It should go without saying that a constant refrain of the recent ACORN debate has been the claim from vocal SDMB participants that ACORN was attacked for registering lots of new voters - mostly voters from urban areas.
Cites on request.
In the wake of the GOP election victories, and especially in the discussions about health care, there has been a recurring theme that the voters are not savvy enough to make intelligent decisions. Nor is it limited to health care – the Iowa voters that didn’t retain that judges responsible for the same-sex marriage decision have been the subject of similar commentary, for example.
Again, cites on request.
It occurs to me that these two claims appear on the surface to be somewhat in tension with each other. If the voters are so ill-informed, why is it so valuable to work to register more voters? Wouldn’t we be better served coming up with a system in which voters have to demonstrate their understanding of the issues?
Or if our notion of government is best served when every person’s voice is heard at the ballot box (a notion I prefer) then why would anyone complain about the voters’ collective lack of critical thinking skills? Wouldn’t the effort spent registering voters be better spent educating voters?
The obvious answer is that Democrats push hard to register disadvantaged voters because they know that those people will vote Democrat. That’s the ONLY reason. If you’re looking for consistency, you won’t find it.
For example, the same people who work hard to get apathetic voters to vote, even by busing them in or bribing them if necessary, will also work to keep military voters from having their ballots counted. The only way you can find any consistency in those two attitudes is if you look at partisan motivation - both actions help Democrats get elected. There is no other reason.
If poor inner city people were somehow individualists who voted Republican, Democrats would be complaining that if they can’t be bothered to hike themselves to a voting booth no one should help them, and Republicans would be supporting ‘motor voter’ laws. And there would be constant handwringing exposes and editorials in the mainstream media about how uneducated people are destroying the electoral system and that perhaps we should look at minimum educational requirements for voters or something.
Scratch the surface of all these contentious voting issues, and you’ll always find partisan motivation underneath.
It should go without saying because it isn’t accurate. ACORN was attacked, including by yourself, because the voters it was helping bring into the process were more often than not likely to vote against your party.
Please do. :dubious:
You’re not getting that, either. There has been a wide amount of deploration of the large number of voters who vote on the basis of perceived self-interest rather than civic responsibility. Factual ignorance is just a by-product of that irresponsibility.
Again, please do. :dubious:
Only because this is yet another of your false equivalence / excluded middle fallacies. Don’t you ever get bored with this game?
I do think that the claims as presented are somewhat in tension. And, since I fall largely in the “the more the merrier” side of the registration debate I’ll attempt a reconciliation.
I believe the key is in your ultimate question, and in priorities. Basically, whether the greater civic responsibility is to vote, or to vote intelligently. Or, put differently, is an ignorant voter a net positive for a democracy, or a net negative (regardless of which side said ignorance favors)?
I tend to prefer a larger number of voters, even if less informed than one would like, for a couple of reasons. One, voting is a habit - once a person votes two or more times, they normally vote for life. Second, ignorance can be fought - today’s uninformed voter is tomorrow’s informed voter. Third, a newly registered voter should not be assumed to be less informed than one already registered. So: register the voters, get them to vote, and then work on educating them.
Some of this is likely informed by the fact that I probably hold the average voter in much lower esteem than some. People in other threads argue about whether the average voter knows the details of the health care reform - I’d be shocked if the majority even have the vaguest of ideas what it’s about (hence “keep government out of my Medicare!”). Perhaps this is overly cynical. But it is why I much prefer a representative democracy than a direct one (and am generally opposed to ballot initiatives, referenda, etc…).
This doesn’t mean one can’t complain about voter’s ignorance, however. Clearly ignorance is something to be fought, even if the battle seems overwhelming.
I am not sure voting your self-interest is necessarily a bad thing as long as you understand that your self interest includes a stable society which might mean you give up a little to get that.
Unfortunately if the Tea Partiers had a clue they would see their self interest is NOT served by the republican party. The republican party sells fear and the conservative mind eats it up.
They want Death Panels for Grandma!
There is a Muslim in the White House!
Homos want to corrupt your sons and daughters!
They want to take your guns!
Immigrants are taking your jobs and ruining America!
Democrats want to take all your money and give it to lazy people!
Democrats are weak on terrorism!
…and so it goes.
There is the ignorant part but it works. Those who vote for their self interest would leave the conservatives with maybe the 10% wealthiest people in the country. The other 90% should send them packing if they had half a clue.
Are you referring to this thread, in which Shodan repeatedly says that polls that show the American people favoring the elements of the health care reform bill cannot be trusted, because if the American people were more knowledgeable about the elements of the bill (the provisions on preexisting conditions, for example) then they surely wouldn’t support them?
I’m just bringing this up because I think you’re saying that liberals are saying that people are too easily fooled to vote; while this other conservative in the other thread is saying that people are too easily fooled to respond to poll questions. So, it seems the question of whether Americans are too dumb to make any decisions doesn’t seem to be a left/right/ACORN/James O’Keefe thing at all.
