I’ve talked w/many folks about who they vote for and why. What constitutes a ‘good’ reason for one isn’t for another, nor should it be used as a litmus test for voting rights
For example, I know there are certain voters who will vote for someone or against another solely based on their position on abortion. Who is to say that is wrong?
For the rest of it, again, to reiterate what DDG was getting at, who sets the standards for ‘being informed’? I would say that in this age, major election issues are almost unavoidable (given, tho’ that they are in 30 second sound bites).
I recall years ago, a resident at my correction center voting for the very conservative John Engler 'cause “He’s going to lower my taxes”. It certainly was his platform. What resulted? under the Engler administration, property taxes were lowered (didn’t matter for her), income taxes were slightly lowered (maybe saved her ten bucks over the course of the year), and sales taxes increased by 2% (undoubtably cost her minimally a couple of hundred a year). Was she wrong to have voted that way? and who is to determine that?
I will agree that it’s impossible to form an absolute test of what constitutes a good reason for voting in a certain way, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t claim some reasons are flat-out bad. In your example, that seems to me a perfectly good reason for voting for someone. It wasn’t arbitrary, she voted for him based on his platform. But what if I voted for Jeff Smith, because “Hey, cool, he has the same first name as me! Dude!” Obviously that’s not a good reason to vote for someone. While I shouldn’t be prevented from voting, I certainly shouldn’t be encouraged.
Maybe we can come up with a system by which we pay stupid people not to vote?
Jeff
I will agree that it’s impossible to form an absolute test of what constitutes a good reason for voting in a certain way, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t claim some reasons are flat-out bad. In your example, that seems to me a perfectly good reason for voting for someone. It wasn’t arbitrary, she voted for him based on his platform. But what if I voted for Jeff Smith, because “Hey, cool, he has the same first name as me! Dude!” Obviously that’s not a good reason to vote for someone. While I shouldn’t be prevented from voting, I certainly shouldn’t be encouraged.
Maybe we can come up with a system by which we pay stupid people not to vote? “You’re a complete ignoramus - here’s $10, now step away from the booth.”
Jeff
Not necessarily. A stated party affiliation does normally provide some indication of the candidate’s overall views of what government is for and what should be done. It also shows that the candidate has the endorsement of the party, and therefore has convinced those who pay more attention to such matters that he generally shares those views and has some capability to carry them forward.
Granted, that isn’t really enough, but it isn’t uninformed either. Now, I am as conscientious a voter as there is, but even I don’t know all the names or platforms for every office on the ballot. I doubt you do, either. Going by party affiliation is not a bad backup.
Dewey:
Yes, it’s better for her not to dilute the votes of those who do care. But yes, she is committing a civic sin by refusing to take even a minimal responsibility for maintaining the rights she enjoys. Voting is the end of the electoral process, not the entire process, and the electoral process is only a part of the democratic process. We citizens are responsible for all of it.
How about if we make voting like a game show. Everyone gets one vote, but then you get a chance to answer a series of ‘Government Trivia’ questions, like:
Who’s your Congressman?
What current states lie in the territory acquired in the Louisiana Purchase?
How many eyebrows did Teddy Roosevelt have?
If you get three questions right, you get a Super-Bonus-Vote-Multiplier, and your vote counts for 2 normal votes (you also get a free pound of cheese). Then you can risk your Bonus to answer more questions which will increase your Multiplier to 3x, 5x, and finally 10x a normal vote. So six straight correct answers gets you the voting power of ten mere mortals, plus a CD of John Ashcroft singing all his Easy Listening favorites.
You also get one lifleline that you can use to call Shelby Foote.
There’s no doubt that my “Modest Voting Proposal” would be violative of extant law. The purpose in the proposal was to suggest how things should or should not be; perhaps, as a htpothetical first step, we can assume that the Modest Voting Proposal would be implemented through repeal of the Voting Rights Act.
To those that suggested a danger in the MVP being used to invidiously target races, the use of random questions drawn up by opposing parties and (perhaps) subject to some sort of judicial review would seem to minimize the problem.
amarinth’s point about the single-issue stadium voter is an excellent one, and certainly the MVP fails on this point.
