It’s a bad sign for the United States that so few citizens vote. Less than half of registered voters 18-29 voted in the last midterm election.
The bleak reality of American voting habits, however, doesn’t justify a “get out the vote” campaign. Uninformed votes are worse than no votes. So, instead of directly trying to influence people to vote, the “get out the vote” campaigners should try to influence people to get informed. Higher voter turnout will come as a result.
Suppose – as is likely the case – that the “get out the vote” campaigns actually do motivate more people to vote. Who is it that these campaigns motivate? They don’t get informed voters to vote. The people who know what’s at stake in the election are already going to vote regardless of whether some billboard on the highway tells them to.
Now, if “get out the vote” campaigns don’t influence informed citizens, then it’s clear that the citizens these campaigns do influence are the uninformed voters.
Do we want to increase the percentage of voters who are uninformed? I don’t think so.
Every additional vote decreases the value of all the other votes. To use a physical metaphor, votes dilute each other’s value. To have a bunch of informed votes dilute each other’s value is perfectly acceptable – even good; that’s how democracy works. The impact of each person’s opinion is counterbalanced by the number of opposing opinions out there.
But having a campaign that implicitly targets uninformed voters makes no sense. Such a campaign unintentionally dilutes the value of informed votes with uninformed votes. Why would you want to increase the number of citizens voting at the cost of making the few informed votes weaker?
An objection to this argument could be that “get out the vote” campaigns encourage uninformed citizens to care about politics and become informed. I grant that these campaigns likely result in a lot of people starting to investigate the goings-on of politics.
However, this is a purely accidental result. As stated, the campaigns merely intend to increase the number of votes, not to motivate informed voters. So, if our goal is to make more informed citizens, we should have an “understand your government” campaign instead of a “get out the vote” campaign.
Elliot Polsky can be reached at pols4319@stthomas.edu.
The founding fathers would be very proud of you for writing this.
On a separate note, I appreciate that you offered a constructive alternative to the sentiment you’re critiquing. Your solution doesn’t just treat uninformed voters as being too stupid to vote, but you instead encourage them to become informed voters.
Friendly reminder that the founding fathers only wanted white male property owners to vote.
The system operates on manipulation. Why pick on just this one form of manipulation? Doe the uninformed voter have the same right and freedom to vote as the misinformed voter? Are there really very many totally uninformed voters (making completely random choices) or just a lot of low information voters? (e.g. will vote the party line if it is listed on the ballot or will vote the way a trusted other person recommends, etc.)
The notion of an “informed” voter is so incredibly subjective. No one should discourage someone from voting based on their own personal belief of what being “informed” looks like. I believe that if someone has the privilege of having access to comprehensive information on political candidates, they should definitely use those resources, however, if they don’t, I still think their vote is important because it’s a product of their thoughts and experiences (even if those things are heavily manipulated by political ads, the ideology of parents, etc.).
This idea of only seeing the value in “informed” votes seems very reminiscent of our nation’s unfortunate history of using racist literacy tests to determine who could and could not vote. It all goes back to the incredible subjectivity of viewing another as “informed.” For example, I think if you’re anything but a rich white man, I don’t think it’s a very informed decision to vote for almost any Republican candidate (probably not a lot of Democratic candidates either really), but that’s my personal view of what being “informed” looks like, and I wouldn’t want that view to discredit the value of a voice that opposes that.
I’m not saying that that is your goal here, but I feel as though your opinion relies on there being an objective notion of being “informed,” and when it comes to politics, I just don’t see that ever existing.
While I appreciate Elliot Polsky’s interest in campaign tactics and voting behavior, the argument is based on a slew of false premises and subsequently comes with problematic implications:
First, we must question what it means to be “informed.” If we mean rote political knowledge, this definition of an informed voter favors those with ability, motivation, and opportunity. Studies within the discipline of political science have identified the following demographics as favored by this definition: men, whites, higher-income, and older people. You see, it’s a luxury to have time to research votes in-depth, and this is an indicator of privilege. If Polsky’s argument is centered on this definition of “informed,” it then takes on very problematic racist, sexist, classist, ableist, and ageist undertones.
But if by “informed” we mean an organized thought process behind political attitudes and behavior, then Polsky’s argument is just plain wrong. We know that most folks do in fact organize their political attitudes, but they tend to do so through heuristics (shortcuts), like ideology, values, group identity, self-interest, etc. Such heuristics make “informed” attitudes and behavior accessible and, I argue, more realistic.
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Second, the argument falsely presumes how GOTV efforts work. Polsky states, “the campaigns merely intend to increase the number of votes, not to motivate informed voters.” (LOL, no.) GOTV work, especially late in the cycle is geared more toward motivating party bases, not only what campaign professionals call the “persuasion universe,” or those whom tend not to vote consistently. This is especially true in mid-term elections, in which turnout tends to be lower.
Party ID is, again, a heuristic for political attitudes and corresponding behavior. Partisans who are motivated by GOTV efforts are informed in that they know the party platform or have organized their political thinking in some way and vote accordingly (when they’re motivated to do so).
Moreover, GOTV efforts greatly consist of direct voter contact (e.g. door knocking and phone banking). These modes of contact mostly consist of political discussions on issues and candidates–what is indeed “at stake in the election.” Field organizers and volunteers don’t simply say “vote for my person” and walk away.
To be sure, I’m all for civic education. But before we jump on the train of devaluing votes and campaign efforts, we must question our assumptions of what it means to be “informed” as well as the implications of our answer.
(Note: References to cited research available per direct contact.)
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For some reason, the mantra that “everyone should vote” goes mostly unchallenged. Uninformed voters should not be encouraged to vote. Here’s an article dedicated to this point:
http://thelibertychronicle.com/the-uninformed-should-not-vote/
A couple of things to think about regarding the “informed” question. If you were a voting stockholder in a company and two people were up for election to be president of the company, one with a strong business education and the other with no business education, which would you vote for? You would be expected to be informed regarding each candidate in order to provide the best for your investment in the company. Everyone has an investment in this country. If it prospers, everyone benefits. Therefore every one who votes is responsible to his neighbor for the success or failure of the country. We see this in the last election. A majority voted for an inexperienced person to run the country and the results of that “uninformed” vote has produced an economy that has languished, and many who did not vote for, or who did not vote at all, suffered the results. So “informed” means that we all have the responsibility to our fellow countrymen to find out who the best candidate is that can intelligently do the job that needs to be done for the country, state, county and/or city. Voting has many responsibilities other than just showing up and pulling the lever for someone.