A few authoritarian regimes have been known have high voter turnout. Russia recently had 67% turnout, Cuba 90%, Turkey had 85% though turkey is compulsory. So, turnout is kind of an independent index.

Also, statistically speaking, if the turnout is “representative” then high or low makes no difference with regard to what would occur with full turnout.

When people say we want high turnout, I think they really mean I want my side to have full turnout and the opposition very low turnout —as this is the only situation where this quest makes sense.

Yes, turnout by itself is not a good index. But that seems like a strawman.

I don’t know about the others but in Russia, most employers will make you go and vote. Sometimes for a small reward, go vote for the “preferred” candidate and get $100. Which is significant for someone living off a median wage.

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Give out free IDs, streamline the ID process, and I won't care about ID requirements. Where I live, while there are DMVs in the city, the only DMVs that provide IDs and licenses are in the suburbs, many of which close at 4:30 PM. Requiring a person to pay for an ID and hope to qualify for a reimbursement later is just two steps removed from a poll tax.

Yes of course I want felons to vote (especially if they've served their sentence), and non-english speakers as well. A citizen is a citizen.

I know many non-English speaking or limited English speaking citizens. Why wouldn't you want them voting?

Side comment: We had a situation here where there was a candidate for a judge, whose name was Uno. (He was ethnically Japanese.) Well, in one of the counties where his name was on the ballot, Hispanics were more than 5% of the population. The election rules required that, for such counties, the ballot instructions be written in Spanish as well as in English. For the judgeship in question, voters were to vote for only one candidate. The translation of that instruction into Spanish was "Vota para uno"!

Note well: I am not saying that citizens who don't speak English shouldn't vote.

Let's flip a coin: heads I win, tails you lose.

If you decide not to play, are you being more rational or more apathetic?

> Anyway, I think you’re projecting a lot of rationality where there’s just apathy.

Calling it "just apathy" is unjustifiable maligning. How is it not completely rational to be apathetic to whether business interests A or business interests B win their contest? What you're doing is the equivalent of a sports fanatic insisting that someone pick a team to root for.

Give these "apathetic" people an actual choice (like say a pitchfork) and you'll see how they really feel. In fact, I'd posit that a primary mechanism by which elections are won is convincing people that "this time will be different".

I’m not sure what exactly you disagree with or why you would consider “just” to be a maligning term. I agree with your points.

"Apathy" is generally seen as a negative condition that can be cured, while the "just" distances itself from rationality which is generally seen as a positive quality.

I'm sure there's a lot of non-rational peer-group following behavior that causes people to not vote, but likewise with the people who do vote. So associating the lack of prevailing rationality to a specific choice is fallacious.

This boils down to an argument that none of the issues that divide the parties matter to you. Apparently you don't care about immigration, feminism, LGBT issues, inequality and so on? Trump is boring?

American politics in 2018 is not lacking in drama or stark divisions. If today's politics doesn't excite you, what could possibly do it?

Well, under our two party system you end up with two shopping carts full of positions, and you've got to buy one of them. Now neither shopping cart typically lines up perfectly with a hypothetical voter, but what do you do if both baskets contain things that you feel deeply about and oppose?

For instance where should a voter who cares deeply about abortion and capital punishment to go? The Democrats are not simply pro-choice, they demean and belittle his pro-life position. The Republicans find it inconceivable that he doesn't want to execute people guilty of the most heinous crimes, and he's dismissed as an unserious bleeding-heart. So maybe it's not that he's unexcited by the issues, but rather because of his strong inclinations he has no one to vote for.

It might be that low turnout is evidence that the current 'baskets' of the two parties are poorly aligned with the current electorate.

Alternatively, these issues are chosen for prominence specifically because they're divisive.

Note how none of the issues you've listed actually threaten status quo economic interests.

(You might think immigration does, in that tightening it up would increase competition for labor. But the issue would be backstopped from harm to actual people long before the economics would be affected)

This seems rather reductive. Threatening economic interests isn't the only goal that matters. There are other issues that also matter quite a bit.

Voting isn't like going to the shopping mall to buy something for yourself. It's something you do because politics also affects other people.

To the business interests that sponsor the elections and the general news cycle, it certainly is the goal! What a better way to assure your victory than to make sure people are busy fighting about things that don't affect you?

> Voting isn't like going to the shopping mall to buy something for yourself. It's something you do because politics also affects other people.

You're saying this like the philosophy of acting for a greater good isn't already reflected in my position, and so supports your argument Yet, regarding the issues you've listed, half the people voting are doing it because it negatively affects others? That's clearly nonsensical!

What I'm trying to get across is to ask yourself why these particular issues are so pressing and prominent. Not for yourself (I assume you've already done this). Not for the "others" (although you should do this). But constructively, in the larger scale.

If you have someone to defend, it doesn't really matter who made it an issue. Whatever new tactic is being tried, you still have to play defense. Not defending means losing.

Understanding the larger forces in play might be intellectually interesting, but if it results in apathy and forgetting to play defense it's just another way to lose.

Maybe voting isn't going to make things a whole lot better, but remember that it could always be worse.

"Defense" is the age-old refrain of the attacker.

And from a neutral point of view, both teams are doing a lot of attacking - while also seeing themselves as being under attack. Given the circularity, taking a step back and analyzing the larger picture intellectually is the only way to possibly win!

It's funny how we could see the sensationalism of the news cycle as it ramped up in traditional channels, but now that much of our media is our own social echo chamber, it's less perceptible.

The divisions are both extreme and bad. I don't want Nationalist isolationism anymore than I want unrelenting psudeo-socalist globalists who are Both clearly in the pocket of big business. No, the issues of social identity are not the real issues facing our country in my humble opinion.