I would only accept this if I could be the one who decides what the issues are and who has properly informed themselves on the issues, which would include not misinforming oneself and checking to make sure the peson’s logic was up to my standards. Under that system, conservatives would as a practical matter not be allowed to vote. Many liberals wouldn’t either, but certainly no conservatives.
Voting isn’t about understanding the issues, it is about understanding the interests, yours and others. Depth of understanding of issues as a qualification, rather than having interests, would only allow the very smart to vote, and then they would vote their own interests.
What about parties C and D, who manage to get on the ballot but aren’t either Democrats or Republicans? If you limit it to the D&Rs you’re going to be according them even more ‘only official’ status, offering them free advertising, and allowing them to lock out people who don’t keep up with their party material. However, if you go the other way allow a third party to ask painfully obscure questions (especially ones that their supporters would likely know) to keep other people from voting. Do you want to have to answer three questions about the
And how, exactly, are you going to enforce that? I’m not sure exactly what kind of questions you’re aiming at, but the most contentious issues are hardly cut and dried. “Is abortion murder?” “Would allowing gays into the military reduce combat effectiveness?” “Does gun control reduce crime?” or, “Candidate Y supports banning abortion. (T/F)” “Candidate X supports schools teaching your kids about the homosexual lifestyle”, or really any pattern of question that I can think of can easily be turned away from simple answers by people honestly examining the issues. And historically politicians given a chance to control who gets to vote don’t exactly tend towards pure honesty.
And if you have someone oversee these questions before they go onto the ballot, how do you prevent them from being known before the election? Is your voting test going to become a mere test of whether I can memorize 20 (or 30, or 40) questions and their pat answers?
Oh, and I really, really hope these would at least be multiple choice - having people ‘interpret’ written answers would really be literacy tests all over again.
So, I either have to research the Democrats and Republicans in detail and memorize their positions even if I know the relevant fact for me that neither party supports The Communist Manifesto or The Non-Coercion Principle, which is my (hypothetical) primary criteria for voting? It seems rather odd to either require someone desiring to vote for a third party candidate to memorize the ‘issues’ information for the D&Rs or to require someone choosing between the D&Rs to research the positions of the Libertarian Party, Communist Party, Natural Law Party, or other third parties when they know they aren’t interested in voting for those candidates.
So, which is the uninformed 30-YO - the one who is a lifelong member of [third party X] and spends his free time stumping for that party, researching and educating people on those issues, but doesn’t study the exact positions of the D&R candidates because they’re so far removed from his position that they’re irrelevant, OR the other 30-YO who is very involved in issues which the D&Rs differ on and can expound at length on those issues, but doesn’t know much about the specifics of the[third party X] because he looked into them briefly and can tell they’re nothing he wants to vote for. Under your system, one of these guys has a good chance of being denied the vote, but I wouldn’t call either one ‘uninformed’.
The end of my first paragraph should be “Do you want to have to answer three questions about the specifics of the Communist Manifesto, Non-coercion principle, or something core to another third party?”
Well, I was thinking about this issue quite a bit recently. I was even considering campaigning to discourage people from voting.
There is this idea in this country that your opinion is somehow less valid if they don’t vote, as though voting has some kind of prestige. I think that’s bullshit. You have the democratic right not to vote as well, and if you don’t like what the candidates are doing once in office, well you have the right to speak out.
I think people SHOULD NOT vote, if they don’t know the issues. I don’t vote on issues I don’t know about. They should have EVERY right to vote if they wish to, but I think that making them feel guilty about not voting just perpetuates the fucked up system that we have, and rewards the people who have the best campaign on television.
Please explain yourself. If you don’t vote, you agree to accept whatever other people choose for you. No, you don’t have the right to complain about the results of a process you decide you’d rather not participate in.
There’s something else missing from this thread - no personal attacks on December. There were plenty of oportunities too. You guys are really going soft.
