|
Gifts for all occasions in the Galleria! Subscribe to the "What is the Deal?" mailing list. The "What is the Deal?" Deal-of-the-Week: Cookie Of The Month Club - Join Now! September 26, 2004 What is the Deal with Ignorant Voters? By Jan A. Larson Would you let your five-year-old son and six-year-old daughter choose the dinner menu for the next week? Would you let your twenty-one year old college dropout son decide whether it was better for you to buy a 20-year term life insurance policy or give him the money to buy two cases of beer per month for the next 20 years? The answers to these questions should be obvious. Not so obvious, perhaps, is the answer to the question, should people that don't know who their congressman or U. S. Senators are decide who will be the next President of the United States? When a majority of Americans don't know who the Secretary of State is, don't know which party is in control of Congress or can't name as many as three of the nine justices of the Supreme Court, does it really serve the nation's interest to have them casting votes to select who will be the most powerful man on Earth? As radio talk show host Neal Boortz suggested in a recent column, there will be a lot of people entering the voting booths around the country on November 2 whose only question when deciding for whom to cast their presidential vote is, "Which candidate will give the most to me?" Needless to say, I find it to be unbelievably frustrating to hear candidates, especially Democrats, toss out campaign promises that (1) can't possibly be kept, (2) are just plain stupid, or (3) are both. Obviously, the candidates know that the stupid voter's vote counts just as much as the informed voter's vote. Anyone that is paying attention to foreign policy, domestic policy, economic issues, healthcare issues, environmental issues and has some basic understanding of economics and human nature, has at least a fighting chance of making an informed choice in November. Those that aren't paying attention will vote for the candidate that makes the most promises. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that the informed choices that many people will make on Election Day can and will be cancelled out by voters who think John Kerry can soak the rich and magically create ten million jobs, can send half a million French soldiers marching into Iraq by simply calling Jacques Chirac on his cell phone or by saying that he won't change anything about Social Security and everything will be okey dokey. Boorz is absolutely correct when he points out that nowhere in the Constitution is there any guarantee of any citizen's right to vote in a federal election. The 15th, 19th and 26th amendments address how one's right to vote may not be denied on the basis of race, sex or age, but the Constitution does not address how one is granted the right to vote. The right to vote is presently denied to convicted felons, so there is precedent for excluding certain classes of individuals from stepping into the voting booth. Why not exclude those that are too uninformed to make a rational decision just a mother excludes her elementary aged daughter from the decision process in choosing between broccoli and cookies for dinner? Of course the answer is that any attempt to establish some sort of basic level of understanding of the subject matter before making a decision goes against that fundamental American ideal that everyone is equal under the law. In addition, the exclusion of the uninformed or the weighting of votes toward the wealthy (as Boortz also suggests) would further divide America into a ruling class and a subservient class. The real question, however, is how long can America afford to have elections decided by large numbers of people that are easily swayed by egregious political rhetoric and who don't grasp the enormity of the uninformed decisions that they make? Some would say that establishing standards that would deny some the right to vote would put America on a slippery slope toward chaos. I would offer that we're already sliding. -- Send feedback to the author. The "What is the Deal?" column will appears weekly on the Pie of Knowledge website. Guest submissions are welcome and encouraged. To submit an article to "What is the Deal?" click here. To subscribe to the "What is the Deal?" mailing list and receive early notification when a new column is available, click here. The Pie of Knowledge will never, ever divulge email addresses to any third party for any reason unless so ordered by a court of law. Contributions to the Pie of Knowledge are greatly appreciated. 
Visitors:
|
|||||||||||||
