Voting

Should you vote? Should that guy across the street be allowed to vote? How about that hostess at Applebees who comes up and asks you how your doing when you've just put a piece of steak in your mouth (you know the one I mean)? Should all people you see be encouraged to vote?

Let's put it another way, taking the individual out of it, what is a proper societal goal? To have as many people voting as possible? Or to have only well informed people voting (while discouraging those who aren't generally well informed?

Tough question. The traditional Democratic answer is, "Hell yes, everybody should vote. We should all vote, that's why we are a democracy." The traditional Republican answer is "Well, I think we want an informed electorate and we also want to make it super tough for people to commit voter fraud, so, no, high voter turnout isn't really a motivating factor for us."

Here's an odd electoral fact; higher voter turnout tends to favor Democrats. Odd how that works out, isn't it?

Thomas Sowell takes on this subject today, and he makes some ok points but kind of blows it at the end.

. . . the emphasis on a duty to vote is a very misplaced emphasis. When the right choice is so critical, the emphasis needs to be on making an informed decision, not a knee-jerk response to images and talk.

A citizen who cannot be bothered to find out the facts about the issues, not just media spin or party propaganda, is doing a disservice to this country by voting -- especially when electing leaders making life-and-death decisions whose consequences will affect this generation and generations to come.

Those who vote on the basis of what the government can do for them are especially short-sighted during a war against worldwide terror networks. What good would it do to get free prescription drugs forever if your forever is likely to be cut short by more attacks like those on September 11, 2001?

In case you missed that, Sowell implies that an informed electorate would vote for President Bush. Uninformed people are the ones who are going to support Senator Kerry.

It's a classic myopia. I have looked at the issues, studied them thoroughly, and figured it out logically. So I must have the right answer. Any deviation from my support of John Kerry is doubtless due to you being ill-informed or having bad priorities or something. Because we all know it's pretty impossible for two conscientious, good-hearted, intelligent people to look at a situation, analyze it thoroughly, and come to a different answer.

Except that exactly that happens all the time. Which is why everybody gets the Vote. If there was one clear answer, there'd be no point to voting.

At any rate, I'm not sure that Thomas Sowell is suggesting we do anything to depress the vote. Nor is he proposing anything to encourage a more informed electorate. I suspect the main point of this article is to deflate a little the idea that we Democrats are the party that wants everybody to vote.