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Ignorant Voters

Krissy Clark  OCTOBER 18, 2008  for American Public Media – Radio Program

You might be busy this weekend getting ready for election day. Pouring over voter guides, fact-checking candidate claims, reading op-eds for a variety of view points, getting informed. If you're doing any of those things, however, you are different than most Americans. Here are some scary statistics: Only two out of five Americans can name the three branches of the federal government. Only one in seven can find Iraq on a map. A majority don't know the name of their Congressional representative. Weekend America's Krissy Clark is a big fan of democracy, but after hearing facts like these, she started to get nervous about election day.

The conventional wisdom is that our democracy can handle all the ignorance.  Their votes are random, but evenly divided. Which means they cancel each other out.  So even if 90 percent of voters have no idea what they're talking about, it doesn't matter. The 10 percent who are thoughtful, reasonable and informed, will cast the votes that count. Candidates can focus on them, and democracy is in good hands.

Shenkman, who is the author of the book "Just How Stupid Are We?," argues that uninformed voters are not divided 50-50 on one side or the other. They're up for grabs, practically begging to be taken advantage of.

"In the absence of facts, myths end up driving our politics," he says. "I have yet to meet a politician who, when tempted, won't wind up using some myth to try to provoke a response from the audience."

Economist Bryan Caplan has a slightly more extreme strategy when it comes to the question of voter ignorance. "A much better ethos," he says, "would be to stop encouraging people to vote if they don't know what's going on." Caplan is the author of the book "The Myth of the Rational Voter." "Right now if you want to become a U.S. citizen and vote, you have to pass a test of civic knowledge," he says. "I don't see why Americans shouldn't have to pass the same test that they give to naturalized citizens."

Caplan is quick to point out he would not want voting rights to hinge on race or gender or income. Just being well-informed. "And of course if you take a look at the test," Caplan adds, "you realize probably most Americans could not pass it."

I head to the corner of 16th and Potrero in San Francisco, to a bus stop, where I ask people how much they know about the basics of the U.S. government. Almost everyone I talk to here says they're planning to vote in this election. I start the questions. First, what's the main philosophical difference between the Republican and Democratic parties? I'm met with a lot of awkward silences, a few guesses, and only one person who gets close.

I move on to geography. One guy can show me where Iraq is on the blank world map I pull out. Most can't find the U.S.A. They keep pointing to Africa, or Greenland.

At this point, I think to myself, a voting test doesn't sound like such a bad idea. And then something interesting happens. I break down and tell the man on the bike what Roe versus Wade is. And as soon as I do, people at the bus stop who'd been wary of me, bored with my questions, snap to attention.

"Well, if you asked me about legalizing abortion, I don't think it would be a good deal," says the bike man. A man leaning on the bus shelter, nibbling on some chicken McNuggets, overhears. "But what about an eight-year-old-- raped--and she gets pregnant from someone. She didn't have a choice, but she has to carry a child when she is a child herself and she's had her childhood taken from her."

"She still has no right to take that child's life," says another man, a retired carpenter. A polite but passionate debate erupts at the bus stop. For the most part, the people involved scored low on my civic knowledge test. But they definitely have opinions. Who knows if they're based on facts, or myths?

And that's the tricky question. How do you gauge someone's political I.Q.? Rick Shenkman, the historian who calls ignorant voters sitting ducks, says it would be impossible. "It would be too divisive to have a civic literacy test. I don't want to exclude people, or shrink democracy," especially given the bloody fights many Americans have had to wage over the years to get the right to vote.

But Shenkman says people should know enough about history and civics "so that we can at least have a conversation. And that's what democracy is all about, is having a conversation." It can make waiting for your bus a lot more interesting. And it's not so bad for the future of the country, either.

The Olympian Newspaper

Letter 1 Uneducated voters are a threat to democracy

ANTONIO SOLA | Yelm • Published July 16, 2012

Our democracy is threatened not by budget deficits or the dirty money in our electoral system, but by the ignorance and apathy of our citizens. Days after one of the most important Supreme Court decisions in our time, a poll conducted by the Pew Research showed 41 percent of the people polled were not aware that the Supreme Court had ruled on the case. In a recent canvassing event many were not aware who Jay Inslee was or that he was running for governor.  People claim they are too busy with their lives, but ask them who was the last guy leaving the “Bachelorette” and they know.

In this election millions will vote against their own interest, without knowledge of the radical proposals on the Paul Ryan budget or promises made to the billionaires supporting the Republican Party. They count on that. Why else would states like Mississippi and Alabama, the poorest and the least educated in the U.S., vote Republican?

The commercials distorting President Barack Obama’s record and Jay Inslee’s character bought with money from the Koch brothers will be ugly, unfair and vicious, but people will believe them because they simply won’t know and they won’t care to find out the truth.

Letter 2  The real uneducated cast votes for Obama

DAVID PULASKI | Olympia • Published August 04, 2012

In a recent letter, it’s amazing that the only “uneducated voters that are a threat to democracy” appear to be Republicans, because they don’t support Democrat policies or candidates.  The “ignorance and apathy” mentioned were definitely on display in 2008 when so many bought into Barack Obama’s phoney “hope and change.” Had they and the media properly vetted him, they would have realized he really had no vision for this country, other than promoting his Marxist socialist policies, which have made his presidency a disaster for all of us.  No, unfortunately, the real ignorant people are the ones who, lacking the knowledge, voted for Obama, simply because they didn’t do their homework on him, and hopefully they won’t make the same mistake again.

