[MD] Voting

Wed Aug 8 05:43:53 PDT 2007

Big problem -
How does one ensure that the 10% are representative of the population? 
You'd have to hold a census first to asses what you were trying to represent and then how do you decide what factors to include?  If you say that in your census results 30% of people are Christians and 10% Muslims and 60% Atheists, you will then need to have 3, 10 and 6 from each group, but what happens if that doesn't overlap with the even 33% 3 way split between confederate, yankee and royalist?  ethnicity? age? education? home province? body weight? - endless, and impossible 

Also voter apathy can be either a measure of dissatisfaction or approval and its hard to asses which is the bigger driver, your outcome will be skewed in the polls towards [people who volunteer to take part in polls] and then in the election towards [people who like to vote]. If people aren't voting because they've lost faith in the system then clearly the election outcome will not be representative of "the people" as it will favour the 10% minority who still have it. Conversely if people think that by and large everythings fine so stay home, 10% radicals go and turn your country on its head.

If you have confidence in the pollsters getting it right then why bother having the election at all? 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org
> [mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org]On Behalf Of
> pholden at davtv.com
> Sent: 08 August 2007 13:26
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: Re: [MD] Voting
> 
> 
> Quoting "Keith A. Gillette" <Keith.Gillette at Detling.org>:
> 
> 
> > I can see what would happen if less than 10% voted: 
> Elections would be
> > decided on the narrowest of platforms catering to those who 
> did bother to
> > vote.
> 
> If the 10 percent voting represented a true cross section of 
> the nation's
> citizens, the results are likely to be the same as if 90 
> percent voted. So
> I don't see a problem. Those who do polling invariably take a 
> much smaller
> sample than 10 percent of the whole and are confident of the 
> results representing
> the whole. 
> 
> Or I'm I missing something?
> 
> Platt
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
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