Change in all things is sweet.
- Aristotle
With just days to go until the most important election of the century, or of our lifetimes, or of the history of the world, depending on how you want to look at it and who you are listening to, the tension is getting almost too thick to cut with a hatchet (never mind a scalpel). And as poll after poll hammers home numbers implying the results of the election a foregone conclusion, the excitement, anxiety and desperation in both camps seem to be focusing in not so much on what the results of the vote will be, but on whether those results will be accurate and untainted.
A fraud-free election clearly benefits the winning party, as it can then claim a mandate to govern the people without question; an election shrouded in suspicion of fraud, however, logically benefits the losing party, as it can then claim grounds for questioning the results, the winner’s legitimacy, and even legal action, not to mention whining rights for the next four years. Thus as the shouts grow louder and the nail-biting intensifies the closer we get to November 4, it is important to examine not only the allegations of voter fraud, but also who is making them, and what their true motives are. It is important, too, to ask how can we still have a system that allows such instances of fraud or potential fraud to exist? For no matter what party benefits from the fraudulent actions or allegations, the ones who truly lose are always the same: us.
Anyone conscious during the last two presidential elections knows that voter fraud, in all its permutations, whether investigated and prosecuted or relegated to the eternal rumblings of perceived paranoid conspiracy theories, is indeed threatening to “destroy the fabric of our democracy,” as John McCain stated in the last presidential debate,* even if only in our minds. The power of suggestion should never be underestimated, and the repeated accusations and subsequent widespread belief that the elections in this country are less than a fair and accurate reflection of the will of the people is a demoralizing force with many ramifications on the electorate, and thus the functionality of our democracy. In other words, when people think their vote doesn’t count, they don’t vote. Studies have shown that in actuality, occurrences of voter fraud, i.e. ballots cast under a false name or identity, are “extremely rare,” one study “found a voter fraud rate of .00004 of a percent, saying, ‘Americans are struck and killed by lightning about as often.’” So if voter fraud is not actually happening, why all the fuss about it, and what can we do to change the negative psychological impact it has on our country and at the polls?
For one thing is clear: while we vociferously defend and project our democratic ideals, both at home and to the world, nearly half of eligible voters in the US do not vote. This can be attributed to many reasons, among them disenchantment, indifference, contentment, socio-economic and hereditery factors, multiculturalism, education, even weather. It is a complex study to determine why, for instance, voter turnout in Western Europe averages 77%, in Australia 95%, while in the United States it approaches 50%. But regardless of the complexities, the numbers still beg the question: if voting is a critical aspect of democracy, and nearly half of our electorate does not vote, does that not imply that nearly half do not want democracy? And if not, what do they want?
Democracy is, simply put, rule of the people, and that power to rule is exercised through free elections. If people are not voting, then they are relinquishing their power, and they might as well live in a monarchy. But are they relinquishing it out of a rejection of democracy, or a rejection of our implementation of democracy? If the former, then we need to revisit some of our basic assumptions regarding our society. If the latter, a better system for registering all legal citizens of the US to vote, once they reach eighteen or have achieved legal status through naturalization, would patently go a long way to improving our voter turnout numbers. Why not make it mandatory? We should not need these voter registration drives that allow for countless inaccuracies and fraudulent registrations. Eliminate the need, and you eliminate the fraud and accusations of fraud that help strip our electoral process of legitimacy. Voting is compulsory in Australia, and many other countries, with varying levels of punishment for those that don’t comply, resulting in the highest voter turnouts in democracies on record. Perhaps mandatory voting is an infringement on the freedoms that we jealously enjoy here in the US, but would mandatory voter registration be such an infringement? Yes or no, we could certainly go a long way toward involving more of the population in the electoral process by revamping the voter registration process and educating the public on their right, and civic duty, to vote.
Even more in need of an overhaul than how we register voters, however, is how we actually vote. Voter fraud may not be happening as much as we think, but voter suppression, intimidation and ballot error absolutely are; even if voters make it to the polls, there is no guarantee that they will successfully cast their ballots in the current system, which is already being stretched to the breaking point under the weight of higher turnout this year. How do we fix this? With the same ingenious tool that allows you to read these words from the other side of the world: the internet. Is it so far-fetched to think that we, the country that produced eBay, online banking and income tax e-filing cannot conceive of and implement a method of voting via the internet?
