What percentage of US citizens voted in the 2000 presidential elections?
How many people feel they can ethically praise or damn the present encumbent if they didn’t themselves vote?
Last time I checked, people are able to distinguish between good and bad actions without voting. Which is good, too, because it would suck to only know what was right every other year or so.
Yes ofcourse people can distinguish between good and bad decisions without voting, this is not what I’m asking.
Do you have an ethical leg to stand on if critiquing the president and you didn’t vote?
It shouldn’t be the voting that matters, but the paying of taxes. If you’ve paid any federal taxes, you have more than adequate justification to criticize your federal representatives, even if you didn’t vote for them, or vote at all.
Not that justification is needed, anyway.
To me they seem like the same question. Anyone capable of determining what is right is capable of judgment. Suppose a murderer called another killer a murderer upon conviction. Is he somehow less correct in his appraisal? “What right do you have to judge?” ; “I have a brain?” 
Well, why don’t we just go back to only owners of property voting?
Here ya go: Stats! The voting percentage was 51.3%. No matter what high drama was generated afterwards, it wasn’t a very inspiring election.
As for the second question, well, I don’t see how it exactly can be stopped.
I don’t think it is the same at all. Everyone has a brain and most can judge.
If you took no part in your democratic duty and a president you don’t like gets in, you have to take some (albeit very small) responsibility. At least if you voted, you can say, ‘I didn’t vote for him, I voted for the other guy’.
If your Mum/SO/Dad asks you what you want for dinner and you give no response, then are given liver and onions, which you really hate, can you ethically complain about the food? Surely you have to take some responsibility for not having given some suggestions about what you wanted to eat. If you had given some suggestions and your Mum/SO/Dad still served liver and onions, you have more of an ethical leg to stand on.
Owners of property aren’t the only ones who pay tax.
Thanks for the stats. Is this not quite high for the US?
I am under no illusions that this can be stopped ever, people judge movies, music, ways of life, other families etc with no real understanding or experience of them, however I think it’s about credibility and ethics.
I would like to think that those will strong opinions on the current president and administration at the SDMB, did at least vote in 2000 (if they qualified).
The percentage was about on the low edge of normal. This site is pretty basic but you can trace the percentages on it for each election until 1996.
Why would anyone think that the people who are bothered enough to debate politics on the Internet are the same ones who don’t care enough to vote?
For that matter, why is it necessary to show some kind of credentials before you have the “right” to debate. Fuck that. A 16 year-old convicted felon, who will likely never vote (depending on what state he lives in), is as entitled to an opinion on government as any citizen, and just as much right to express it.
Ethics, schmethics.
To me, you see, that’s all that’s required.
It is hard for me to suggest that a voter is responsible for the terrible things a president may do, anymore than a voter becomes a better person if the president does good things. The president is, or should be, responsible for his own decisions, ethically speaking.
Sure, why wouldn’t you be able to?
What does one have to do with the other? Complaining about dinner is not conditioned on whether or not a person had a choice in the matter. One could even imagine a situation where a person cooked their own dinner, only to realize it contained something they disliked. Are they somehow forbidden from bitching about it? I can’t see why. The two things just don’t have anything to do with each other. “Having done something” has almost never been a requirement for moral judgment. To me, being able to make a moral or preferential judgment is all that is required for complaining.
I might ask you, suppose you are given a lottery ticket as a gift. The ticket has winning numbers on it. Are you somehow acting unethcially by claiming the money?