The majority that voted. Those in favor were more likely to go out and vote than those opposed. Many of the opinion polls showed that more people were opposed, but clearly not enough of them actually went to the ballot.

Either way, I'm confident that the same measure today would have a snowball's chance in hell of passage.

That's the way democracy works, though. If about 320,000 more conservative voters had turned out to vote in several swing states in 2012, we'd have a different President in the White House.

That doesn't mean Romney should have won, though. It's the people who turn out to vote who get to decide. If you don't care enough to vote, tough beans!

> That's the way democracy works, though.

> It's the people who turn out to vote who get to decide. If you don't care enough to vote, tough beans!

Democracies with more complete voter participation don't seem generally worse off for it.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with that. The point being made is that the people who come to vote are the ones who make the decisions. If people are being prevented from casting their votes, that is a serious problem, but if people choose not to exercise their right to vote then whatever vote they would have cast doesn't count towards the outcome.

Saying that a vote would have gone differently if more people on the losing side voted is obvious. It's also not constructive, except in the context of wishing more people would participate in the political process in the future. Amusingly (or perhaps not), the fervor against Brendan Eich is based in large part around his participation in that process.

I agree that in practice elections are won by those who manage to cast their ballots, but I disagree with the notion that this is not a defect but rather how democracy ought to work.

I'm all for the option to not vote, but I want it to be a choice. I think the current setup provides the wrong incentives: it encourages politicians to care about how they can rouse up enough to come to the polls or demoralize enough to keep away, in addition to or at the expense of reaching out to all constituents. We can change this either through cultural or legal means, but the legal way is faster and not demonstrably harmful.

Greater participation is far from a panacea, of course. It may even introduce its own particular ills (e.g. takes longer to change the status quo). But I hardly think it would make no difference at all. That's why I pointed to other democracies with better voting records, to show that overall democracy isn't harmed by more voting.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout#International_di...

So you're saying it was wrong for the Supreme Court to strike down bans on mixed race marriages because at the time an overwhelming majority of Americans were against it?

Why do you think human rights should be put up for a vote? Are you against mixed race marriage because it was so unpopular at the time the "activist court" struck it down?

How can it be a right if it's subject to a majority vote?

All rights are subject to majority vote. Or subject to the majority, anyway.

No, rights are manifestly NOT subject to a vote. That is why they are called rights.

That is the case in an ideal world, where we receive some blessed words inscribed upon our souls and also a way to read them.

Since we don't live in that ideal world, our only option is to designate some body to decide what are rights and what are not. Whether that body is a king or a judge or a council of judges or a legislative body or the full populace (or some combination of the above) is an important and worthwhile discussion, but in the end we do need to designate some entity to decide what the rights are.

Fortunately, that entity sits above California's voters.

Except the population votes for the people who pick the members of that entity.

We've added a few hops, and hopefully increased the average intelligence of the people who get to decide on rights, but they still end up there based on the population's vote.

Is marriage a civil right, or even a fundamental human right? On closer examination, the answer appears to be NO.

The campaign for gay marriage, branded as marriage equality, actually leaves many people behind.

Brothers can't marry sisters, mothers can't marry sons (nice way to avoid inheritance tax!), men and women can't join in a polygamous marriage even though there is a long history of polygamy in many cultures around the world.

It's quite ironic that the campaign for marriage equality is itself highly discriminatory.

You left out bestiality.

(which I've never understood why it wasn't spelled "beastiality")

I guess the rationale for specifically bestowing marital rights on same-sex (but non-related) spouses is that there's a significant number of them.

Polygamy, too, there might be a lot of that somewhere in the world, possibly Africa, obscure corners of Utah, certainly pre-modern China when it was normal for a wealthy land owner to have several wives, etc. I suspect it won't be long before polygamy is legalized. Maybe a couple of decades at most.

Reality disagrees.

No, it doesn't: Californians passed a proposition that violated people's rights. The courts, playing their proper role in our system, said, "Nope, you can't do that." That's what happened; that's reality.

The courts played the role that the majority allowed them to play, just like they did for the hundreds of years during which even same-sex sexual activity was illegal, let alone gay marriage.

Like a diet that sometimes prevents people from eating what they crave, the system is nothing more than a mechanism of self-control for the majority.

What's the other option? One person, or a small elite group, deciding the list of "rights"?

> I guess if they consider any other candidates for CEO from California, they'll have to ask them how they voted.

Interesting. The difference between which box you check, and giving money to influence other people to check a certain box. The privacy of the former is a nearly-sacred privilege, while the latter is not allowed to be private. And I do tend to agree with campaign finance disclosure, but the double-standard is interesting. To be consistent, will we have to make all voting records public?

Would there be outrage if there were political questionnaires for employment/promotion like this? If proof of lying was found, would there be more outrage over the lie; or over violating privacy to find out about the lie?

Please remember that part of the reason many voted in favor of Prop 8 was because of the amount of money raised in donations allowed a massive ad campaign that was full of lies and deceit.