If part of the reason that millions of people don’t vote on November 4 is that it’s a Tuesday, or the lines are too long, or the weather is bad, if part of the reason that hundreds of thousands of ballots do not get counted is because absentee ballots arrive too late, or disappear, or machines malfunction, if part of the reason that untold numbers of potential voters get turned away at the polls is because they don’t have the right kind of ID, or they are minorities intimidated by a police presence or threatening partisan behavior, it can all be resolved by pulling our antiquated, haphazard, disparate and frankly desperately broken system of casting and counting ballots into the twenty-first century with an internet-based system that employs state-of-the-art encryption and identification technology, that produces a verifiable paper trail in quadruplicate, and that provides the results in seconds, versus hours, days, or even months. Sure, there are challenges to creating such a system, sure it raises questions about vulnerability to hackers influencing election results, yes, it absolutely would require the best minds and talents that this country possesses to architect a system that could be viewed as trustworthy by all the people, of all political affiliations, while also protecting our right to privacy. But given that our current system is so riddled with problems and errors, is already so vulnerable to partisan influence and electorate distrust and is quite literally incapable of handling the number of voters in a growing population, could it really be worse? And the benefits of moving both a voter registration** and a voting system to the internet would be so huge, that if successful, we just may see some real upward movement in the number of people who participate and therefore fulfill the promise and potential of our democracy.
“If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.” So wrote Aristotle in 350 B.C. Over 2300 years later, are we not finally ready to make this a reality here in the US? Whatever happens four days from now, we must keep trying to make fears of voter fraud and voter suppression part of the past. Every vote should count. Except Mickey Mouse’s, and of course, Homer Simpson’s.
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* In his debate statement, McCain was referring to one particular organization, ACORN, which is now under federal investigation on charges of nationwide voter registration fraud, though there are numerous potentially more egregious examples of fraudulent voter registration, and, even worse, voter suppression, underway, that are not getting near the coverage that ACORN’s activities are. Check these out for more information:
Group’s Tally of New Voters Was Vastly Overstated: New York Times, 10/23/08
McCain’s Warning About Voter Fraud Stokes a Fiery Campaign Even Further: New York Times, 10/26/08
A Myth of Voter Fraud: The Washington Independent, 10/28/08
Election fraud fears: the cure: The LA Times, 10/27/08
Vote watchdogs warn of troubles on election day: The LA Times, 10/30/08
Party Lawyers Ready to Keep an Eye on the Polls: The New York Times, 10/27/08
Black America may get a president before black Americans get to vote: The Guardian, 10/27/08
** Many states already have some type of online voter registration in place, but ideally we will move toward all 50 states adopting similar systems so that voter registration can be updated easily as people move about the country.
Well, explaining Australia’s high turnout doesn’t require much complex analysis; voting is mandatory there. A monstrous system where it’s a criminal offense to express your opinion that all options are dissatisfactory and that one accordingly ought to refrain from voting or ought to show up but not fill in a ballot in the prescribed way. And some share of the US-Europe contrast is due to greater in-country mobility in the US–voting is partly a function of long-term residential stability and knowing the local issues, candidates, polling places, and so on.
Non-voting may be an expression of indifference between existing options, which one would hope and expect a lot of people to be in a well-functioning two-party system where parties converge near the middle in their struggle to win elections. That doesn’t mean they might as well be living in a monarchy; it is the possibility ov voter rejection that keeps the parties relatively close to the middle, and one’s indifference one year is compatible with getting fired up the next because one party has veered off somewhere. One would expect turnout to be high in an existential election between radically different parties, with the future of the world at stake– and it’s generally a sign of health in the US political system that the elections aren’t like that and/or that people don’t *view* them as being like that.
I expect turnout to be noticeably higher in the US than it has recently been, due to the spread of early and mail-in voting. But that increase in turnout is just a thing, not a terribly good thing.
