It would require a separate nominative register for the blank votes, sure. But the whiners complain that they are unheard. This solves that. If you want your “no preference” added up and counted, then sure, but you have to be ready to be elected yourself. Seems fair to me. Democracy does not work without participation. People who opt out are effectively voting against democracy and they should own that fact.
There is absolutely no situation in which I would be okay with one of these people being in a leadership position. They’ve proven that they can’t be bothered to do the basic citizen’s duty of caring about politics enough to cast a vote at all, and you want to put them in charge of operating the government? No.
So at what point does low turnout become a problem, and how would you propose to fix that? The system we have depends on people voting and running for election. For every additional person who opts out, the legitimacy of the elected politicians falls, the scope of what they can get done is narrowed, and the relative voice of those who do vote becomes louder - these people typically being richer and more powerful already. It’s a problem. Forcing citizens to take responsibility is one solution.
That last paragraph doesn’t work in a secret ballot system.
It would require a separate nominative register for the blank votes, sure. But the whiners complain that they are unheard. This solves that. If you want your “no preference” added up and counted, then sure, but you have to be ready to be elected yourself. Seems fair to me. Democracy does not work without participation. People who opt out are effectively voting against democracy and they should own that fact.
There is absolutely no situation in which I would be okay with one of these people being in a leadership position. They’ve proven that they can’t be bothered to do the basic citizen’s duty of caring about politics enough to cast a vote at all, and you want to put them in charge of operating the government? No.
So at what point does low turnout become a problem, and how would you propose to fix that? The system we have depends on people voting and running for election. For every additional person who opts out, the legitimacy of the elected politicians falls, the scope of what they can get done is narrowed, and the relative voice of those who do vote becomes louder - these people typically being richer and more powerful already. It’s a problem. Forcing citizens to take responsibility is one solution.