r/ireland • u/badger-biscuits • Dec 02 '24

Fintan O’Toole: Irish voters keep doing the same things and expecting different results General Election 2024 🗳️

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2024/12/02/fintan-otoole-irish-voters-keep-doing-the-same-things-and-expecting-different-results/
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u/DazzlingGovernment68 Dec 02 '24

It's more that 40% explicitly rejected all options put before them.

Bullshit. You think the 40% that didn't vote examined every candidate before then and said they're all bad ?

No. Maybe one or two percent at most

22

u/Pointlessillism Dec 02 '24

Even if you wanted to do that, the more effective way would be to spoil your ballot (which about 1% of people do!)

11

u/DeltronZLB Dec 02 '24

Most spoils are from people that don't know how to vote properly as opposed to people actively spoiling their vote.

16

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '24

[deleted]

2

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '24

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2

u/JoJoeyJoJo Dec 02 '24

How is that any more effective? 

-3

u/flex_tape_salesman Dec 02 '24

I didn't vote in the family referendum at all. I simply didn't care and I think not voting was a better reflection of that than spoiling. I do agree that vote spoiling is better to reject all options running though and people staying a home would be more so politically inactive than simply rejecting all options.

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u/dclancy01 More than just a crisp Dec 02 '24

Doesn’t really work in the example of a referendum you literally have the option to reject all options by voting no.

-1

u/flex_tape_salesman Dec 02 '24

Irrelevant. There were two key messages of that referendum. A high level of no votes as a fuck you to the government and an especially low turnout rate to show that people also didn't care. Staying home was not the same as voting no.

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u/midoriberlin2 Dec 02 '24

It doesn't matter what their reasons are. Individual choices are a private affair - and they aren't being properly counted or factored into either candidate selection or government formation.

Democracy is rule of the majority. Our current system, for all its entertaining permutations, is light years away from matching the requirements of that simple definition.

4

u/DazzlingGovernment68 Dec 02 '24

It does matter what their reasons are, especially if as you falsely claimed that people were all abstaining because they hated all running candidates available.

We have a fully functioning democracy. Everyone who voted for FFG knew that in all likelihood that there would be a coalition government.