Thanks, Jacob. Yes, I agree that mandatory voting is an infringement on our liberty, and would never fly here, as I stated. Though I wonder if making it mandatory and allowing for people to either leave it blank or choose “none” wouldn’t be an interesting way to understand how many of those who don’t vote are doing so as a political statement, vs. indifference, laziness, etc. In any case, I don’t think it would work with internet voting, as there wouldn’t really be any just way to enforce it. Regarding the in-country mobility, internet voting and registration would resolve a lot of that, as ideally it would be easily updated as people moved around the country.
I wonder too if turnout wouldn’t be higher if we DID have more radical parties on the ballot, in addition to our two centrist ones, that is. A lot of people don’t vote presumably because neither party is extreme or specific enough in their ideals for them. I’m not so sure how healthy the American two-party system is, as it divides the nation between two choices that in an effort to win the majority end up looking almost the same. I suppose even if there were more parties involved it would always be one of the big two that wins the majority, but it would at least give the voters more options, and perhaps engage them more.
Turnout was the highest (about 60% +/-) for the last presidential election than it has been in decades, and will certainly be as high or higher this year. So perhaps it is on the rise, though I suppose we’ll need a few more election cycles to determine that for sure. Why don’t you think that is a good thing? The only bad thing I see is that our system can’t handle it, and more and more of those votes won’t be accurately counted. But a society in which more of the electorate is voluntarily engaged seems to me to be a sign of a healthy political system.
Thank you Jacob – it is comforting to read a balanced explanation to America’s poor voter turnout – that Americans vote as much as they need to, with voting proportional to the differences between the candidates. This makes sense.
However, I am quite fascinated with the idea that not voting does in the end boil down to voting against voting – i.e. against democracy itself. Even when people don’t vote out of sheer laziness, or when the parties are close in their programs, they essentially express their opinion that voting isn’t necessary, their opinion against voting, even if in that one instant.
As you say, Jacob, it would be a crime not to allow the boycott of voting, or maybe better, voting blank. And these blank votes (or non votes in our American example) are in deed the most interesting, suggesting a vote against the concept, or against the system. I haven’t ever found this sufficiently discussed in American public, and hence my curiosity for Naomi’s article.
Granted, this year we will see less of the need for such discussion, since the turnout just has to be a record one. But (thanks for the words, Jacob!) that is just a thing – a temporary occurrence. While the initial problem of voting against the system remains not addressed.
Dear Ms. Camilleri,
I am as concerned as you are about our Democracy. If we don’t vote, do we truly love our freedoms? I suggest that our apathy about going to the ballot box is symptomatic of an America that is losing its dominant place in the world. We don’t vote and we don’t graduate from high school. Some recent studies suggest that one in three students drop out of high school. We are falling behind China, India and other industrialized Western Nations in math and science. Our economy is in shambles and our economic dominance is being challenged in the East. We are becoming a weakened state and it begins with the electorate for having lost interest and motivation in citizenship and its inherent responsibilities. We Americans have lost contact with what it is to be American and why. I can remember when I first voted and how thrilled I was. It meant I was a part of something and I was now recognized as an adult, worthy of a voice in my country’s present and future. While countries like Argentina, Australia, Belgium and Brazil have compulsory voting, I believe no one should be forced to vote but instead should be penalized if they don’t, i.e. reductions in Social Security benefits. We have to find ways to help Americans want to vote and to participate in their governance. We need to teach citizenship in our schools and keep our children in school, so that they can become functioning citizens of our Democracy while at the same time making voting easier and more accessible. If we can buy lottery tickets at the press of a button at the corner newsstand, why can’t we simplify our voting techniques? America, our government needs to make it easier for those who want to participate in Democracy to vote .
What a great idea! Perhaps there are others out there thinking along the same lines. Soon everyone will have an email address, while those who don’t can be automatically assigned a generic email address for use with functions that are no longer done any other way (similar to paying with PayPal instead of by check). Most people will also have a computer, while those few who still don’t can use a family member’s or a neighbor’s or go to their local library. This will cut down on the physical problems, long lines, bad weather, malfunctioning machines and officials, intimidation, sabotage. We should also do as many nations do, register people as voters automatically when assigned a SS number. There can be several days of voting, with the deadline sometime on the first Tuesday in November. Of course there would have to be powerful controls to prevent hacking, but that’s a lot less hazardous than the present (lack of) system.
