{"id":431,"date":"2006-08-09T13:27:14","date_gmt":"2006-08-09T21:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/?p=431"},"modified":"2006-08-09T13:27:14","modified_gmt":"2006-08-09T21:27:14","slug":"interesting-point-on-election-turnout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/2006\/08\/09\/interesting-point-on-election-turnout\/","title":{"rendered":"Interesting Point on Election Turnout"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080\/cspan\/cspan.csp?command=dprogram&#038;record=196778109\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080\/cspan\/Pictures\/Persons\/004342\/004342-193724.jpg\" alt=\"Andrew Neil on C-SPAN\" border=\"0\" align=\"left\" style=\"padding-right: 5px\"\/><\/a> I was flipping through the channels on Sunday and stumbled upon a tape of the recent Libertarian Party Convention in Portland, OR.  They were showing a speech by <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/newswatch\/ukfs\/hi\/newsid_3630000\/newsid_3639000\/3639035.stm\">Andrew Neil<\/a> of the BBC.  One of the interesting points he&#8217;d made, which I&#8217;d never considered, dealt with a common conclusion people make in elections with low voter turnout.<\/p>\n<p>In the UK they went through a period of declining voter turnout during elections.  It caused many to conclude and report that people aren&#8217;t interested in politics or social issues.  Simultaneously (and unceremoniously), membership in various social groups and charities was on a rise all around the UK.  He went through some numbers, many of which were quite dramatic.  The point he was making was that election turnout <strong>isn&#8217;t<\/strong> a reliable indicator as to how much people care about their country, their fellow man, or how involved people are in their societies.  His hypothesis is that people don&#8217;t participate in national elections because they don&#8217;t feel like they&#8217;re incredibly affected by the outcome.  They involve themselves in areas that they care strongly about, and where they believe they will really be able to influence change.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking at the Libertarian convention, he of course regarded this as a good thing.  A population that doesn&#8217;t regard the federal government as a provider of everything they need, and a solver of all of the nation&#8217;s problems, demonstrates strong libertarian tendencies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was flipping through the channels on Sunday and stumbled upon a tape of the recent Libertarian Party Convention in Portland, OR. They were showing a speech by Andrew Neil of the BBC. One of the interesting points he&#8217;d made, which I&#8217;d never considered, dealt with a common conclusion people make in elections with low [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-libertarian"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5TCqO-6X","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}