Inequality Undermines Democracy

By EDUARDO PORTER

Published: March 20, 2012 NY Times

Americans have never been too worried about the income gap. The gap between the rich and the rest has been much wider in the United States than in other developed nations for decades. Still, polls show we are much less concerned about it than people in those other nations are.  Policy makers haven’t cared much either. The United States does less than other rich countries to transfer income from the affluent to the less fortunate. Even as the income gap has grown enormously over the last 30 years, government has done little to curb the trend.

Our tolerance for a widening income gap may be ebbing, however. Since Occupy Wall Street and kindred movements highlighted the issue, the chasm between the rich and ordinary workers has become a crucial talking point in the Democratic Party’s arsenal. In a speech in Osawatomie, Kan., last December, President Obama underscored how “the rungs of the ladder of opportunity had grown farther and farther apart, and the middle class has shrunk.”

Inequality isn’t quite the top priority of voters: only 17 percent of Americans think it is extremely important for the government to try to reduce income and wealth inequality, according to a Gallup survey last November.  But a slightly different question indicates views have changed: 29 percent said it was extremely important for the government to increase equality of opportunity. More significant, 41 percent said that there was not much opportunity in America, up from 17 percent in 1998.

Americans have been less willing to take from the rich and give to the poor in part because of a belief that each of us has a decent shot at prosperity. In 1952, 87 percent of Americans thought there was plenty of opportunity for progress; only 8 percent disagreed. As income inequality has grown, though, many have changed their minds.

From 1993 to 2010, the incomes of the richest 1 percent of Americans grew 58 percent while the rest had a 6.4 percent bump. Under these conditions, perhaps it is unsurprising that a growing share of Americans have lost faith in their ability to get ahead.

We have accepted income inequality in the past partly because of the belief that capitalism can’t work without it. If entrepreneurs invest and workers improve their skills to improve their lot in life, a government that heavily taxed the rich to give to the poor could destroy that incentive and stymie economic growth that benefits everybody.

The nation’s relatively fast growth over the last three decades appeared to support this view. The United States grew faster than advanced economies with a more egalitarian distribution of income, like the European Union and Japan, so keeping redistribution to a minimum while allowing markets to function unimpeded was considered the best fuel.

“What matters is how the poor and middle class are doing and how much opportunity they have,” said Scott Winship, an economist at the Brookings Institution. “Until there is stronger evidence that inequality has a negative effect on the life of the average person, I’m inclined to accept it.”

Evidence is mounting, however, that inequality itself is obstructing Americans’ shot at a better life.

Progress still happens, but there is less of it. Two-thirds of American families — including four of five in the poorest fifth of the population — earn more than their parents did 30 years earlier. But they don’t advance much. Four out of 10 children whose family is in the bottom fifth will end up there as adults. Only 6 percent of them will rise to the top fifth.

The sharp rise in the cost of college is making it harder for lower-income and middle-class families to progress, feeding education inequality.

Inequality is also fueling geographical segregation — pushing the homes of the rich and poor further apart. Brides and grooms increasingly seek out mates with similar levels of income and education. Marriages among less-educated people have become much more likely to fail.

If the very rich can use the political system to slow or stop the ascent of the rest, the United States could become a hereditary plutocracy under the trappings of liberal democracy.

One doesn’t have to believe in equality to be concerned about these trends. Once inequality becomes very acute, it breeds resentment and political instability, eroding the legitimacy of democratic institutions. It can produce political polarization and gridlock, splitting the political system between haves and have-nots, making it more difficult for governments to address imbalances and respond to brewing crises. That too can undermine economic growth, let alone democracy.

National Review  June 2, 2011  by Clifford May

The founding of the United States ushered in the modern democratic experiment, along with new concepts of freedom and human rights. In the 20th century, the Greatest Generation fought for the survival of that experiment against its totalitarian enemies, Nazi, Fascist, and Communist alike. Today, the challenges posed by Islamic totalitarianism test a new generation.

America has been a uniquely productive nation: a font of invention, creativity, and economic dynamism. In America, tens of millions of people have risen from poverty. The United States has been a singularly generous, if not always effective, provider of assistance to other countries, including those where Americans are not popular.

But, most of all, exceptionalism implies that the responsibility for global leadership rests on America’s shoulders, not because Americans hunger for power but because there is no good alternative.  If that torch has now become too heavy for Americans, or if it is seen as unfair for America to continue to lead, who is prepared to take America’s place? Those who rule Iran, China, and Russia are no doubt eager.  In other words: At present, there is no substitute for American leadership. America is the indispensable nation. That is what makes it exceptional.

Americans value freedom not least because we don’t think anyone has a monopoly on truth or the private e-mail address of the Almighty.  Americans will never perfect themselves or “form a more perfect union” by letting transnational bureaucrats, politicians, and professors run our lives.

Exceptionalists do not deny that America has many faults and that Americans have made many mistakes in the past and are likely to do so in the future. But that doesn’t make the United States the equivalent of Norway, Uruguay, Burkina Faso, or New Guinea. That doesn’t lead us to the Lake Wobegon all-children-are-above-average view of the world expressed by President Obama two years ago in Europe: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

We exceptionalists look instead to President Reagan, for whom exceptionalism meant that America remained “the last best hope for a mankind plagued by tyranny and deprivation.”