Shofercia wrote:Oh, I agree with you on that point. You're right, you're not engaging in a debate. Unfortunately that doesn't prevent you from responding.
If you prefer, I could start ignoring this rather pointless little section of your posts.
Except we were arguing over whether or not the elections manifest the People's Will, so I thought we were arguing over the most important elections.
I suppose we should really look at both types, shouldn't we? I'm pretty sure we're allowed to.
Life isn't fair. The voting age population in Mali was, at least, 6 million in 2007; but wait! We don't want to exclude those living abroad, and voting in Mali's election, which gives Mali a voting age population of roughly 8.2 million. Currently, 4,400,000 Malians are living in other countries.
Sauce: http://www.migrationinformation.org/Fea ... cfm?id=247
And they vote. And out of those living abroad, the voting population is 2.2 million. So the total voting population, assuming that only half of Malians are of total voting population, is 8.2 million. Out of those, only 2.5 million voted.
Since you're so keen on voting age population, we have 2.5 million, out of 8.2 million voting: that's a turnout of 30%. Dear Cosmopoles, 30% isn't 50%. It really, really isn't.
Why on earth would you consider all emigrants a part of the voting age population? How many are seasonal or temporary migrants already counted as part of Mali's population? How many of those 4.4m have no intention of ever returning to Mali and as such have little interest in the internal politics? How many are citizens of the nations they have moved to and are quite happily voting in elections there?
So you can't actually respond to the point I made. Ok thanks for clarifying.
I did - would you like me to repeat my response?
That's not the case in the US, or in Russia, or in France, unless you want to tell me that Sarkozy's power is purely ceremonial.
Sure, but they aren't a majority.
When you're talking about reflecting the people's will, you go for the most important elections, not the ones that have the lowest turnout. Do you even have numbers for the Mali Legislative Elections, in terms of people voting?
It was 2m.
Facts are those things that you can present without spinning. Where did I say that no one gives a shit about Swiss elections? Obviously the people running give a shit. My direct quote was:Switzerland is a Confederacy. In a Confederacy, people generally don't give a shit about the national government, since it has so little power.
You spun that to me saying "no one gives a shit". Again, spin artist, stop trying to put words into my mouth.
Indeed you did. Thanks for pointing out to me that you were talking utter rubbish in a completely different way from how I said you were talking rubbish.
Atheist Heathens wrote:This isn't particularly on topic but I'd just like to applaud Cosmopoles for his current role as some kind of quasi-omniscient deity of patience, happy to throw ever more information into a yawning void.
Thank you. This is why I do it, really - I don't expect the void to benefit from the information, but if other's do then its all worthwhile.