Of course it matters, to the extent that it gives the illusion of popular sovereignty.
See, that's the biggest problem with the election theft of 2020. Over half of Americans, and something like even a quarter of Democrats, will say on surveys that they think fraud affected the outcome of the election. If you are basing your political system on the theory of "the people" as sovereign as a legacy of Hobbesian Enlightenment ideas, it becomes a very real problem when a majority of people can say, rightly so, that the system they are living under is a lie. So how do you deal with that?
You make the voting system so the people think they have sovereignty by making elections more trustworthy. Of course, there are all sorts of issues with this, but that's a whole other debate.
If the Governance truly reflects the People then this situation simply indicates that our society's dominant culture is pragmatic and amoral, which is exactly what I see when I walk down Main Street.
Modern republics/democracies as governments, all of them, are oligarchies of some sort of another. They only reflect "the people" to the extent that the oligarchy draws into it new talented members from the masses from time to time in a gradual replacement as older members die off or lose importance.
The current oligarchs in the West, in large part, are amoral and some are satanist pedophiles, so I suppose they can be classified as pragmatic from a certain point of view.
If voting mattered, the peasants wouldn't be allowed to vote.
Of course it matters, to the extent that it gives the illusion of popular sovereignty.
See, that's the biggest problem with the election theft of 2020. Over half of Americans, and something like even a quarter of Democrats, will say on surveys that they think fraud affected the outcome of the election. If you are basing your political system on the theory of "the people" as sovereign as a legacy of Hobbesian Enlightenment ideas, it becomes a very real problem when a majority of people can say, rightly so, that the system they are living under is a lie. So how do you deal with that?
You make the voting system so the people think they have sovereignty by making elections more trustworthy. Of course, there are all sorts of issues with this, but that's a whole other debate.
If the Governance truly reflects the People then this situation simply indicates that our society's dominant culture is pragmatic and amoral, which is exactly what I see when I walk down Main Street.
Modern republics/democracies as governments, all of them, are oligarchies of some sort of another. They only reflect "the people" to the extent that the oligarchy draws into it new talented members from the masses from time to time in a gradual replacement as older members die off or lose importance.
The current oligarchs in the West, in large part, are amoral and some are satanist pedophiles, so I suppose they can be classified as pragmatic from a certain point of view.
Oy vey!