Associated Press had a story last week about a toy creator named Ken Hakuta (known as "Dr. Fad" to kids), whose Adopt-a-Vote campaign aims to give the underage set a real voice in this election:
According to Hakuta... children and parents [could] enter into an agreement pledging that the parents will vote according to their children's preference as long as the children have done their homework.
Right, that's what we need in politics: more pandering. It's bad enough MTV's Rock-the-Vote campaign frantically urges 18-to-30-year-olds, no matter how ignorant, to get to the polls.
Look, voting is a privilege as well as a right and if you don't vote, you should be ashamed of yourself. But the reason you should be ashamed of yourself is that not voting is lazy and idiotic. Should the lazy idiot constituency be encouraged to influence society even more than it already does? Should contemporary parents fool children even more into thinking that the world revolves around them?
In his book "The Vanishing Voter" (based on the Vanishing Voter project at Harvard), Thomas E. Patterson admits tht "in most locations, it takes about as long to drive to the video store and rent a couple of movies" as it does to vote. Yet he agrees with the theory of increasing voter turnout by coddling. Taken to the logical extreme, his solutions -- making Election Day a national holiday; eliminating the Electoral College; keeping polls open even longer -- might include assigning government workers the task of physically carrying citizens to voting booths and then singing them to sleep that night with politically informed lullabies.
Many things in life are hard; voting is not one of them, and parents promising to vote the way their children want in return for finished homework sends a message about as useful as school principals who eat worms if a class improves its grades. In the eternal words of Marge on "The Simpsons," "One person can make a difference, but most of the time they probably shouldn't."
oh, cathy, you are sooooooo right. and isn't it dreadful how MTV has a "voting 101" guide that actually walks users through the american electoral process? i mean, we really don't want those ignorant kids to learn something about their government! all manner of chaos could ensue!
——————————-
Make Election Day a national holiday and watch turnout surge.
I don't think so. For one thing, there's a big difference between making something a government holiday and requiring that employers give their employees a day off. Unless you do the latter — which is going to be awfully expensive and hard to administer — who's going to care that it's a holiday?
For another, you'd have to show some evidence that most people who don't vote don't do so because they have to work for the twelve hours or so that the polls are open. I'm sure that's a small segment of the electorate, but not enough to represent a "surge." (Of course, if you know in advance that this is the case, you can always vote absentee.)
As for why your "let people vote on their lunch break" solution can't be implemented, it could —if all people worked in the same jurisdictions in which they lived. Or if all elections in the country were centrally administered.
Amen. In fact, it's relatively easy. It's way easier than jogging or registering a vehicle. All this mental energy going into figuring out the absolute easiest voting system for everybody I think is just an absurd waste of time. If you can't punch in between the lines, and read a line of straightforward directions, I don't particularly want your policy analysis forming the world i live in. In fact, I think ballots should get trickier, with big flashing lights saying "this candidate is a liar!" and "punch here to start making money now!" in order to form a healthier democracy. lol.
actually, it appears that rock the vote (have you checked out their website?) is trying to get young adults involved in and aware of the political process. i hardly see why that is such a bad thing. if our schools aren't providing the civics education they should be, what's so horrific about MTV doing it?
i can't find a single spot where rock the vote says, "you don't know anything? don't bother to learn! just step into the booth, flick a switch, and pull the lever!" (oh, how i personally long for the old-style RI voting booths. who knows what agony awaits me this year in virginia...)
trying to cure youth apathy about the political, social, and economic future of the country is, in my mind, a very noble cause. if it takes working with musicians and entertainers to get kids interested, what's wrong with that?
you know, that argument has a familiar ring to it... oh, wait. i remember. it was used to justify keeping women from voting! and blacks!
Which is why I don't think it's "coddling" to look for a way to make it easier to get to the polls. Regarding the difficulty of enforcing a holiday, point taken—though that still seems to me to be a matter of Would it work?, not Is it worth it?
But perhaps you can explain further the problem with voting away from a home district? I mean, couldn't different jurisdictions share their databases? I'm envisioning a process in which I go to whatever polling place is nearby and give the pollworker my name and address. They access a database, and their computer prints up (or puts onscreen, if that system is certified) the same ballot that I'd get if I went to the elementary school around the corner from my house.
I understand that there would be problems of logistics and security that would need to be worked out, but doesn't it seem like that would be worth the effort? If it's constitutionally unviable, can you explain that? I may read a legal blog, but I'm no lawyer.
Umm... So what does eliminating the Electoral College have to do with "coddling" voters?
