The American Voter
If you aren't already sufficiently convinced that over 80% of the American populace should never vote, read this. (Don't let the amateur formatting fool you into thinking Converse was a crank). The conclusion: as a normative matter, the American voter either a) doesn't know what he's voting for or against or b) knows the bases of the parties' disagreements, but only in a narrowly partisan way, i.e., b/c he only processes new information in ways that will conform to and confirm his established ideological convictions, he doesn't approach the chimeric ideal of the "informed voter" any more closely than does his most uninterested & illiterate fellow citizen.
Further conclusions:
1. The swing vote - those people who make the decision in most years as to who'll be our congressmen, president, etc. - are in fact least qualified to decide.
2. Independent voters are more likely than partisan voters to vote out of a (sentimental) sense of moral obligation to exercise their constitutional right, as they've no other reason to go to the polls. Schools should emphasize to elementary students that the initial conception and practice of the American polity did not include or contemplate universal suffrage.
3. It cannot be emphasized enough how radically different the decision environment of the genuinely educated/intelligent etc. - in this context, those who closely follow and are concerned for policy reasons about election outcomes - is from that of the average voter. The reality is that most voters don't understand their own interests in any but the most rudimentary way; they don't think about the relation between those interests and X policy; and, perhaps most importantly, they'll only hear about X speech/gaffe/policy proposal indirectly and often in a distorted fashion.
And then they'll vote on instinct. 'Cause Ron Littlefield is "good people".
Chattanooga Politics | By Josiah Roe | 8:57 PM