Whatever the cause of the recent severe lack of interest, it seems that interest in voting is back again. Perhaps the electorate has come out of the coma it went into when their vote was taken from them twice in the 1960s by “lone gunmen.” Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again, or if it does (shudder), that the electorate decides to get to the bottom of it instead of lapsing into another coma.
“Why don’t you think that is a good thing? ”
“As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man’s life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.”– Thoreau
That people should be excited about the exercise of power over one another seems to me a bizarre thing to hope for for its own sake. We should look for excitement and meaning and the chance to express ourselves in our lives, not in our politics. This paragraph:
“I wonder too if turnout wouldn’t be higher if we DID have more radical parties on the ballot, in addition to our two centrist ones, that is. A lot of people don’t vote presumably because neither party is extreme or specific enough in their ideals for them. I’m not so sure how healthy the American two-party system is, as it divides the nation between two choices that in an effort to win the majority end up looking almost the same. I suppose even if there were more parties involved it would always be one of the big two that wins the majority, but it would at least give the voters more options, and perhaps engage them more.”
seems to me precisely backwards. Engagement’s not an end in itself; engagement’s a necessary price that we pay. It’s instrumentally useful to the degree that it stops politics from going off some moral or policy catastrophic cliff. Encouraging there to be extreme parties running around just so that people feel engaged (which is likely to mean “afraid”– “the Nazi and the Communist are each running at 20%, so I’d really better turn out to make sure that one of the two parties in the middle wins– my life may depend on it!”) would simultaneously increase the chances of political catastrophes *and* make it harder to attend to our other affairs and get on with our lives.
And– NB– I’m a frequent third-party voter who in most years can rant with the best of ‘em about there not being a meaningful-by-my-measure difference between the two parties. But the political scientist in me knows that ‘not a dime’s worth of difference’ is ordinarily a sign of political health– it’s a system that’s not about to break down in any of a number of ways. And the part of me that knows Thoreau was right says: if that means a few extra million people can afford to do something more useful with their second Tuesdays in November than voting, well, at worst that’s just a thing too, and not a terrible thing.
Aristotle’s political animals were the citizens (in the Greek meaning of that) who had the leisure to spend all day, every day gabbing about politics, because they had slaves to do the work. They had fewer other affairs to attend to in Thoreau’s sense.
“I do not go to cast my vote to exercise power over my neighbor, I go to voice my preference, beliefs, hopes and desires for the society in which I live.”
Potato, potahto. You can give voice to your beliefs on your blog. What you do when you vote is to authorize some people to exercise power over others provided that they (vaguely, loosely) match your ‘preferences, beliefs, hopes, and desires;” you ask some people to use power to shape the society in which you live. It’s not *only* voice; its voice in the service of the exercise of power. A necessary evil, but not an occasion for romantic self-expression, and given a choice between something that will maximize the number of people who can find true self-expression through the vote and something else that will keep politics calm and boring and stable and peaceful, I’ll go for the latterevery time.
More on-topic:
“One day of the year, every two or four years, is not such a huge sacrifice to ask of those who benefit or suffer under the laws and practices of a governing body.”
Those who really only devote the one day– that is, those who show up at the polling place having devoted no real time or effort or thought into considering the candidates or parties or issues or state of the world– those are the people who vote in increased numbers when turnout ticks up from 55% to 60%. And you’re right that one day isn’t that much– but it also makes for some unimpressive-quality participation. Those marginal voters cast votes on something approximating a random basis; they vote, among other things, on the basis of the weather. (See this New Yorker article for a summary of some of the political science literature on voter ignorance: “In a paper written in 2004, the Princeton political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels estimate that “2.8 million people voted against Al Gore in 2000 because their states were too dry or too wet” as a consequence of that year’s weather patterns. Achen and Bartels think that these voters cost Gore seven states, any one of which would have given him the election.”)
