Originally posted by Eladar
If you vote for the lesser of two evils, do you elect people you actually want?
Thumbs up if you think that people elected as the lesser of two evils has the mandate of the people.
Thumbs down if you think that people elected as the lesser of two evils do not represent the will of the people.
It seems to me that voting for the lesser of two evils is an endorsement of evil.
Here in Africa, we elect leaders into 'power'. In other words, once elected in, they do what they like - which usually consists of trying to manipulate the next election in their favour, and stealing as much money as they can in case plan A fails.
More advanced democracies have a lot more checks and balances and a lot more input from the people apart from elections. They elect officials 'into office' not 'into power'. Elections should be about general policy decisions not about personalities.
I saw a recent talk where the speaker challenged the audience to name the prime minister of Switzerland. Any prime minister from its history. Nobody could. He said that that shows that their system is not about personalities.
Sadly the US seems to have a situation where there is a lot of input to government between elections but it is input from lobbyists which means it represents money not people.
I am also of the opinion that democracy has its limits. It should not be used in many situations such as human rights. That is where a constitution comes in. For example issues like gay marriage which centre around rights issues of a minority should never be settled democratically. The same applies to any question that affects a minority - the majority should not get to vote on it. I see this as one of the failings of Swiss democracy in that they have very strict immigration policies decided on democratically when it should be address as a human rights issue.