Do you think that it’s generally better for voter turnout to be high than low?
If not, that would seem to be inconsistent with a desire for the US to continue being fairly politically stable
This is a non-sequitur, despite its status as cached wisdom.
I see no reason to expect that higher voter turnout implies greater political stability. In fact, my intuition is exactly the opposite: assuming a genuine freedom to vote, low turnout is a marker of stability, since it signals that voters don’t much care who wins, which suggests that not much of importance depends on the outcome. You wouldn’t want to live in a country where it really, truly mattered who won an election.
Furthermore, the political class has a transparent interest in spreading the meme that high voter turnout is good, since a faction that wins an election with high turnout has a greater mandate to assume more power.
I see no reason to expect that higher voter turnout implies greater political stability. In fact, my intuition is exactly the opposite: assuming a genuine freedom to vote, low turnout is a marker of stability, since it signals that voters don’t much care who wins, which suggests that not much of importance depends on the outcome.
This is a really good point, so I’m withdrawing my statement about stability.
To pick another standard meme, what about popular involvement in the political process as a way of promoting just policies over unjust? That is, by unjust policies I mean policies that provide insufficient benefits to people who have little power. This is a separate question from stability, as a stable government can still have extremely unjust policies (or vice versa, though I can’t think of examples as easily).
This is a non-sequitur, despite its status as cached wisdom.
I see no reason to expect that higher voter turnout implies greater political stability. In fact, my intuition is exactly the opposite: assuming a genuine freedom to vote, low turnout is a marker of stability, since it signals that voters don’t much care who wins, which suggests that not much of importance depends on the outcome. You wouldn’t want to live in a country where it really, truly mattered who won an election.
Furthermore, the political class has a transparent interest in spreading the meme that high voter turnout is good, since a faction that wins an election with high turnout has a greater mandate to assume more power.
This is a really good point, so I’m withdrawing my statement about stability.
To pick another standard meme, what about popular involvement in the political process as a way of promoting just policies over unjust? That is, by unjust policies I mean policies that provide insufficient benefits to people who have little power. This is a separate question from stability, as a stable government can still have extremely unjust policies (or vice versa, though I can’t think of examples as easily).