice to people doing things I find utterly reprehensible to try and convince them to not be terrible anymore! This applies in many situations.
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Sums up the entire Western hemisphere and liberal democracies that we live in to be honest (despite the left and right insisting that the West has fallen and we are all in an apocalypse and nothing works etc. etc.). The EU is terrible, until you realise Europe as a continent holds the greatest sum of all the democracies in the world within this tiny little continent.
Despite how much people complain, things are fine, things will inevitably get fixed, policy will inevitably deal with modern issues so future generations don’t have too, etc. etc. Nothing Ever Happens.
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This is my biggest issue with refusal to vote & or protest voting(usually voting for the worst option possible as a show of protest).
Because it means you are hurting other innocents people to show your displeasure, and that is never acceptable.
And yes, not voting also does that even if not intentional, because of exactly what has been said already, every non-voter is an automatic favor for the worst candidate.
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no, you’re just flat-out wrong here.
Are the Sinn Féin MPs who refuse to take their seats in Westminster akin to racists? Are they privileged to be the subjects of an empire?
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Easily, it tends to come from a cushy place of privilege where really, whatever happens doesn’t really have that much of an impact on the person anyways (or they perceive it to be that way, at the least, usually wrongly so!)
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I treat ‘group of people that do thing i find reprehensible’ similar to ‘other group of people that do thing i find reprehensible’, it’s really that simple - eschewing, of course, the legal aspects involved (such as can be the case with racism!)
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I don’t necessarily agree with Adelais’ tone here (we’re all kinda sorta friends here), but I do agree with the principle of it. Not voting or making a protest vote as a futile gesture–unless you’re in a Labour stronghold I guess–is shooting yourself in the foot on a matter of admirable but misplaced integrity.
I don’t like Labour, but I’m in a constituency that flipped narrowly to the Tories in the last election. I am not going to give the right another term here because Starmer is far from my ideal PM. That’s what’s at stake – Labour, who nominally support my rights, vs the party that would love nothing more than to villify people like me.
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While I do think this is nice and see where you are coming from, I also do think it shouldn’t be needed.
Because to be a little blunt, needing an incentive to go and vote against the worst possible candidate instead of doing nothing(and then by proxy supporting them) seems a bit…entitled I guess? Like people feel like they need to earn or get something in order to do good.
Its essentially the shopping cart theory but for politics.
It plays into what Adelais just said in that it’s easy for some people because they wont get immediately impacted, where as many others will suffer greatly.
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Sinn Fein is frankly as bad as the SNP for moral grandstanding and then shaking their hands and shying away from actually dealing with problems when given an opportunity. Nooo, please don’t put us in the political house where we can make our voice heard and at least start discourse and debate about the failures of the devolved system, that would be terrible, we’d have to actually make our stance clear aside from shirking our political and civil duty!
Wales is trying, with little support from the other devolved governments, to press concerns to Westminster about current ongoign issues in the Devolved system, and yet despite this, the other devolved governments are nowhere to be seen - they’re too busy insisting its too far gone to even bother trying to enact meaningful reform that would actually help people long-and-short term.
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I will say here, because I saw this a lot around 2016 when it was Clinton vs. Trump - while obviously voting for a smaller, independent party isn’t going to influence the election where there’s a discrepency between the two largest parties and everyone else, you also can’t assume that everyone voting for the smaller party would otherwise give their vote to one candidate or another. Democrats definitely voted independant because they dislike Clinton, but republicans also voted independant because they didn’t like Trump.
While it doesn’t influence the main election - like it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that the UK will have a tory majority or labour majority government once our election season has come and gone - it can potentially have longer influences with more seats in parliament, maybe more of an influence in congress. While it’s almost always better to vote for the “least worst”, sometimes the least worst may genuinely be the smaller candidate that isn’t going to win over the majority of voters.
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Wales #1 vote Plaid Cymru
they don’t want to be a part of the devolved system, that’s kind of the whole point of them as a republican (not the american meaning) party
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Incredible. Complain about how “they don’t know what they’re doing” is a nefarious stance which can lead to right wing populist movements gaining power, and then turn around and say that you have no interest in correcting it. Why is “I don’t feel inspired to vote” nefarious but apathy towards changing that isn’t? Seems like you’re part of the problem.
I don’t blame my boss for not wanting to vote. For her entire adult life she’d been under a Tory government, and for the majority of it she’s had to suffer through a brexit she narrowly got a chance to vote against. The last fourteen years of British politics has been a revolving circus of people sucking up money to give to their fatcat mates when they’re in power, or the leader of the ‘next best option’ shifting further to the right and breaking sincerely held pledges at the drop of a hat. They’ll tank her mortgage and get a golden parachute for doing so. They lie as easily as breathing air - not just obtuse lies, but clear ones. Obvious ones. And yet, they’re still in power. They get away with all of it.
Any words I could offer to them to say “you should vote anyway” would be so much sophistry, based entirely in a thoroughly unrealistic approach…well, reality. Sheffield’s a labour stronghold. It has been for decades and it will continue to be. There’s no sincere shift for a third party here, nor do I expect there will be in the future. Her vote would be a drop in a red ocean, even if she’d spent the time to research the dozen candidates on offer (none of which have done much in the way of outreach) so…why bother?
Political apathy is very real. Politicians don’t care, clearly, because the ones in power can coast through off name recognition alone, and the system (the broken FPTP system) won’t change because those in power…are in power. They’ve got no incentive to change it to something more proportional.
I voted, but how can I know all of the above and then say “no you should vote anyway”? For what reason? If the politicians don’t care to inspire us, why should I? Through some nebulous commitment to a democracy that we don’t really have? Her vote won’t change the system.
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