Deming: Many Voters Lack Knowledge To Make Right Choice

By Luke Deming

Nearly 137 million Americans went to the polls last Tuesday, and many of them were young adults. The young adult vote increased this year with groups like Rock the Vote encouraging people to express their voice. These groups empowered young adult voters to believe they deserved to be heard. But did they deserve to be heard? Even more, were they even qualified to vote?

It’s not that the 137 million people weren’t qualified by America’s standards. The 137 million were citizens, at least 18 years of age, registered to vote, and not felons. But do these weak standards mean they are qualified to vote?  

To be accepted into a college, most students have to achieve a high enough ACT score. Most jobs require interviews to make sure prospective employees qualify for the position. So why don’t Americans have to take tests to prove they know enough about the issues and candidates to qualify for the right to vote? If these tests were set up a disturbing truth might turn up, most Americans wouldn’t be qualified.

Proposal 2 was a popular topic, but before we hit the polls did we know Proposal 1 involved the issue of medical marijuana? Did we take the time to do any research on the proposals or did we let the political signs help us make our decisions? Did we vote for candidates by their party because we didn’t know anything about them?   

While most of us know about Barack Obama and John McCain, were we surprised to find there were four other presidential candidates on our ballot? These candidates include Chuck Baldwin of the U.S. Taxpayers Party, Robert Barr of the Libertarian Party, Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party, and Ralph Nader of the Natural Law Party. Do we know where McKinney stands on The Iraq War or do we know what Baldwin thinks about the Second Amendment?   

The argument “they don’t have a chance to win” is a poor excuse. We vote for candidates because they represent what we want America to be, and a third party candidate might just be the right candidate. Too bad we didn’t give them a chance. In fact, too bad we didn’t even know they existed until we saw them on the ballot.

There is an expression that “we are electing idiots into office.” But that’s our fault, we voted for them. Maybe if we did some research we would stop electing idiots. We have the right to vote, but we also have the responsibility to not vote if we don’t know what we are voting for.