Voting

I was listening to NPR the other day, and there was a commentary on how bad it is that the turnout for the local primary election in Dallas was less than 10% (I think it was about 6%). The commentator was shocked at how low the turnout was, and felt that we, as Americans, were letting our country down by not voting. This seems to be the conventional wisdom in America. Puff Daddy's (or P. Diddy, or Diddy, or Didgeridoo, or whatever he's calling himself now) "Vote or Die" campaign seems to be the attitude of most people.

This attitude is wrong, and a little stupid. Allow me to explain...

We LOVE democracy. Apparently, we can't get enough of it.

I tried to find my county's ballot for the 2004 general election, but to no avail (If you can find out, please post the link in the comments.). Here is the ballot for Travis County (Austin, TX) for 2004. As you can see, the ballot includes about 39 different races for each person to vote for. There are a lot of jobs on the ballot that most people don't understand in the first place: Constable, Railroad Commissioner, County Commissioner. Unless your full time job is researching those people, there is no way you can intelligently decide on each of those races. This leaves a few options:

1) Straight party vote. I know a lot of people who vote like this. Because a lot of people vote like this, candidates for lesser known positions will often try to become the candidate from a party that gets the most votes in an area (GOP in Texas, for example). They may not follow the party line or care at all about the party, they just know it can be the key to winning a race, especially in a less well-known race.

2) Random Guessing. There are people who vote for candidates with the funniest names, candidates whose names sound nice, candidates who seem to be from a certain race (based on their name) -- Hernandez for Hispanic or Goldstein for Jewish, for example. All of these only hurt our democracy and put Mike Hunt in office regardless of what he believes.

3) Not Voting. While not politically correct, or the ideal option, sometimes this is the right thing to do. I would much rather have 5% of the population vote, and be knowledgeable about the races and issues, than 95% of the population vote ignorantly. Democracy is a great system of government, ignorant democracy is one of the worst!

As a sidebar, I'd like to point out that we do not live in a democracy, but a republic. We elect people who decide issues for us. In a democracy, we'd all vote on every issue. Actually, we live in a plutocracy.

What is the solution to this problem? Well, I see a few. First, we should not be electing so many positions. For example, perhaps instead of electing all those different judges, we could elect a panel to appoint judges, or put that role in the hands of the governor or legislature. We elect them. If they put in bad judges, we shouldn't elect them next time. Second, we are in the 21st century. In this day and age, we should have the ability to have a central repository for information on candidates. The Secretary of State's office already makes sample ballots available online. In addition to that, they should have links to each candidate's website. When the candidate petitions to be on the ballot, they can supply a website where voters can go for more information. Third, there should be a central website for YES/NO answers to policy questions facing the different positions. The candidate can supply a YES/NO answer to a series of questions that are relevant, so voters can EASILY see where they stand on the issues.

So, next time you go to vote, really think about the candidates you're voting for, and decide if you know them well enough to hire them to work for you, because that's what you're actually doing.

And now, some links to more information:

US Voter Turnout
International Voter Turnout
Texas Secretary of State - Offices up for election in 2006

Corn

I LOVE CORN!

(As I mentioned in the "Olive Theory" post below, this is part of the "Idiotic Post Series")