Posts by Chris Waugh
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to Moz,
can I start by saying that those who voted for someone later convicted of a criminal offence should never be allowed to vote again. Obviously their judgement is poor and their vote compromises our democracy.
No. Those who vote do so with the information at their disposal, which very rarely includes allegations of criminality, let alone enough evidence to suggest prosecution is likely, let alone a conviction. And "poor judgement" is far too woolly and subjective a value judgement to be of any use.
-
Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to Steve Parks,
Can’t we just be pragmatic about this too?
That's precisely what I was trying to do. As I wrote:
It’s arbitrary, yes, but it has a rationale, and that rationale is pragmatism – at what age can we expect young people generally to have the maturity necessary to make this decision?
We've currently decided 18 is the age at which we can expect people to be mature enough to decide who to vote for. I'm sympathetic to arguments for a younger voting age. But so long as we're sticking to the system of setting a minimum age, we're being pragmatic. Aren't we?
-
Hard News: Five further thoughts, in reply to Paul Campbell,
I remember they tried to sell it here, it was the wrong colour and tasted odd – no one would buy it
I remember in my first year in Beijing some American friends gave me this weird lurid radioactive orange coloured stuff and tried to claim is was cheddar cheese. I tasted some (it wasn't long before I'd spent a year in Changsha, so I was quite used to trying weird stuff) and it may have once had something to do with a cow, but it wasn't any kind of cheddar cheese. As much as I love to rant about Fonterra, if I ever want to terrify myself I read about America's food industry.
-
Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to Moz,
So once they have the vote it doesn’t matter what they do or what condition they’re in.
Yes.
I’m actually torn by that one, since the evidence we have is that mental maturity arrives between 25 and 30 for most people.
Oddly proving that Confucius (at least, according to what his disciples claimed he said in The Analects) got at least that one thing right. But we don't require full maturity for full participation in society on any other matter, we simply set an age at which we expect people to be mature enough.
-
Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to Moz,
I explcitly said that I didn’t consider “it’s simple” as sufficient reason to do it.
No, you didn't. You said you wanted some kind of rationale. Pragmatism of the same kind we use to set minimum ages for a whole variety of activities is a rationale, and the one I prefer, because it gets the job done with minimal fuss. It doesn't matter which system you use to decide who gets to vote and who doesn't, some people are going to unfairly miss out. I would argue that extending the franchise to all citizens over a certain minimum age (currently 18, but I'm sympathetic to arguments it should be lower) is the fairest way to decide on voting rights, as it's simple, clear, easy to understand, and minimises unfairness.
If it helps, imagine you have a kiwi soldier in Syria working with a kiwi UN employee.
If I were one of them I'd be more worried about not getting shot than who to vote for. But for the record, both should be allowed to vote. But I think I've already made my views on disenfranchising expats clear enough already - no citizen should lose the right to vote. Or: The only valid reason to cancel a citizen's right to vote should be death.
-
Well, this is interesting:
Tatua, the small Waikato-based dairy co-operative, did well over the 2014/15 dairy season while its far bigger competitor, Fonterra, did not. The reason - powder.
-
Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to Moz,
All the ones who can understand what voting is.
But how do you define that? And more importantly, how do you measure it or impose the necessary test to determine who gets to vote and who doesn't?
We impose minimum ages for many things - driving, having sex, drinking alcohol, military service, criminal responsibility (although we do have some strangely outdated, barbaric laws around that), getting married, etc. It's arbitrary, yes, but it has a rationale, and that rationale is pragmatism - at what age can we expect young people generally to have the maturity necessary to make this decision? And yes, sure, there are plenty of well-informed 13-year olds with the maturity necessary to cast a vote, and no shortage of ignorant and hopelessly immature 65-year olds, but we've got to draw a line somewhere, and a minimum age is the simplest way to do that.
And:
I think people in Syria have bigger things to worry about than deciding who to vote for in NZ.
You have your Taiwan/China example backwards. Taiwanese already have the same voting rights as Mainlanders in PRC elections. But considering Ma Yingjeou is president of the Republic of China, which still claims Hong Kong, Macau, the Mainland, all the same disputed islands in the East and South China Seas as the PRC, and Mongolia, perhaps voting rights in "Taiwan" (i.e. Republic of China) elections should be extended to residents of Hong Kong, Macau, Mainland China and Mongolia? Now that would make for quite an interesting situation... ...and a lot of very unhappy pan-Green voters in Taiwan... ...and lonely, bored election officials in Mongolia... ...and I wonder if the CCP would allow such an election? It would almost certainly result in a reunificationist landslide, but it would mean at least temporarily suspending its claim to have won the 3rd Chinese Civil War and ceding to the KMT... ...all fun and games until somebody loses an isle.
-
Capture: Upside Down, Inside Out, in reply to Nora Leggs,
Great eye-benders!
-
Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to Steve Parks,
do you think Anders Breivik should be able to vote?
Yes.
-
Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to Steve Parks,
a person could commit violations against other members of our society that are so bad that we not only remove them from the general public for most/all of their remaining life but we also say it would be perverse for that person to be able to vote while their victims cannot.
Like what? Where do we draw the line? As in - how severe does a crime have to be before the person convicted is denied the right to vote? And how severe does a punishment have to be before it is considered excessive? Surely preventive detention is about the most you could do and still claim some measure of civilisation?
And then there's the American experience of denying convicted criminals the right to vote, and all the consequences that has entailed. I don't think that's an example to be emulated.