Posted on 10/29/2008 7:03:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
I keep hearing how important it is for everyone to vote.
Let me be politically incorrect and say that maybe some people shouldn't vote.
I know I'm swimming against the tide. Get-out the-vote groups now register young people at rock concerts. HeadCount cofounder Andy Bernstein told me: "We registered over a 100,000 people. It is so imperative that this generation's voice is heard."
But wait. Is that really a good idea? Many kids don't know much. At a HeadCount concert, "20/20" asked some future voters, "How many senators are there?" One said 12, another 16, and another 64. One girl guessed, "50 per state."
Most kids didn't know what Roe v. Wade was about. "Roe vs. Wayne?" asked one. "Segregation, maybe?" "Where we declared bankruptcy?"
Headcount's Marc Brownstein concedes, "there's a lot of uninformed voters out there." But he argued:
"Democracy is not about taking the most educated portion of the society and having them decide who's going to run the entire society. Democracy is about every individual having a voice."
I suggested that when people don't know anything, maybe it's their civic duty not to vote.
"It's an argument that really, really smacks against everything we hold dear as Americans," Bernstein replied.
Maybe it was unfair to pick on kids at a rock concert. I went to Washington, D.C., and showed people pictures of prominent Americans. I'm happy to say that everyone recognized Barack Obama and John McCain.
But only about half recognized Sarah Palin, and most didn't know Joe Biden. Few people recognized Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but everyone quickly identified TV's Judge Judy.
Economist Bryan Caplan, author of "The Myth of the Rational Voter", points out, "the public's knowledge of politics is shockingly low."
He scoffs at the idea that "it's everyone's civic duty to vote."
"This is very much like saying, it's our civic duty to give surgery advice," Caplan said. "We like to think that political issues are much less complicated than brain surgery, but many of them are pretty hard. If someone doesn't know what he's talking about, it really is better if they say, look, I'm going to leave this in wiser hands."
Isn't it elitist to say only some people should vote?
"Is it elitist to say only some people should do brain surgery? If you don't know what you're doing, you are not doing the country a favor by voting."
My ABC "20/20" segment about this enraged some viewers.
"That was a shameful piece you put together about youth voting. ... I wonder if the quality of the information in our society has anything to do with hackery like yours infesting the airwaves and drowning out reasonable discussion."
Another wrote: "You are a decrepit journalist and a poor excuse of a patriot."
And still another: "Democracy is defined by citizen participation. So you are undermining democracy. Thanks."
Someone even made a video parody mocking my story.
Clearly, not everyone understood what I was saying.
"You sit there on television and ignorantly say that all youth should not vote . . . wow."
That's not what I said. I hope that informed young people do vote.
I just don't think it's so wonderful when famous people drag uninformed and uninterested people to the polls.
One viewer raised a fair point: "You simply cannot create a litmus test for voters. At what point does a voter become satisfactorily 'informed'? Do they have to know the name of the president, vice president, both their senators? This is the problem with your argument; you don't state how informed a voter should be, just that they should be. This is a very slippery slope."
But I'm not saying that the government should impose a litmus test. God forbid. I just want clueless people to find something else to do on Nov. 4.
Voting is serious business. It works best when people educate themselves.
If uninformed people stay home on Election Day, good.
That doesn't include you.
What gives you the right to tell someone who didn’t have a positive number on their tax line of their 1040 should not be allowed to vote?
But Nickolodeon kids choice, chose Barack Obama!
My 7 year old froze when they announced that and said “Is Barack Obama going to be the President for Kids!?!”
Poor thing, they terrified her.
What gives me the right to have that opinion? That’s funny.
OK, so here’s how I back up my opinion:
Those who have no stake and no skin in the game don’t get to tell others who have skin in the game how their money is to be spent or how much of it they’re going to pay.
This is why the vote originally, by the founders opinion, was to be only for land owners.
John Stossel is my favorite Libertarian
I respectfully disagree.
Everyone who CAN vote, Should vote.
Those who don’t care won’t even go to the polls.
Those who know nothing will balance out those who know nothing. Statistically, they will distribute their votes evenly across the candidates.