I’m not sure that works out. For starters, the worst thing that can be said is that if we can’t trust voters then trying to register more of them is neutral; if voters can’t be trusted to make intelligent decisions, then registering lots of people isn’t going to make the situation worse. “Tension” would seem to be the wrong word; perhaps that the two in combination are inexplicable, but tension implies some level of actual running counter to each other to me.
But really I’m not so certain you can’t have both. You could simply believe in the principle of the idea, with the actual practical results not the point. You might believe that the act of voting, in and of itself requires some level of self-improvement, or that the intent to vote means you pay more attention to such issues. You could believe that ignorance is not simply the purview of one particular party, or that it does not have simply one political axis to it, and so feel that the more people that vote the more of an equal or fair (or biased, if that’s your thing) form of ignorance will be brought about.
This strikes me as a false dilemma. Can two problems not be complained about at the same time? If your notion of government is best served when every person’s voice is heard, then is not that notion best served by both a a) committed and b) learned people, not one or the other?
I think most folks whose favored side has lost an election can be heard to complain how foolish the voters are. But when conservatives do it, they don’t really contradict their other position, which is that some barriers to voting are acceptable, or even desirable.
So I wouldn’t have posted this OP following the 2008 election, because the tension would not be in such stark relief; the liberals would be happy with the voters and happy at the register-everyone approach; the conservatives unhappy with each.
Oh, sure - that’s enlightened self-interest. What I was deploring is the unenlightened kind which dominates too many voters’ thinking. You’ve been less kind / more realistic to add simple fear as another deplorable motive.
Well, if your voter registration efforts are concentrated in inner-city or poverty-stricken areas, I might be able to make some sort of claim that relative sophistication about electorate issues is lower, on average, than in wealthier areas. I don’t know that I’d defend that hypothesis tooth and nail, but it’s worth discussing.
All good points, and an excellent discussion.
Only a false dilemma if we accept your claim that the two notions truly don’t run counter to one another. If we accept that “more voters” = “more uninformed voters,” then it’s not.
Bricker, I still think you are avoiding the possibility that ACORN organizers believe that the voters they are registering a more informed than the average voter, and therefore registering them increases the average.
You seem to be equating “previously registered” with “more informed than average”.
The response in 2010 would be: “Damn, we didn’t register enough people with a good understanding of the realities of the individual health-care market in the US. Therefore, the uninformed majority (those with good health-care from their employer or the VA or Medicare) dominated voting”
When people say “the voters can’t be trusted” they aren’t meaning, obviously, all the voters, because clearly, in every election, a very significant block of the electorate votes in the way in which the speaker wanted them to vote.
Instead, the phrase is targetted to a pretty small group of swing voters. There’s a block that will always vote Dem, and a block that will always vote GOP, and the battle is over the swing voters. Now, registering lots of voters, if those voters are likely to vote for your chosen party, doesn’t necessarily seem inconsistent with that use of “the voters can’t be trusted.”
And I’d think that voter registration efforts in general are more likely to favor the Democrats than the Republicans, as I would guess (and it is a total guess) that Republicans have a greater percentage of their core base (a) registered and (b) voting regularly already. The reason I guess this is that African Americans and poorer urban dwellers are, I believe, less likely to be registered, and these people are more likely to be Democrat voters if they vote.
So increasing the size of the voter pool may actually diminish the potential power of the swing vote, which is the sector targeted by the “can’t be trusted comment.” So no, there isn’t an inconsistency.
Remember the political angst about the “motor voter” law of 1993? I seem to recall a lot of conservatives were opposed to it. Granted, it was passed under Clinton. However, my sense at the time was that they didn’t like it on principle, and it wasn’t something they would have supported during a Republican administration.
Indeed, at least one conservative group seems to want it repealed. Google search results on the topic make me think this is largely a conservative position, often on the basis of potential for voter fraud.
And if you’re interested in a liberal sample size of one…
Voting is good, and it should be encouraged. I had no problem with making voter registration easier in 1993, and my position hasn’t changed with political swings. I would support, and consider participating with, an organization whose goal is to register any and all voters in an apolitical manner.
I disagree that the only “dumb” voters are the ones who didn’t vote the way you (general “you”) wanted them to.
I disagreed with my dad politically most of the time but he could clearly and intelligently tell you why he voted for who he did. I often felt my points were more important than his but of course he felt the opposite.
He was one of the most intelligent people I ever knew and he was exceptionally on top of current events and politics.
If you are voting against Obama because you think he is a Muslim you are ignorant. If you are voting against him because you think he got, say, FISA wrong then that’s fine (well…hopefully not a single issue voter but hopefully you can see what I am driving at).
And if you’re looking for anything that would impose an obligation of “consistency,” you won’t find that either. So long as they turn in all registration forms to the elections office as required by law, Dems have as much right to run voter-registration drives in poor neighborhoods only as Pubs have to register wherever and only where they think they’ll find Pubs.
