Insert Voting Slogan Here

Should we really encourage people to vote?

This past week I received an e-mail from a former student of mine asking for some sources that argue why we should vote. After searching around both among my texts and online, I was able to find very little. There were plenty of pithy slogans about voting (Thanks MTV), and there were plenty of sites pushing partisan fear-mongering (come out and vote for us or the world ends!). What there was not much of was intelligent talk as to why people should vote."Rock the Vote". "Choose or Lose". "Vote or Die". Radio and TV anchors tell us to vote, no matter who for. "Non-partisan" (yeah right) groups spend hundreds of man-hours registering people to vote. Teachers and professors decry our country's low voter turnout rates.

Around 60% of Americans who are eligible to vote do not. There is an overwhelming sentiment in the American media and in educated circles that this is a travesty that must be corrected. Voting is a right--a right for which, sadly, many Americans had to fight--and is something I, and likely you if you are reading this, value. But is it something that we should really work to compel most Americans to do?

No, it's not.

Two years ago, right before the 2004 presidential election, a Newsweek editorial by Leftist Anna Quindlen argued that America should follow the lead of Austrailia and other countries in forcing their citizens to vote or face a fine. The idea is called compulsory voting, and it's a horrible idea.

Here's what Quindlen wrote in her Oct. 18^th, 2004 editorial:

Low voter turnouts hurt everyone because they erode the notion of government by the people and for the people....In fact it's astonishing that we've blithely allowed Americans to drop out of the electoral process for so long. There's no argument about this: when we make an act optional, we inevitably suggest that it's not that important.

Quindlen is dead wrong. Wrong as wrong gets. There are an infinite amount of things Americans deem important, but are in every way optional, as they should be. Were it the government's job to mandate and require us to do everything they deem "good"...well, if I continue down that line of thought I will end up name-calling. Point is this: we are a free country. Each of us gets to decide what is good and bad, worth doing and not worth doing, worth voting for or against, and, yes, whether we should vote at all. Every bit of my daily life revolves around free choices I make. Does that mean those choices are not important? They are. Often they are life-changing. In fact, the sum of them is my life. The government has no business making any of these choices, or even making me choose in any of these situations, compulsory. That brings me to my real point: I wish more people would be informed about politics, and would therefore vote.

However, people should not vote simply because the act of voting is good.

If we truly value voting, we must focus on why voting is important and emphasize those things. Voting is a means to an end, not an end in itself. For what end do we want people to vote? The issues for which, and the people for whom, we vote will determine the direction of the country. Unfortunately, we live in a Freak Show age, where being as extreme, superficial, and confrontational as possible will get you noticed by the most people, and can win you the most votes. By contrast, being brilliant, creative, moderate, problem-solving, and policy-minded will get you appointed to be the ambassador to Greece.

I'm dancing around my point, so let me just get to it: our political culture is stupid. Check out this chart about why people didn't vote, courtesy of The Onion:Obviously ridiculous, but it's getting at the point: the people who don't vote don't care. Why should we encourage someone who doesn't care to vote? Voting is not inherently better than not voting. The ideas and issues are much too important to have people who are uninterested or uninformed, or genuinely uncaring to have a say in matters as important as these.

I do not want the people most influenced by the Freak Show to vote. I don't want to encourage the person swayed by every mud-slinging ad to vote. I don't want uninformed, unintelligent, uninterested people to vote. I do want more people to vote, but I want them to vote because the issues and people we choose are important. I want them to know the issues. I want them to think logically through complex problems. I want emotionalism to end. I want a smarter America. I don't want people to vote because P-Diddy said "Vote or Die" or because Claire McCaskill implied Jim Talent wants to kill people who have a disease. Those people are stupid and should not vote. Stay home.

It will make me sad if our Voter Turnout stays low or goes lower. It will make me more sad if more people vote because of pithy slogans about voting. It will make me sadder still if people vote because the Freak Show convinced them to vote for the worse of two options.