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Comment by hef19898 | Hacker News Reader

hef19898·

Absolutely! But having elections in 2021 makes every Covid-related decision by definition political. And that doesn't help.

I should have made clear that the problem with elections is the timing, not elections in general. Governments should be focused on getting the population vaccinated as fast as possible now, and not worry about their / (re-)election chances.

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As soon as you justify canceling elections for one crisis, you can cancel them for any crisis. You'll manufacture a crisis if necessary.

I never said we should cancel elections, quite the opposite. I just certain problems with conflicting incentives in the period before an election. Like weighing decision not just based on data and facts, but on public perception, media coverage and the impact on election chances. Covid had a shitty timing with that.

> But having elections in 2021 makes every Covid-related decision by definition political

Every COVID-related (or other) decision by or about government is political, by definition, independent of election timing.

Election timing may effect the degree to which the people of a democratic state have effectively direct input on an issue whose existence and political salience would not be regularly forseeable, but that’s a very different issue than whether decisions about that issue are “political”.

People often mean “partisan” when they say political. The parties of course control our definition of politics but that’s done with the consensus of party line voters, unfortunately the overwhelming majority of our electorate.

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