Comments on: Democracy One

By: lurky

lurky — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 18:29:25 +0000

I remember that once we, all the students in university involved, that is, quite a lot of people, had a chance to elect the deputy of our university. We just had no idea about the candidates at all. There were brief introduction about them maybe, resume something, but still we did not know whom we should vote for. We simply did not see the point and most of us just didn’t care. So the name sounded familiar became our final choices. I must confess I don’t know much about democracy either. Maybe college education should focus on deepening the concept of democracy aside from curricular goals. But many people aren’t interested in politics at all or even if it’s the case, people have to obtain basic understanding of democracy. Although major improvement should be made to better current democracy in China, I wonder if there should be cultural or political diversity and the situation in China will never be the same as most democratic western countries?

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 16:40:48 +0000

Good point! That is definetly the essence of a democracy, choice.

Australia has mandatory voting which states that everyone is obligated to appear at the voting office on election day, but they allow a voter to choose “none of the above” option should they feel that the candidates are not worthy of their vote.

By: Fraser

Fraser — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 11:57:43 +0000

Interesting post. However, I have to disagree with your stance that all members of a democratic society should be obliged to vote.

Even though the idea sounds noble, I believe the application would have a negative effect on the democracy.

I believe that citizens that intend to vote have a responsibility to educate themselves about the candidates and party platforms. If everyone is forced to vote, a large part of the voting population will not have taken this time. While I wish this wasn’t the case, the sad reality is that there is a significant part of the population that doesn’t want to be concerned with politics.

While there are obvious drawbacks to this (demographic over and misrepresentiation) would the alternative really be better?

I like to think that people that have made a conscious choice to vote will choose better than those that have been forced to do so.

It sounds strange, but I think people should also have the freedom not to vote. (and give up the freedom to complain about who wins ;)