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A right or a privilege?
A prominent McCook businessman and a friend of mine asked me the other day if I intended to write a column before the November election on America's "ignorant electorate" and I told him it was already on the drawing board.
It's something we talk about in class at the college every semester and an issue that simply won't go away. Because far too many Americans cast uninformed ballots at every election, should voting be a right or a privilege?
Current registration rules in most states require only that one be a resident of the place they're voting at, be 18 years old or older, and not be a convicted felon. Some people interpret these few rules we have as a "privilege" and not a "right" since there are at least SOME restrictions placed on who can vote.
Others, including the friend mentioned in the first paragraph, believe "privilege" entails demonstrating some knowledge and awareness of what or who one is about to vote for or against and I heartily concur. We've seen far two many "man or woman in the street" interviews where people show a woeful ignorance or misunderstanding of incredibly basic things that one would assume every American would know. It's that assumption that everyone knows the candidates and the issues that often get us in trouble.
I voted in an election not long ago where a woman carrying her small child entered the voting booth next to me. The child started crying and the mom told the child not to cry, that they were going to play a game. She was going to say people's names out loud and the child was to tell her which name she liked the best and that would be who "they" would vote for.
Several years ago, the President of the Northwest Arkansas Neo-Nazi organization came within a few percentage points of being selected as the Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor because people had no idea who he was and the media didn't do their job to find out. His name was the first one listed in a field of candidates that hardly anyone knew. This confirmed something else we already knew. Whenever a group of unknown people are running for an office, the person most likely to get elected is the first one listed. Since people don't know ANY of them, they simply mark the first one on the list and go to the next race instead of not voting for any of them under the mistaken belief that if they don't vote for someone in every race, their ballot won't be counted.
To confront voter ignorance, my friend suggested that there should be some kind of short test to give to potential voters to demonstrate their awareness of who's running, what they stand for, and what they will do or won't do once elected. In the case of amendments and propositions that often show up on the ballot, what those amendments and propositions will do or won't do if they're accepted or rejected. For example, if you believe Barack Obama is not an American citizen, is a practicing Muslim, and intends to take away everyone's guns as soon as he becomes president, you wouldn't get to vote because none of those things are true.
Unfortunately, we're not ever going to see a competence test administered before we get to vote because it has been done before. Back in the middle part of the last century, primarily in Southern states, voters DID have to take a qualifying test before they were allowed to vote. Whites were given a very easy one-page test that practically everyone passed while Blacks were given a complicated multi-page test that practically everyone failed, ensuring that an entire category of people were denied the vote. Because this has happened in the past, it's unlikely that anyone could come up with a test that some group wouldn't define as being prejudicial towards them, even if that group consisted only of the ignorant electorate.
Politicians try to get your vote in many ways and one of those ways is to try and convince Americans of how "smart" we are. They're always telling us that "American voters aren't dumb" and "You can't fool American voters." Of course both these statements are false on their face. A lot of voters ARE dumb and a lot of voters can be EASILY fooled. Just look at the emails that flood our inboxes on a daily basis filled with lies and distortions that so many of us choose to believe because they support our biases and prejudices and we eagerly pass on these lies to as many other people as we can.
That's why I've often said that low voter turnout is GOOD, because the more ignorant and uninformed people there are that stay away from the ballot box, the better off all of us will be. It doesn't take a world of effort to do a little research on what candidates stand for, what they believe in, and what they will or won't do once they're elected.
If all of us would just take the time to do that before we cast our ballot we could then say that not only did we cast a vote today, we cast an INFORMED vote today and that's one of our most important responsibilities as American citizens.