Quote from: suchmoon on February 27, 2020, 11:01:38 PM

I do worry about voter disenfranchisement and disillusionment. I know I call them lazy lemmings every chance I get but the whole system kinda depends on them getting off their asses and voting. Maybe some chaos is actually good for motivation, not sure.

That same problem of lazy lemmings as you call them happen to be a something that many countries have an issue with during very important or dare I say critical (general/local) elections. For example the UK had its Brexit referendum with a sizeable turnout of just over 72% from 46.5 million eligible voters. That vote returned the following result:

Remain: 16,141,241
Leave: 17,410,742

Considering the referendum was to decide whether the UK left the European Union or stayed as a member state - the turnout really should have been higher because of the importance attached but 1,269,501‬ more people voted to leave and that was what mattered and after years of political deadlock in Parliament, the breakthrough to end the uncertainty came when the present government won the general elections in December 2019 as they now have a huge majority so they will be able to pass through almost any bill and legislation and they did that with the UK exiting on 31st January 2020. The present government won the popular vote and most seats too (363 from 648). Their nearest rivals won just 203 seats.

The status quo for almost all rules of European project are still there but a deal has to be completed by 31st December 2020 otherwise there will be a break off between both with the UK going on to WTO terms with the EU and vice-versa. As for everything else from tax, trade, commerce, travel, security, finance etc everything will probably have to be negotiated individually. Having said that the UK government announced yesterday they would happily walk away from talks in June 2020 if they felt the EU was playing games and was not serious - therefore much remains to discuss beteeen both parties but the UK has left the European Union as a member state because the people voted for it. Who knows what would have happened if 82% or 92% of the population had turned out for the referendum instead of the 72% but it was still a good turnout.

Looking at the 2016 US Presidential elections when Trump won and Hillary lost, those statistics are very proof for many of a system that needs reforming. Hillary won the popular vote by having around 2.86 million votes more but it was Trump who won the electoral college. What impact could the lazy lemmings have made when it came to the states that Trump won which tipped the balance in his favour? Even though I am no fan of Hillary I would like to think it would have made a lot of difference.

That voter disenfranchisement and disillusionment is a real thing and a lot of people worry about it. Is Sanders really the man to get people jumping in their seats getting all excited at the prospect of seeing him in the Whitehouse or seeing Trump out of it? Not sure on that one.