07
Oct 08Don’t vote, American idiot!
Will Wilkinson puts my “Idiots shouldn’t vote” stance much better than I did:
People should be public-spirited, and act with the common good in mind. When enough people vote badly–from ignorance or bias, for example–the result is often bad policy. The quality of policy matters to the public good. Higher-quality democratic decisions, and better policy, can be secured if bad voters choose to abstain. Because the personal cost of not voting badly is so low, a public-spirited person shouldn’t do it. And it seems that a lot of people are quite likely to vote badly. So there are many people who, if they care about the common good, ought to choose not to vote.
Obviously, we differ on what it means to “vote badly.” Wilkinson argues that the Democratic Party benefits disproportionately from ignorant or biased voters, and while it’s true that “poorer and younger voters” do swing Democratic, you’d be hard-pressed to convince me that the right doesn’t suffer from “ignorance or bias.” John McCain got a large bump (especially in volunteer turnout) after he chose the unqualified, defiantly ignorant Sarah Palin as his running mate.
Let’s review some of the unfounded or illegal (but fairly-common) positions supported by right-wingers:
- Young earth creationism / intelligent design
- Opposition to abortion, even in cases of rape or incest
- Disbelief in global warming
- Illegal extradition and torture
- Warrantless wiretapping
- God hates fags (dot com)
Obviously, such a drastic, elitist solution could never work. Reborn poll taxes, literacy tests and other Jim Crow laws wouldn’t fly (sfx: rimshot), and no one wants to believe their opinions shouldn’t count, even if it’s true (egregious examples: Palin, Sarah Louise Heath; Bush, George Walker; O’Reilly, William James). And of course, most people don’t care about the common good–politics has, is and always will be a huge prisoner’s dilemma.
And yeah, it’d kind of be an oligarchy, blah blah blah. But we can dream.