We live in an era of consumerism in the context of politics, a logical result of mass democracy. At age, the relationship between the government and the people is more intimate. The ideology of consumption value where many people enjoy political participation for its own sake. Nevertheless, the question of the rationality of voting never ceased to exist. In the concept of democracy, one of the instruments that are misguided is voting.
Why should an individual vote? Is it ethical for the masses to participate in voting and how well does it lead to exercising one’s democratic rights?
Although voting seems reasonable to impact and change the outcomes of the election, the chances for this notion to be more practical in the political setting should be in an active democratic state.
Ethiopia’s electoral system translates the vote count in an election into results, the system works in a manner if the majority of candidates for the national seat, the party with the majority candidate most likely to win the election, with the highest polling candidate is elected.
Not to mention parties with more geographically concentrated support gain a disproportionately large share of seats in the election.
Smaller parties with more evenly distributed support gain a disproportionately small share, likely a single party will hold a majority of legislative seats
Handling a legislative voting majority to a government that lacks popular support can be problematic where said government policies favor only the fraction of the electorate that supported it. Particularly the electorate divides on tribal, religion, or in the urban and rural area.
Empirical works generally find that most voters are badly informed. In the electoral system, the majority of vote matters hence regions with a high population necessary get to impact the results in terms of vote counts, putting pressure on the majority without considering the factors of the common good.
Individuals vote instead of trying to change the “mandate” the elected candidate receives. Their ability to get things done once elected. Depends in part on how large of a majority vote they received. If that were true, an individual might vote for what he expects to be the winning candidate to increase their mandate or vote against the expected winner to reduce their mandate. The virtue of the mandate notion should be rational if the individual is sure the vote will change the outcome.
In the 2015 Ethiopia general election, In total 36.8 million (93.2 pc), registered voters participated in that parliamentary election, and 1.4 million (3.3 pc) of the total votes cast for the election were deemed “invalid”. reports had been stated that the elections were not free and fair; the government-controlled nationwide election board declared the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, the authoritarian ruling party in Ethiopia for more than two decades, and its allies to have won every single seat. Claiming the ruling party to have won 500 seats.
Surveys show that most citizens in contemporary democracies believe there is some sort of moral obligation to vote. A duty to vote relies upon the idea that individual votes make a significant difference.
Citizens count as partial authors of the law, even when the citizens do not vote or participate in government. Citizens who refuse to vote are thus complicit in allowing their representatives to commit injustice. Perhaps failure to resist injustice counts as a kind of sponsorship. thus implies that citizens do not merely have a duty to vote rather than abstain, but specifically have a duty to vote for candidates and policies that will reduce injustice.
Are there particular candidates or policies that the voter is obligated to support, or not to support? For instance, is a voter obligated to vote for whatever would best produce the most just outcomes, according to the correct theory of justice. Must the voter vote for candidates with good character? May the voter vote strategically, or just an individual vote by their sincere preferences
According to an expert in law Bisrat Awelachew (Ph.D.) mentioned,” The dominant view is that we ought to have some sort of representative democracy and that each adult ought to have one vote, of equal weight to every other adult’s,”
The idea here is that if it’s wrong (even if it’s within my rights) in general for me to express sincere racist attitudes, and so it’s wrong for me to express sincere racist commitments at the polls. Similar remarks apply to other wrongful attitudes. To the extent it is wrong for me to express sincere support for illiberal, reckless, or bad ideas, it would also be wrong for me to vote for candidates who support those ideas.
“Another notion holds that voting might be wrong because it is an ineffective form of altruism. that when people discharge their obligations to help and aid others, they are obligated to pursue effective rather than ineffective forms of altruism. The concept of voting is more complex than we ought it to be. ” He argued.