Of all the arguments I've heard for (and against) eliminating the Electoral College, I've never heard anyone claim that it inconveniences voters.
Nevermind the reality that passing a basic civics test should be required for voter registration. If you don't know how many branches of government there are, and there roles, should you really participate in the electoral process?
Perhaps I should be ashamed of myself, but I think I'd rather rent those movies.
Without a rational valuation of voting, then, the argument seems to reduce to "their values are different from mine, and therefore they shouldn't vote."
As an aside, regarding the issue of voting where you work rather than where you live, one of the Federalist papers dealt with this subject (Hamilton, as I recall), but I don't recall the number, and there doesn't seem to be a good synopses of the papers on the web that I could find. Does anyone know which it is?
Carl Keller
People who think that the voting process should be dumbed down to the lowest possible common denominator of laziness should ask themselves; would they want people as lazy as this making decisions for their families or their businesses? Should a democracy cater to the laziest simply to up another "feel good" statistic?
Tell America to show up at a given time, with registration and documentation of identity or forget it and they will come out in droves....as long as it appears they might be "deprived" in some way.
Absentee voting would be a pretty good cure-all except that absentee ballots are discarded by the thousands on various technicalities. Maybe if that system were improved, we'd be in business, but barring that if often remains a hit-or-miss process (especially in highly rural areas).
Democracy is rather inefficient as it is, if you must have it you might as well limit the voting to people who have some clue. Elitism is underrated. At the very least it would stop a lot of the mtv kids and their older equivalents from voting.
Voting is easy for those of us who work too - I leave for work at 6:00am every day, on on election days, I usually don't get home to the next day (I work for the media helping with the coverage) - Get up early and VOTE. I'm usually the 1st voter at my polling place - I'm there before the polls open at 6:00am. Too hard? Use an absentee ballot
I think you and Carl are missing my point. I wasn't looking for good advice as to how to find my way to the polls. I do vote, thank you -- as I explained in two posts.
All I'm saying is that it could be much, much more convenient. If I could choose the polling place closest to my office, or the daycare, or the dry cleaners, then it would be an awful lot easier to vote. Not just for me, but for everyone. And I think that would result in a significant increase in voter turnout. I'm not sure that increased voter turnout would make everyone in here happy, but it seems to be a goal that many embrace.
As far as being a democracy, we are not. We are a democratic federal republic (thank you John C. Calhoun for the description.) We have democratic institutions that allow us to choose our representatives. We are not, however, a democracy. It was never the intention for this nation to be a democracy. Democracies vote directly on all policy matters and vote directly on who occupies each public office (not merely senators, reps., and Pres.)
That follows, doesn't it?
Democracy (such as we have one; as Mr. Lekkas notes, the US is not "a democracy") may not be best served by making voting the easiest thing in the universe to do; this does not imply that arbitrary groups should be disenfranchised, and I find it difficult to believe you could honestly get any other message from what Mrs. (Ms.? Miss?) Seipp wrote.
Phil: While all votes "count" equally, why should it be that effort and expense should be expended to get people who do not care enough to vote to do so? Is there some magical principle I'm missing that makes their obviously otherwise worthless to them votes so important that they must be garnered? I've personally considered that the best thing one can do if one doesn't care about the outcome of a vote, or doesn't know which way to vote, is to not vote.
Random "because I can" voting might make someone feel good, but it's not very good at doing what voting is for, which is presenting a picture of the thoughtful desires and preferences of the electorate.
All the "easier" I think would be helpful would be vote-by-mail in every state - it works nicely enough here in Oregon. No need for another federal holiday. (A holiday? Nobody working? For something that takes 10-15 minutes in person or 5 by mail? That's a great idea.)
Here's a question for Cathy, though. Would the country be a better place if all the fools who believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction stayed home on Election Day out of shame of their ignorance? Should we discourage these dangerously gullible people from influencing society any more than they have to? And if this isn't a qualifying example of ignorance, could you please propose one that is?
Four points.
1 I kinda doubt that this is Cathy's most deeply-held political conviction.
2 The above supports the Rock The Vote argument, does it not? — i.e. : not voting per se is simply dumb.
2 Strictly speaking, isn't the above an example of petitio principi? Laziness and idiocy are not caused by non-voting. The latter is a symptom of the former.
4 This is my first visit to these pages (I'll be back). The bottom line is that the State shouldn't discriminate between the qualifications of its potential electors, and nor should it prefer the interests of those who turn out on polling day.