Nothing deep or Skald-hypothetical complex story here, just a straight-up for-fun poll:
Suppose you had the technical means of hacking election vote results in such a way that you could sway the outcome of elections in a way that entails only a small risk of being found and caught (let’s say, a 5% chance of discovery every time you do this.) Would you, if you knew your preferred party/candidate would lose the election(s) otherwise? You can do this once every four years.
Nope. If I’m in the minority (or otherwise outfoxed by the electoral college) I need to know that so I can reevaluate my position, decide what I need to do in order to get others into my circle, or at least understand that I am in the minority. A stolen victory is no victory.
I voted No, but not because I defer to the current voting system. It’s because I don’t have enough data to replace the system properly.
I’m of the opinion that, philosophically speaking, majority rule should rule. (Well, unless they’re assholes. Which they are. But I can’t prove I’m not also an asshole so I don’t have a good basis for choosing my asshole opinion over theirs.) However it’s not the case that American elections are resolved by majority rule. While Trump’s abject loss/dubious win shines a spotlight on the flaw that is the electoral college, even more local elections fall hard due to rampant gerrymandering. In america votes are not majority rule. (Though of course in many cases the results are the same as if they were.)
If I had the ability to tell what the total numerical majority vote winner was for an election, and it didn’t match up with the result that gets pooped out by the districted/electoral colleged/whatever system, I would change the result in a heartbeat. Yes, even if that switched the result in the wrong direction. Fans of democracy can’t be choosers.
Of course I don’t have the raw numbers from at my disposal (particularly not in time to change the results of the systemically tainted vote) so I don’t have credible reason to believe the vote needs fixing, democratically speaking.
I choose to live in a democracy. As an ethical matter, that means I choose to play by the rules. Tampering with the vote is against the rules and importantly is against the rules in a way that effects lots of others. Effecting lots of others is an important point.
Speeding is against the rules. It might even effect others if I cause an accident. I choose to speed on occasion because the cost to society as a whole is miniscule. If I were driving a truck filled with poison gas the calculation would be different.
I picked “no” because “yes” is illegal, and I don’t do things that are illegal.
Agreed. Representative democracy is the finest thing the human race has ever devised, and the underlying principle is more important than the specifics of which candidate wins.
It’s a Mephistophelian offer: you get what you want right up front…at the cost of the very soul of democracy itself.
Why do I get the impression that all the respondents so far are Democrats?
<d&r>
I wouldn’t even if there was a 0% chance of getting caught.
No I wouldn’t because I don’t want to live in a society where shit like that’s considered okay.
I went past yes to Hell Yes but the last cycle my have influenced my decision.
I think I have to say yes, if it is a big national election, because I think we collectively do NOT follow all the rules, and have twisted others to make them unfair. We disseminate such a great deal of misinformation that we can’t really say our democracy is legitimized by the consent of the governed, as it is not really informed consent. We systematically impede voting by people who are any race other than white to a significant extent, and to lesser degrees by people who are women, youth, and the elderly. We gerrymander voting districts to comical extents. We also strongly overemphasize the per se votes by people in low population states and underemphasize those by people in high population states. All of these strategies benefit one party and disadvantage the other, and get elections where more candidates from one party win, and more people vote for the other party. We clearly try to avoid carrying out the wishes of the people in what ideally should be considered democratic fashion.
In other words, if we really want government of the people, by the people, and for the people, morally, what we should do is to apply the best tools and information we can get, to determine what the will of the people is, and tamper with the election to make it turn out that way.
I dunno. How much will the winner give me?