I have spoken to people who have admitted their racist ideologies and motivations for voting. And I’ve interacted with people who knowingly vote for their own economic interests at the expense of society’s interests because they fundamentally believe they should take whatever they can get.

The latter example especially takes place in local elections regarding things like zoning and local ordinances and work contracts.

>I’ve interacted with people who knowingly vote for their own economic interests at the expense of society’s interests because they fundamentally believe they should take whatever they can get.

This should hopefully be balanced out by the fact that everyone gets a vote.

It’s evidently not, especially since votes aren’t equal in the US since voters in certain states have more sway in electoral college than others. Which is how we end up with leaders that the majority did not elect.

This is the United STATES, a democratic republic - not to be confused with a popular democracy outright. We recognize that in national issues, a few blocks in a major city should not be able to out-vote (and thus overrule) entire states having very different needs/interests. Issues which are appropriate for popular vote should be decided within suitably local jurisdictions. Without this balancing of "tyranny of the majority" vs "tyranny of the minority", low-population states would not have signed onto, and would not remain in, the overall federal system.

In a country so large and with so much diversity (!), no region should be able to absolutely dominate another simply by having a larger population.

You're talking about subtle economic issues, when the original point was about people dismissing the pandemic as a hoax.

One can be understood through the lense of conflict and mistake theory. The other requires a conspiracy.

I think that's a bad example, has anyone gotten elected over the corona hoax thing?

Besides, "I would rather accept the risk of virus X than the inconvenience of wearing a mask," is a perfectly legitimate position for many viruses, and deciding which ones it applies to is the exact same kind of utility balance and value debate as any other policy choice.

We all agree that it would be wrong to poison the reservoir. We all agree it’s wrong to pool our money to hire someone to poison the reservoir.

If I vote for the mayoral candidate who promises to poison the reservoir, why should that suddenly be a completely morality-free decision on my part? Just because a lot of people made the same decision I did?

For the people that voted for the mayor it would be "morality free", because they presumably believe it's the right thing to do for some reason