Those who are totally confused, or overwhelmed by the information will fall in with those who know nothing.
Which leaves us with those who know what they are doing; and those who think they know what they are doing, but have bad information.
Americans had bad information from GW Bush & Co about going into Iraq. It was a deliberate denial of, and alteration of information concerning justification for military action. Most of us were supporting something for reasons that in reality didn’t exist. We are responsible for what we supported; but we are also responsible for implementing corrections (or not) once we found out the truth.
So those who know, or think they know, should get out and vote. Take responsibility for your selections. And don’t sweat it that there are plenty of fools in the voting lines.
I’m of the mind that only property owners should be able to vote. Now THAT is kickin’ it ol’ school! Property owners actually have a stake in how limited or expansive their gov’t is. Alas, it will never happen. We are close to the magic number 51%. Once 51% figure out they can vote themselves a raise, or goodies from the gov’t, this Republic is doomed.
Just his opinion. At one point in time it was thought that if you didn’t own property you had no vote.
If your your only stake in the government is how much can they give me, why should you be allowed to make the decision.
What are you smoking?
But that's the democrat base!
I imagine that the majority voters that are registered at events like rock concerts, such as Puffy Daddy's Vote or Die, never make it to the Polls. They just register at the time to get a free t-shirt or pack of smokes.
If you are drawing more from the treasury than you are putting in, you have an inherent conflict of interest when it comes to voting. That is, such people are not paying their way in this country and should therefore not be allowed to keep voting to get more goodies out of the government. Long-term, letting such people vote will be a death-knell for the Republic.
If you register people to vote who otherwise would not be bothered, if you ‘help’ people who have no interest or idea about whom to vote for, you are essentially getting another vote vicariously. Leave people alone. The only people who should be allowed to vote are those for whom it is important enough to take the time to register and to vote. The government should provide help only for people who ask for it, but it should be illegal to go out and harvest votes from otherwise unmotivated people.
“You are ridiculous.”
Thank you for sharing that. Why do think that?
Our saving grace is that, even though the libs work hard to register those voters, most of them don’t bother to actually VOTE.
John speaks directly to the dummycrat penchant for taking the ignorant, registering them, then pointing to where they should put their “X.”
I agree . I ran into a person from eastern Europe and asked him if he liked it here in the USA he said yes it’s wonderful .so I asked would you ever move back to your home land .He replied yes .I asked why if you like it here.He replied there are just too many stupid people here.I took offense to this for obvious reasons .Then I thought about it for a while and came to the conclusion.He wasn’t saying we are all stupid but that there are a lot of uneducated people in this country.That get by because of all the government handouts and programs that reward the people who don’t try to find jobs and just collect all they can from the government. This is a country that reward a person because he or she can throw a ball in a hoop .They get free educations and high paying jobs just because they can play a game.a lot of them can’t even balance a check book .Could you imagine them having to make a big desition like who the leader of the free world should be.
No offense intended, but for you to be talking about what people might say concerning American intelligence ... and for it to be in the grammatical, punctuational, and spelling condition.....
Well, all I have to say is this: Isn't Irony Ironic?
Not when a significant number of the know nothings have been rounded up off the streets, bribed, and transported to the polls like cattle to a slaughterhouse by left wing groups, and wouldn't be there otherwise. Also, understanding the flaws in the left's arguments requires a little study. Redistributionist bromides are appealing to children and child-like adults. "No Blood for Oil" resonates much better with clueless simpletons than learned people.
The whole community organizer thing is to maximize the manipulated loser population to use as tools for the acquisition of power.
I agree. It's a conflict of interest for folks on the dole to vote.
Why am I ridiculous? If one has no stake in the economics of America, as evidenced by paying taxes, should one have a voice in how things are run? I think not. My approach could be refined, perhaps with upper and lower bounds for filing a 1040. However, to permit individuals who have never actively paid into the system to vote seems wrong. Perhaps it could be tied to Social Security eligibility, which reflects a citizen’s work history as defined by accrued benefit. Maybe you could think about it a bit, rather than saying I am ridiculous but offering no counterargument.
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