Obama wants "Cousin Pookie" to vote

[Axulus]

Because people like Pookie are almost certainly not informed to know anything about the elections you want them to participate in. You can be poor and still informed, so it's not about socioeconomic status, but if you have to be dragged to the polls what are the chances you even know who or what's on the ballot and have formed an opinion about either?
I do not want Pookies to vote, just like I don't want Badgers or Skinny Petes to vote either.

And which organized system are you envisioning should be set in place to eliminate from the right to vote US citizens you deem unfit to vote?

Not wanting them to vote is worlds away from wanting a system set up to take away their right to vote. Slippery slope fallacy taken to the extreme.

 

[Axulus]

I happen to think an informed citizenry is essential to a healthy democracy.
Dragging somebody to the polls who has no inclination to vote and probably doesn't know Obama from the black guy in Allstate commercials (he once saw him as president on 24) just to make up (the presumably reliably big-D Democratic in Pookie's case) numbers doesn't strike me as particularly small-d democratic.

You need to bone up on the meaning of democracy.
I see no reason why someone who is informed and batshit crazy and inclined to vote is a better voter than someone who is not informed and less inclined to vote.

Is our democracy and society strengthened if all the batshit crazies and all the uninformed and less inclined to vote go out and vote vs. staying home?

 

[Axulus]

Democracy means everyone has a voice. Means your individual voice will get drowned out by all the others. If you are a sociopath, I can understand why that would bother you so much.

And a lottery ticket means you have a chance to win millions. Means your individual ticket has very low odds of actually winning. If you are a sociopath, I can understand why that would bother you so much as to decide to not play the lottery.

 

[Emily Lake]

Anyhow, what would be wrong about encouraging the cousins Pookie to get out and vote?

Because people like Pookie are almost certainly not informed to know anything about the elections you want them to participate in. You can be poor and still informed, so it's not about socioeconomic status, but if you have to be dragged to the polls what are the chances you even know who or what's on the ballot and have formed an opinion about either?
I do not want Pookies to vote, just like I don't want Badgers or Skinny Petes to vote either.

Step 1: Only allow informed citizens to vote

Step 2: Determine what constituted "informed" by controlling the flow of information

Step 3: Win!

It's almost like something out of Cards Against Humanity, isn't it?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

And which organized system are you envisioning should be set in place to eliminate from the right to vote US citizens you deem unfit to vote?

I am partial to having to answer a few questions from the citizenship test.
"Who is the vice president of the United States"
"How many US Senators are there?"
"How long is a US Senator's term?"

Things like that. If you can't answer those you frankly do not deserve to have a say in how the country is run.

I'd prefer asking what the original 13 colonies were. That'd thin the herd to about 10%.

Not very likely to ever pass, but until then we at least have self-selection: Pookies and Badgers tend to stay at home because they are too lazy and I'd rather have them on the couch than voting no matter which party they reflexively choose.

Wouldn't that be "being convinced" to vote a certain way by a relative, instead of reflexively?

 

[Axulus]

Because people like Pookie are almost certainly not informed to know anything about the elections you want them to participate in. You can be poor and still informed, so it's not about socioeconomic status, but if you have to be dragged to the polls what are the chances you even know who or what's on the ballot and have formed an opinion about either?
I do not want Pookies to vote, just like I don't want Badgers or Skinny Petes to vote either.

Step 1: Only allow informed citizens to vote

Step 2: Determine what constituted "informed" by controlling the flow of information

Step 3: Win!

It's almost like something out of Cards Against Humanity, isn't it?

Setting up a system to disenfranchise anyone will do far more harm than good. How about we just go with not encouraging them to go out and vote unless they actually have some basic knowledge about what they are voting on and the differences in the choices they have?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Democracy means everyone has a voice. Means your individual voice will get drowned out by all the others. If you are a sociopath, I can understand why that would bother you so much.

And a lottery ticket means you have a chance to win millions. Means your individual ticket has very low odds of actually winning. If you are a sociopath, I can understand why that would bother you so much as to decide to not play the lottery.

I am so writing to my Congressman right now. I want a Federal Law passed that makes creating poor analogies a federal crime.

 

[Emily Lake]

There is no math, it is counting. And your logic is sound if you are a sociopath. Democracy means everyone has a voice. Means your individual voice will get drowned out by all the others. If you are a sociopath, I can understand why that would bother you so much.

None of your emotional pleas change the reality involved. The odds of Cousin Pookie's vote changing anything approximate that of him being mauled by both a polar bear and a regular bear on his way to the polling place.

You're both wrong.