Returning to topic, there is really only one answer to this question. You cannot prevent people from voting in our system (at least not morally), but we certainly don’t have to make it as easy as we do. I think ElJeffe is right on target. Voting should require just enough inconvenience that only the informed and interested will bother. Self-selection is the only way to do this.
A computerized blind voting system, where the voter casts his vote based exclusively on issues. You answer a series of questions about what you believe about the issues at stake and the importance of those issues to you, and your vote is computer-matched to the candidate whose positions (both stated position and prior voting record, which would be weighted) most closely match yours. This way we are able to completely eliminate “ignorance” votes. You vote for the candidate who matches your views most closely and not the best-looking or the one with the best speech writer.
Now, assuming there are no major technical problems to be overcome (for example, assume there is a good algorithm for weighting your beliefs and the candidates’ records and matching them accurately), would there be anything wrong with this system?
Say you live in an area where Party 1 is more moderate and Party 2 lives in the extreme, so extreme that on a local level, the Party 1 candidate is the candidate that your issues align with & the Party 2 candidate kind of scares you. However, on a national level, you tend to be more with Party 2, and less with Party 1.
It’s a close year, the Senate is up for grabs. Do you choose to vote with the candidate that most aligns with your issues? Do you choose to vote so that the party that most aligns with your issues is the majority party and runs the committees? Shouldn’t that be your choice to vote strategically - instead of automatically decides for you?
Well, considering I don’t like party politics and think it’s stupid to vote based on which party the candidate gives his membership to, I don’t find that to be a meaningful question. If you think it’s important, however, maybe you’re right.
Just an aside, is the literary allusion of “A Modest Voting Proposal” lost on anyone? I would be distressed to think the proposal was taken seriously on its face, after all.
I’d argue that the uninformed and ignorant already don’t vote. The turn-out rate in our most recent state primary was abysmal. It’s not as though the polling places were flooded with hordes of illiterate mouthbreathers. And as the system currently works, voting does require a certain amount of inconvenience and determination–not a great deal, but a certain amount.
If you want to argue that politicians should focus more on substantive debates, and less on political ads and mudslinging sound bites, then I’m definitely with you. If your goal is to convince people that they need to educate themselves on political issues and the democratic process, then I support you. But I’m not going to advocate taking away anybody’s rights as a citizen, especially the right to vote.
Either you’re using a clever method of argument to show why this is a bad idea (e.g., to illustrate the problem of “who decides what ‘informed’ means”), or you really believe this. Given some of your posts in other threads, I’m inclined to believe the latter (correct me if I’m wrong).
It just staggers my imagination that you can only conceive of someone voting conservative based on either (1) misinforming him/herself, or (2) a failure of logic. Do you really not believe that different people can look at the same problem and, in good faith and with complete clarity of thought, after reviewing the same set of data, see different solutions as being favorable?
Anyway, as to the OP: while I agree it’d be nice if we had a more informed citizenry, with more participation in civic affairs, I’m not sure that the current lack of participation means the sky is falling. In a lot of ways, it means our society is doing OK: people are less concerned about politics and government, and more concerned with their families, their jobs, and just generally living their lives. Which is how it should be. Places where politics are the all-important center of society tend to be places under oppression, places who have recently thrown off opression, or places with serious life-or-death (in a literal, society-wide sense) issues on the dock. Places where politics are less important tend to be more peaceful and prosperous.
Joe Cool: A really nice idea, and in a way I approve.
But one key point is that one votes for the candidate, not the party, the issues, or anything else.
North Carolina is fortunate in having two excellent candidates running against each other for the U.S. Senate seat coming open: Erskine Bowles and Elizabeth Dole.
Of their stances on the issues, I tend to agree with Bowles more than with Dole. However, until this year’s campaigns, I’ve never known her to be anything less than forthright and reliable in what she does. I trust her integrity, and while I have no reason to question Bowles’s, I have nothing to go on there. So I might possibly vote for the candidate farther from me on issues, though not unacceptably so, on the basis of my confidence in her ability to deal with situations that are as yet unknown in a manner I know I can trust.
Though I am (as usual! :)) disagreeing with you, I have a strong feeling that we share a perspective here.
