LogFAQs > #966181153

Seanchan posted...

It's a bit of a chicken and egg but if the politicians actually got punished it would very likely sway opinions that what happened was actually dishonest/illegal. Without punishment, people think "well...I guess it's fine then".

I think part of the problem is that a lot of the punishment is supposed to come from voters seeing this and saying "Wow, those people are criminals and I'm going to turn out and vote against them at every possible opportunity". As it stands though, we have a political system where 50% of the politicians have no reason to stand up for what's right and just, since they know they're going to receive no backlash from the voters in the general election. In fact, they're only likely to be punished during the primaries, so why risk that?

Don't get me wrong, there should be legal consequences too, and hopefully the DoJ is working on that...but these committees are kinda restrained by the fact that half the country's electorate aggressively votes against what the committee stands for and absolutely wants to see no punishment, except for the people running the committee in the first place.