Those Stupid Voters!

Cal Thomas writes on the depressing state of the American Voter in his latest column. Apparently voters don't know enough on the essential issues of the day, according to a poll taken by the libertarian Cato institute, performed by a Mr. Ilya Somin.

You might be suspicious of what sort of information Mr. Thomas expects his readers to have (seeing as he is a very partisan writer in general). For example, he might expect his readers to "know" that Senator John Kerry shot a fleeing kid in Vietnam out of malice (according to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. For more info on the "truth" of this story, check out yesterdays Daily Howler). He does expect voters to know that the Bush Admininstration has certainly never ever tried to link September 11th and the invasion of Iraq.

Mr. Somin posits an interesting theory as to why people don't know more about the issues when they vote. Rather than ascribing laziness or stupidity to them, perhaps they are simply being rational.

. . . even a smart and hardworking person can rationally decide not to pay much attention to politics. No matter how well-informed a person is, his or her vote has only a tiny chance of affecting the outcome of an election. Since that vote is almost certain not to be decisive, even a citizen who cares greatly about the outcome has almost no incentive to acquire sufficient knowledge to make an informed choice.

Acquiring significant amounts of political knowledge to be a more informed voter is, in most situations, simply irrational. But the rational decisions of individuals create a dysfunctional collective outcome in which the majority of the electorate is dangerously ill-informed.

If political ignorance is rational, there are limits to our ability to reduce it by reforming the education system or by improving media coverage of politics.

Not the most upbeat analysis, admittedly.

The problem with talking about stupid voters is that the obvious assumption is that if people really knew their stuff politically, they would vote for the guy I'm going to vote for. It's hard to believe that someone would know the issues and know the facts and vote for that jerk, "candidate B." It's pretty clear that both Mr. Somin and Mr. Thomas believe that an informed electorate will favor their guy (President Bush), while my assumption is that an informed electorate would largely go for my guy (Senator Kerry). But of course one of us is probably wrong.

I'm guessing its Somin and Thomas. If you want to look at the text of Somin's report, you can get it here (it's a PDF).