Voting By The Uninformed

One of the benefits of a democracy is that the citizens have the right to vote.  One of the problems in a democracy is that the citizens have the right to vote even if they have no clue what's going on.   For the entire history of our Republic, there have been countless elections in which very few voters bothered to vote.  

Even during the formation of the nation, as school kids used to be taught, the populace didn't form a clear majority for a particular direction (we learned 1/3 of the late 18th century population was "loyalist" or pro-British, 1/3 were in favor of independence, and the remaining 1/3 didn't care one way or the other).  This break-down apparently arose from the writing of John Adams, and he may have been talking about support for the French Revolution, not the American dispute.   Other estimates give the Loyalists and Patriots in the neighborhood of about 20% each, and the fence-sitters the vast majority (around 60%) of the white population.  The point is, even during the American Revolution, there were a huge amount of people who either had no opinion or couldn't make up their minds. 

So should we expect everyone to vote in elections now?   I think not, and so does Stan Zegel in this Chicago Tribune article.   He makes the case that our country is better served by only encouraging the informed voters to actually vote, and let those who are uninformed stay home.  

In Illinois, the State that gave the nation Rod Blagojevich our impeached ex-Governor, and the State that recently had an unknown pawnbroker win the Democratic nomination for Lt. Governor (only to resign from the nomination after his criminal history became public), and the State that is rapidly lurching toward bankruptcy, the recent primary election had something less than 1/3 of the eligible voters show up.


Zegel rightly points out that "that the quality of the vote is more important than the quantity of votes."  He talks about the fact that a candidate for the Republican nomination for Governor drew 7000 votes, despite the fact that he dropped out of the race before election day.  That implies that there were at least several thousand voters who weren't paying attention closely enough to understand who was still in the race.  In fact, the winner of that race still hasn't been determined, and the votes for the non-candidate are far greater than the distance between the top two candidates.

Those random or uninformed votes are four times greater than the margin separating the first- and second-place finishers in the cliffhanger race. In fact, carefree voting possibly changed the outcome of the race.

I have to agree with Zegel; our elections, whether they are for national or local offices, are too important for all of us to be decided by the ignorant.   We should be encouraging people to become informed and knowledgable about issues, rather than simply encouraging everyone to "get out and vote."

Most citizens have the right to vote, but not everyone should exercise that right. Voting is too important to be thrust into the hands of the uninformed...For good government we need good voting. The best election is not one in which everyone votes, but one in which everyone who voted cast fully informed ballots.