The next stage out beyond the people who vote randomly are those who vote on the basis of affirmative misknowledge or lies or misrepresentations– all those people who vote because they think foreign aid should be cut from the 25% of the federal budget the imagine it to be to the 20% they tell pollsters it should be (when it’s a fraction of 1% in reality), or those who will vote on the basis of the e-mail they heard someone got saying that the black guy is a secret Muslim.
Is there any level of political knowledge below which you think turnout ceases to be a particularly good thing? If so, a) the “one day” move is unavailable to you, because what you’re aksing isn’t one day but rather the time it takes to really learn stuff when the stuff is often hard and technical; and b) I wonder whether you have any reason to believe that the marginal American voter whose turnout you hope to see rises above that level of knowledge.
If you really do think that turnout is valuable regardless of level of knowledge– that engagement as such is valuable even if it leads to random or worse political outcomes– then you’ve detached voting from that sense of making the world or the society a better place to live in– right?
“He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.” – Aristotle
Yes, certainly we should look for meaning and excitement in life in many and varied ways, Jacob. You have twisted the meaning of my words by inferring that I meant to say “people should be excited about the exercise of power over one another.” “Power,” as exercised by voting, could be also expressed as “voice.” I do not go to cast my vote to exercise power over my neighbor, I go to voice my preference, beliefs, hopes and desires for the society in which I live. Asking members of the society to do so is not such a huge request, so that the society can be governed by the will of the people, rather than the will of a few, or even one. One day of the year, every two or four years, is not such a huge sacrifice to ask of those who benefit or suffer under the laws and practices of a governing body. There are lots of other days in the year that they can continue to pursue their excitement and meaning, whether it be in politics or other areas.
“Man is by nature a political animal.” – Aristotle
I do not agree that engagement in our political process is a necessary price that we pay. It is that very belief that hampers the involvement of youth in politics, and increases apathy and indifference. We should want to engage, even if only to cast our vote. I do agree that a multi-party system is more likely to break down, I lived in Italy for a time and was intrigued and baffled by the chaotic political process there that resulted in zero confidence in the elected by the electorate and succeeded only in accomplishing complete paralysis. I vastly preferred our neat, orderly system of two parties and regularly scheduled elections. But I’m not convinced this is the best solution either, as the issues that many people care about do not get addressed by either party. Perhaps I am naive in my optimism, but I do not believe that the most extreme parties would ever gain such a large percentage that it would truly cause panic, and it may be good for the parties, actually. Look at what is happening to the Republican party, which is becoming ever more divided between the traditional fiscally conservative ideologues and the extreme socially conservative religious right. Look how strong candidates have to sell out to pander to the “base,” so that in the end we don’t really even know what they stand for or believe anymore. The same could be said for candidates on the left. I’m just not convinced that the homogenization of our parties is a benefit.
Thoreau was right about a lot of things, but I disagree that we are not here to make this a good place to live in. Didn’t he contribute his part, making it a better place? Of course we all want to contribute, whether it is by writing about our thoughts and reactions to this world, or by caring for family or friends, or by engaging in international affairs and trying to help bring more understanding to different cultures. Again, one day, every two or four years, of casting a ballot, is not a huge contribution to ask of people who live in what many claim to be the “greatest” democracy, enjoying its freedoms that allow them to pursue their lives however they see fit. That those few million people are truly doing something more useful on that one day than taking part in the society in which they live is a notion of which I am not in the least convinced.
Based on what I am reading here, I just can’t believe that nobody yet started questioning the basis of it all – democracy itself. If we are to presuppose the democracy to be our goal and ultimate good, then we should care about it functioning. And this means 100% voter turnout, and people voting for what they believe, not only for 2 parties imposed on them by the simplification of marketing (trying to make a product appealing to the widest mass of people necessarily makes it impersonal, dull and simple).
However, we are rightfully afraid of such devotion to democracy: if everyone would really speak their mind, and should that voice in deed have an effect on the society, we should have a percentage of nazis in our government, executing nazi ideas. True democracy is downright scary, letting uninformed, uneducated, and unqualified people make decisions for the rest.
