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Electoral Realities

By Noam Chomsky at Mar 10, 2004

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About half the population doesn't bother to vote. The voters are heavily skewed towards the wealthy and privileged, who tend to vote for the more reactionary of the two factions of the business party. That's of course not enough for the Republicans to obtain the statistical tie they achieved in 2000. They did get a considerable majority of the male white working class vote, women too, but the reasons are important. Turns out the main issues on which they voted were "religiosity" and gun control -- not their primary concerns, by far, but the primary concerns don't come up because on those -- e.g., international economic arrangements -- elite opinion and popular opinion are generally opposed, so the issue has to be kept off the electoral agenda. In fact, "issue awareness" -- knowing where candidates stand on issues -- hit a historic low in 2000. That's not by accident; rather, design. Candidates are trained to keep away from issues and focus on "values" or personality. For good reasons. And the population is aware of that too. True, there's no mainstream critique of the whole electoral process. That would be next to inconceivable. Rather, there are enormous propaganda campaigns to try to induce people to vote and trying to make the elections look very serious. We're right in the middle of them now. They have some success, but it's limited. As for whether one should vote, that's a separate matter.

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By Legalmedia, Cyranoo at Jan 10, 2006 07:56 AM
the same problem exist here in Canada; half the population not going to vote; this denotes a general decline in in interests for issues that are crucial.. It is like half the population is asleep..or don't care anymore or as if the blood has ceased to be flowing in their veins. I aint sure you could label this some sort of collective proscrination but it is collectively very dangerous not to react to the decreases in the quality of life since THIS proscrination will affect future generation.. Strangely, it seem to be the poorest people of our societies (in other countries) are reacting to the unfortunate events of war, pollution and global warming.. I failed to understand ways to awaken the frozen mass.. will people awake only when there is no more drinking water ?

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