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Governor stands with trans kids & won’t take ‘soul-sucking path’ of sacrificing their rights
(www.lgbtqnation.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2025
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I struggle with this one on a philosophical level.
[Theory] In a representative government, are the elected officials there to just summarize and convey the aggregate opinion and will of the voters? Or are the voters identifying an individual who embodies the most virtuous among them, who will do what is best for society even if it disagrees with the aggregate opinion?
Democratic principles are important, but elections are never about one issue and some issues can be pretty divided like this one. I'm not sure if there is a poll for whether trans people should be recognized legally, but I can't imagine that the majority will of the voters in Illinois is for encouraging LGBT suicides.
It's also important to note that even the state isn't simply there to enforce polls. There are laws and constitution for a reason, and officials are often more informed than the population on snap decisions. Mob rule is a risk that has to be avoided too. I just watched a series called "Show Me A Hero" where like 60-70% of the voting population in Yonkers, NY wanted to segregate housing in the 1980's. (gerrymandering and voter suppression aside) If there was no laws in Yonkers, then those houses would still be segregated today. However, there are federal laws against racial discrimination, even if NIMBY's are against diverse neighborhoods. In the end, the federal courts forced Yonkers to desegregate its housing, against the will of the voters.
I feel like this question is as useful as asking "when is it ok to downvote someone?" You can theorize about how a downvote should only be used when someone is not contributing to the discussion honestly, and how you should never downvote someone just because you disagree with them....but at the end of the day, people are gonna downvote others for whatever random reason they feel like.
Similarly, is it useful to ask what a vote "means" in a democracy? Or is it a waste of time to try and apply reason to, or derive reason from, the behavior of a hivemind? Unlike individuals who can learn from hypothetical failures, I personally believe hiveminds (groups/societies/whatever word you'd like to use) can only learn from actual failures.
The people could elect a perfect model citizen who will represent the people's best interests, but if what's best for the people in the long term comes with too much discomfort in the near term, the people will happily vote against their own interests.
My personal preference is to vote for a candidate 1) who has a chance of winning and 2) seems to embody the intelligence and moral character necessary to make difficult, potentially unpopular, decisions. Ideally they're somehow smart and able enough to make unpopular decisions a little bit less unpopular. So, I guess this means smart, ethical, and charismatic. I feel like this is one of those cases where I get to pick ~~two~~ one of those traits, and it has to be charismatic.
That seems to accurately describe where we find ourselves. To quote Men in Black, "A person is smart, people are dumb."
I think we don't get out of this situation by thinking real hard and convincing people to vote based on a theoretical future; people will only change their behaviour in the face of an actual failure. I'm not a historian, but I have to assume the appeal of fascism was alive and well in the US during the great depression. We just had the opportunity to learn from Germany and Italy's mistakes before we went down the same road. Now WE are the example that will hopefully sway other countries' democratic behaviors.
Ex. the conservative party was heavily favored to win the Canadian election after Trudeau stepped down, but ever since Trump took office, the polls have completely reversed. Still unclear where it will land, but I think Canada's voters are getting that much needed opportunity to learn from our failures.
To the United States! The cause of, and solution to, all the world's problems.
I think it's one of the flaws with representative democracy. When faced with a choice between what's good for the country/state vs. what's popular (or just good for their district), what should an elected official pick? If they go with the former, they will eventually be replaced by someone who votes the other way, and we'll end up with a government of elected officials who only vote selfishly (to get reelected by supporting public opinion, I mean).
Maybe proportional voting would help with legislatures to avoid that, but I don't see a great fix for executives. And proportional voting can also have its own flaws by making parties more influential. The best is trying to elect people who can convince the public/their constituents that what's good for the country (or state) is also good for the people, and change public opinion on the topic. Obama (preceded by VP Biden) coming out in favor of gay marriage worked pretty well on that front. So I guess we're just back to trying to elect the best people, or at least the most influential. But that's also why Trump has been successful politically and that sucks, so I don't know.