This is why we settle for the middle. For an illusion of democracy (doesn’t matter what we call it), where just a portion of the population votes, with their hands tied to 2 buttons only, and that vote doesn’t necessarily mean any radical difference (ok, except maybe next Tuesday). This compromising sad state of things is here just to show us that we haven’t matured into finding anything better yet. And to push us further towards Thoreau’s cabin in the woods.
But why treat that image as representing true democracy? A system in which large numbers of people freely exercising an equal vote can peacefully remove bad rulers from power, a system that when it’s working well means that the elites competing for power try to approximate the interests and wishes of the median person in society rather than serving only their own interests and wishes– that’s quite an accomplishment. It’s better politics than the vast majority of humans have lived under for the vast majority of human history. I’m satisfied to see it called democracy– rather than either criticizing the status quo for failing to live up to some imagined state of affairs, or to criticize our existing principle of democracy on the basis of the *faults* in that imagined state of affairs.
Agreed that Aristotle’s reality was further away from ours than Thoreau’s, but perhaps for that very reason his political thought is interesting to apply to today, as an ever complex world sometimes benefits from a viewing through an intelligent distant lens.
Again, you misconstrue my words a bit, I hardly think casting a vote is a method of “romantic self-expression,” but it is, however, the one and only way (apart from the courts) that citizens have to directly exercise their power in a society. Yes, sure, it is the act of assigning their power over to another body to exercise it on their behalf, but that is the system. If we want a system where everyone exercises their power to rule directly, then we are looking at full-on chaos, or perhaps anarchy? It would seem from what you have written that you believe that the more people vote, the more likely we are to head into a political hurricane. I don’t see any evidence of this.
Of course a huge portion of the electorate is not well informed, and yes, that does require more than one day every two or four years, I grant you that. However if we push the argument that one must be fully informed in order to vote (an impossible ideal, I’m afraid), then we are no longer discussing democracy. If we remove voter registration drives and diminish the need for “get out the vote” efforts every election cycle, then more focus can be placed on informing the electorate on the issues, and bringing up the level of knowledge of the masses. Sure, some of that effort will always be used to misinform, and scare people from one candidate or the other, but that doesn’t change the fact that we should err on the side of engaging too many, rather than the side of not engaging enough.
Who is to say that engagement would lead to random or worse political outcomes? Better or worse are very subjective terms, and can be applied at random with no meaning. What we would get is a government that is representative of more of the people, so if you think that is a worse thing, then you are right to oppose the idea. If more of the people are informed and understand more of the issues even if only superficially (as all of the issues are endlessly deep, and nobody can be fully informed about even few of them, let alone ALL of them), we just may get a “better” political outcome than we have witnessed these past few decades.
Thanks for an immediate reply, Jacob… I agree, compromise is the name of the game when it comes to all things concerning…. um… reality! Obviously in our case the discussion happens around determining the level of the compromise, or just how much of a degradation of an original idea we are willing to accept.
My usual fault is starting from the level of an idea, and working my way towards reality. This then exposes me to a criticism of anyone comfortable with that reality.
True to the meaning of the word, democracy should get even worse than previously described: whole population internet voting on whether to nuke some (to them unknown) country on the other side of the planet. And this (internet voting on every issue) is as democratic as I can imagine it these days.
So I’m happy we don’t have a radical democracy. It just still bugs me that we call what we have by that name. I guess it just smells of propaganda too much! Opium for the masses.
More wisdom from Aristotle:
“All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.”
“[Democracy] arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.”
Just some food for thought. If we are talking about democracy, and not some other form of governing that we haven’t quite named yet, then we must allow that each and every vote should be given equal weight, regardless of the level of knowledge or motivation behind the vote. Now, if we do a better job educating not just our youth, but our whole society (though youth is a good place to start, obviously), then we have a much better shot at approaching true democracy, where the people understand what it means to vote, and what their vote means.
I think this discussion is just brilliant and one of the aspects that I find most interesting is the information-misinformation issue that comes up every time we talk about Democracy.