Jimmy Higgins is correct in that democracy means that everyone has a voice. The US, however, is not a true democracy, it's a representative republic, and we have an electoral college for presidential elections. The popular vote doesn't necessarily matter. Beyond that, it's ad hominems all the way down.

dismal is correct that the odds of Cousin Pookie's vote changing anything are very small. However, that is only true if the people not voting are equally distributed from each party. If there is any reason to believe that the non-voters are skewed or non-representational, then voting can make a substantial difference in aggregate. Cousin Pookie specifically may not shift results as an individual, but when there are several thousand Cousin Pookies who make up an under-represented cohort, it can make a material difference to the outcome. Beyond that, it's argument from absurdity all the way down.

 

[Emily Lake]

You seriously need to get with someone to explain to you what an "emotional plea" is.

The odds of Cousin Pookie's vote changing anything approximate that of him being mauled by both a polar bear and a regular bear on his way to the polling place.

Except that Obama wasn't asking one person to get their typically non-voting relative to vote. He was asking hundreds, thousands to get their non-voting relatives to vote. In the aggregate, it makes a big difference. Ask Norm Coleman or Al Gore.

See what you did there? You did not make a logical case that Pookie should vote.

You shifted it to a discussion of whether someone should convince hundreds or thousands of relatives to vote.

I assume you are aware these are two different and entirely independent things.

One of them is what we were discussing. Not the one you tried to shift to though.

Incorrect. He specified that hundreds of thousands of people were each being asked to get one relative to vote.

 

[Axulus]

None of your emotional pleas change the reality involved. The odds of Cousin Pookie's vote changing anything approximate that of him being mauled by both a polar bear and a regular bear on his way to the polling place.

You're both wrong.

Jimmy Higgins is correct in that democracy means that everyone has a voice. The US, however, is not a true democracy, it's a representative republic, and we have an electoral college for presidential elections. The popular vote doesn't necessarily matter. Beyond that, it's ad hominems all the way down.

dismal is correct that the odds of Cousin Pookie's vote changing anything are very small. However, that is only true if the people not voting are equally distributed from each party. If there is any reason to believe that the non-voters are skewed or non-representational, then voting can make a substantial difference in aggregate. Cousin Pookie specifically may not shift results as an individual, but when there are several thousand Cousin Pookies who make up an under-represented cohort, it can make a material difference to the outcome. Beyond that, it's argument from absurdity all the way down.

And in the aggregate, if a bunch of people who don't normally play the lottery start buying tickets, it can make a substantial difference to the odds that one of them will win the lotto at some point.

 

[Emily Lake]

Step 1: Only allow informed citizens to vote

Step 2: Determine what constituted "informed" by controlling the flow of information

Step 3: Win!

It's almost like something out of Cards Against Humanity, isn't it?

Setting up a system to disenfranchise anyone will do far more harm than good. How about we just go with not encouraging them to go out and vote unless they actually have some basic knowledge about what they are voting on and the differences in the choices they have?

I will correct my Cards Against Humanity plan to take over the US then. In accordance with your "newer, softer" recommendation:

Step 1: Only allow informed citizens to vote Recommend that only informed citizens vote

Step 2: Determine what constituted "informed" by controlling the flow of information

Step 3: Win!

- - - Updated - - -

[And in the aggregate, if a bunch of people who don't normally play the lottery start buying tickets, it can makena substantial difference to the odds that one of them will win the lotto at some point.

Yes.

I am not certain if you are in agreement with me, or if you believe you are making a counterpoint.

 

[dismal]

dismal is correct that the odds of Cousin Pookie's vote changing anything are very small. However, that is only true if the people not voting are equally distributed from each party. If there is any reason to believe that the non-voters are skewed or non-representational, then voting can make a substantial difference in aggregate. Cousin Pookie specifically may not shift results as an individual, but when there are several thousand Cousin Pookies who make up an under-represented cohort, it can make a material difference to the outcome. Beyond that, it's argument from absurdity all the way down.

Cousin Pookie's decision to vote or not vote has no control over any of that and essentially no impact on it. Cousin Pookie is not "several thousand Cousin Pookies". Cousin Pookie voting does not cause the other 999 Cousin Pookies to vote. Cousin Pookie is just one Cousin Pookie. If Cousin Pookie votes there is one more vote. If he doesn't there is one less. Assuming he shows up at the right place on the right day and the machine works.

 

[dismal]

You seriously need to get with someone to explain to you what an "emotional plea" is.

The odds of Cousin Pookie's vote changing anything approximate that of him being mauled by both a polar bear and a regular bear on his way to the polling place.

Except that Obama wasn't asking one person to get their typically non-voting relative to vote. He was asking hundreds, thousands to get their non-voting relatives to vote. In the aggregate, it makes a big difference. Ask Norm Coleman or Al Gore.

