voting = prizes

[vidcc]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/23/politics/main1644607.shtml

To encourage more people to vote a proposal has been made in AZ to have everyone that votes entered into a draw to win one million dollars.


Under the plan, the $1 million awarded to one randomly selected voter after each election would come from unclaimed Arizona Lottery prize money. A voter could get one entry in the drawing for voting in the primary and another for the general election.

We get the government we deserve, so if one doesn't vote one can't complain if the winning candidate isn't to their liking, but would this idea be good, bad or indifferent?
would it encourage thoughtful voting or just "putting the x anywhere for a chance to win"

[Barbarossa]

The latter.

[j2k4]

What it is, mostly, is really dumb.

What strain of legislature are you afflicted with, that came up with such a misbegotten idea?

[vidcc]

What it is, mostly, is really dumb.

What strain of legislature are you afflicted with, that came up with such a misbegotten idea? If you glance at the story it is a proposal to have the issue on the 2006 ballot by a political activist, It's not my state so I have no knowledge of the "proposer" other than in the news article.

you say it's dumb but not why.


IMO....while I am all for returning unclaimed lottery money to the community I am not so sure that this would be the best way to do it. I fully appreciate that many regular voters just blindly vote for the candidate standing for a particular party no matter who that candidate is, but I feel that those that don't vote generally either have no interest or don't feel that any of the candidates are worth their vote. This idea may increase the turnout but IMO many of the new voters would be just "putting the x anywhere for a chance to win"

Perhaps brewsters "none of the above" should be an option.

[Mr JP Fugley]

What a pish idea, get people into the polling both on the basis of maybe winning a few bucks. They then won't give a fuck about who they vote for because it doesn't really matter to them. So they just put the x against any name.

Worst case scenario, your version of the BNP get power because their candidates name is at the top of the ballot paper.

FFS think about it. If your normal turnout is 35%, that's the 35% of people who give enough of a fuck to go and vote. So they probably have some sort of opinion. Lets say it goes up to 70%, just for a larf. That means that half of the people voting don't have an opinion and don't really care about it, they just want a free lottery ticket. Just how random do you want your electoral system to be.

[j2k4]

What it is, mostly, is really dumb.


you say it's dumb but not why.

It's not apparent? :huh:

Apart from that, remember that I can be easily goaded into advocating means-testing for voters...