Addition to the last post

[shkrobius]

I've always found the arguments for "enfranchisement" of this or that group (e.g., women) somewhat dubious. It sounds great, but it tacitly assumes that the voting patterns would not change, whereas the opposite is true.

...By 1840, voter participation levels reached 80% and remained high throughout the 19th century. By the end of the 19th century

Comments

[vdinets]

It's not a proven causation. Besides, who says 100% voter turnout is a good thing? And treating elections as spectator sport leads to people being too fixed in their choice of a party. "My party, write or wrong" approach undermines the whole idea, don't you think?

[shkrobius]

If you follow Aristotle, politics is but a shool of virtue. So are the sports. If sports do not teach virtue, why do we have PE at schools? It is preposterous to claim that the 19th century politics was "wrong" while the 20th century politics was "right". Open any sports magazine and you'll see that the sports stories are framed precisely in terms of winning by the more virtuous. I do not think you've thought it through. Of all people, aren't you "fixed in your choice of a party"? I see nothing wrong with that, but blaming the 19th century men for an alleged vice of which you partake yourself is simply bad sport.

[vdinets]

The only virtue brought by sports that I can see is that it replaces warfare in places like Papua New Guinea :-)
I am not fixed. There is plenty of countries where I would happily vote for the right. It's just that the US is not one of them.

[dmpogo]

So what ? 50% evenly distributed is more representative than 100 % drawn from preselected 1/2 of population

[shkrobius]

Do not we have representative democracy? If it is considered proper for some people represent the others, why is it improper for men to represent their households? If the principle of representation is openly admitted to fail at the level of family, it is difficult to make the consistent case for its general propriety. To put it differently: if we consider it repressive for husbands to represent the interests of their wives, why do we make exception for parents representing the interests of their children

[dmpogo]

Do not we have representative democracy? ....

Why stop at the level of family ? Afterall the king himself can well represent his people and call it representative democracy. Such retorical questions are neither deep nor interesting.

Whatever the history of the suffrage it's outcome is eliminating specific biases in the polls of today, which IS enfanchisement of the groups the
voting was biased against before. ( It is not measured in the number of participants BTW, every statistician will tell you that whether a sample is biased and sample size are different things.)

Sure biases still exisits in the current voting rights, e.g. against minors. But at least agains women they are largerly eliminated.

The fact that in US women vote came with antialcohol sentiment - well that does mean that male only sample was biased :). Tough luck, I guess men should have drank less to keep the other half of the population happy.

[shkrobius]

Family is the smallest unit of society. If the representation does not work for the smallest unit, why should it work for larger ones? I can see the case for direct democracy. I do not see the case for enfranchisement in representative democracy. You conflate the two issues.

Moreover, I do not see where your confidence of less bias comes from. Is it just an opinion or you can back it up?

[poltorazhyda]

You just linked to a post that said that voting patterns DID change. And here's some more research on the way suffrage changed voting patterns: http://www-siepr.stanford.edu/conferences/Gender05/WomenSuffrage_final2.pdf... )

[shkrobius]

There is no way women in 2011 would not have voting rights.

[poltorazhyda]

Why?

[shkrobius]

Because they voted in 16 states before the ratification of the 19th amendment.