See what you did there? You did not make a logical case that Pookie should vote.

You shifted it to a discussion of whether someone should convince hundreds or thousands of relatives to vote.

I assume you are aware these are two different and entirely independent things.

One of them is what we were discussing. Not the one you tried to shift to though.

Incorrect. He specified that hundreds of thousands of people were each being asked to get one relative to vote.

I'm not sure how you imagine what "he" said affects what I said.

To refresh your memory, what I said was:

My guess is Cousin Pookie stays home because he is smart enough to know his vote won't mean shit.

 

[Emily Lake]

There is power in aggregation, which you are ignoring in favor of an individual point argument.

Obama is not urging one specific individual to have their specific relative named "Cousin Pookie" to specifically vote. Obama is urging many people with their non-voting relatives, who are represented by an archetype referenced by "Cousin Pookie", to vote.

One vote does not make a difference; several thousand votes may make a difference - especially if those votes are skewed to one side or another.

Envision a basin of water. One person may come along and drop in a single drop of green food coloring, and it may make no difference at all. The water will still be clear, because one single drop of food coloring in the basin makes no measurable difference to the color of the water. But if you conclude from this that adding food coloring to the basin makes no difference, you would be in error. It may take a thousand people each dropping a single drop of green food coloring into the basin to turn the water green... but it may take only a hundred, or only ten.

Simply because one single measurement doesn't have the power to shift the average in an aggregation does not imply that the average cannot be shifted.

 

[RavenSky]

Did I miss the companion thread you started wherein you bitched about the Tea Party dingbats voting?

I do not recall Tea Party politicians ever suggesting one drag one's lazy, slacker (and possibly drug-addicted) relatives to the polls even if they really do not want to, calling them things like "cousin Skinny Pete" or "cousin Badger".
There is a lot to attack Teabaggers on but this isn't one of them.

By the standard you set, it is many of the Tea Partiers themselves who should not be voting. Have you posted a thread suggesting they shouldn't?

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Step 1: Only allow informed citizens to vote

Step 2: Determine what constituted "informed" by controlling the flow of information

Step 3: Win!

It's almost like something out of Cards Against Humanity, isn't it?

Setting up a system to disenfranchise anyone will do far more harm than good. How about we just go with not encouraging them to go out and vote unless they actually have some basic knowledge about what they are voting on and the differences in the choices they have?

And who determines that? What the basic knowledge is?

 

[Axulus]

Setting up a system to disenfranchise anyone will do far more harm than good. How about we just go with not encouraging them to go out and vote unless they actually have some basic knowledge about what they are voting on and the differences in the choices they have?

And who determines that? What the basic knowledge is?

Anyone who is encouraging others to get out and vote should not have it be a goal to get the uninformed and the crazy to get out and vote. Since they are the ones encouraging others, they should make that determination.

 

[Keith&Co.]

dismal is correct that the odds of Cousin Pookie's vote changing anything are very small. However, that is only true if the people not voting are equally distributed from each party. If there is any reason to believe that the non-voters are skewed or non-representational, then voting can make a substantial difference in aggregate. Cousin Pookie specifically may not shift results as an individual, but when there are several thousand Cousin Pookies who make up an under-represented cohort, it can make a material difference to the outcome. Beyond that, it's argument from absurdity all the way down.

Cousin Pookie's decision to vote or not vote has no control over any of that and essentially no impact on it. Cousin Pookie is not "several thousand Cousin Pookies".

Sure he is. The president wasn't asking this one guy to vote, or asking one guy to get his cousin to vote.
He was asking the community to get the whole community to vote.

Cousin Pookie voting does not cause the other 999 Cousin Pookies to vote. Cousin Pookie is just one Cousin Pookie. If Cousin Pookie votes there is one more vote. If he doesn't there is one less. Assuming he shows up at the right place on the right day and the machine works.

Completely missing the context of the President's comments that drove this thread...

 

[RavenSky]

And who determines that? What the basic knowledge is?

Anyone who is encouraging others to get out and vote should not have it be a goal to get the uninformed and the crazy to get out and vote. Since they are the ones encouraging others, they should make that determination.

Who is "encouraging" "the uninformed and the crazy to get out and vote."

Couch potatoes are not necessarily "uninformed" or "crazy"

 

[AthenaAwakened]

And who determines that? What the basic knowledge is?

Anyone who is encouraging others to get out and vote should not have it be a goal to get the uninformed and the crazy to get out and vote. Since they are the ones encouraging others, they should make that determination.

And they have and they dont think they are encouraging crazy people to vote, but CITIZENS to vote.

So, see, you can sleep easy.