A vote is as good as the thought that somebody has put into it. Showing up at the polls just because it is compulsory to do so or in order to avoid penalization is, and maybe I am exxagerating, useless.
A voter should have access to good information and should then base his/her decision on this good information.
Now, my grandfathers supposedly didn’t have access to good information, my parents supposedly didn’t have access to good information. Do I have access to good information? I think so. I mean, the information is there. There is a lot of it, mixed up with the lies, the misinformation, the detail that doesn’t add anything, the mundane. But it is there.
Does it make a difference, though? Are voters more informed, or in a better position to take a decision now than they were 50 years ago?
What makes people ready for democracy? Are we getting ‘more’ ready year after year? And if (if) democracy is a measure of progress, are we making progress?
These are the questions that are turning in my head all the time and as I read this post. I struggle to find an answer.
Alessia
I think this fun colloquy has run its course, but just one last clarification from me. Naomi said “we must allow that each and every vote should be given equal weight, regardless of the level of knowledge or motivation behind the vote” and “However if we push the argument that one must be fully informed in order to vote (an impossible ideal, I’m afraid), then we are no longer discussing democracy.
I never proposed unequal votes, or restrictions of the franchise! I suggested that there’s no great moral urgency in getting a bunch more uninformed votes cast, and no moral harm if some number of people decide for themselves that they don’t know enough to cast an informed vote. If they feel like voting, of course, they have the right to and their votes count equally!
I don’t think that characterizing the uninformed vote as not adding much that’s worthwhile to the process implies any derogation of the equality of the person– because I don’t think voting is the core of moral personhood. I think that someone can stay home on election day and still be a good person, and that they don’t really do anyone else any favors by turning out if their votes are radically uninformed. That only turns around as an insult to the person’s equality and dignity if there’s some independent moral worth in every person turning out to vote– which is the conclusion we’re arguing about, not a premise.
If you are excusing yourself from the conversation, Jacob, then I’ll take this opportunity to thank you, as it has indeed been fun and very interesting, to say the least.
To clarify as well, I never assumed you were suggesting that votes should be given unequal weight, perhaps my choice of words was not the wisest. And I certainly agree that a person’s choice not to vote has no moral implication whatsoever. Where it grows fuzzy for me is when we talk about turning out the vote, we tend to assume that those voters are the “radically uninformed,” to use your words, as if that is something that can truly be quantified. Truth is, we do not know how much of the 40% +/- of eligible voters that don’t turn out are radically uninformed. Perhaps only 10% of them are, and 30% are somewhat uninformed, and 30% are somewhat informed, and 20% are highly informed and 10% are radically informed. Why aren’t those highly informed or radically informed (I like that expression!) getting out there to vote? Perhaps those are the ones that are boycotting for political reasons. But the point is, if we do not encourage all to vote, then we are not just losing the radically uninformed, but potentially a portion of those that are extremely informed, or at least rise to the level of adequately informed, as well. This is what I meant about giving equal weight to all votes, that we must assume that the uninformed votes are balanced by the informed ones, otherwise, yes, there is no point in pursuing the ideal of higher voter turnout.
But this brings me to Alessia’s point, which is really a strong one: “A vote is as good as the thought that somebody has put into it.” As I just submitted, we cannot quantify how much thought a person has put into their vote. All we can do is try to get people to think about it, and to get informed. Some people will always reject the entire business, perhaps they have, as was first asserted by Jacob, better things to do with their time. Or they just don’t want to be bothered by politics, which they view as beneath them, or they are completely opposed to the system as it stands and can’t bear to engage in it. But some people want to be informed, and engaged, but they don’t quite know how, other than watching the revolting campaign advertising on the television, most of which is full of half-truths at best. I think these people can be reached, and brought into the process more. I think they already have been, through this election, more than ever before. But there is not going to be a Barack Obama running for president every election cycle. It remains to be seen whether these voters continue to stay engaged beyond an Obama presidency.
Another interesting note on the subject of the weight of each vote, in this NYT Op-Ed piece, regarding how the electoral college ends up giving some votes a lot more weight than others:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/opinion/02cowan.html?th&emc=th