Low voter turnout may indicate absence of distrust rather than failure of support
Evidence
Low voter turnouts in many nations, including, notoriously, the United States, are commonly taken as evidence that government has failed to elicit support. Prima facie, an equally or even more plausible conclusion may be that such turnouts are evidence that government has not engendered grievous distrust and opposition. Silence cannot unambiguously prove the case for or against government. If the crippled epistemology of mimicry underpins our expectations of government, then the limited commitment of most people to try to change or affect government makes epistemologically good sense. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 772
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Directly parallels the meaning of silence in Blindness — low visible engagement (non-participation) could indicate stable order rather than failure, an inversion of the default reading.
- DEEPTHINKING: The revaluation of silence-as-order against silence-as-failure — an interpretive inversion of a standard data point — is dense and generalizable well beyond voting.