Voting

Voting is not a right, it is a privilege. The fact that women did not have the right to vote until 1920 is terrible, and many women to start did not exercise their right to vote because they did not care. The were not allowed to for so long, they did not see the significance of it. However, today, more women vote than men, men have taken suffrage as a right instead of a privilege. Voting is very important to our society, it allows all people who are not felons or over 18 to voice their opinions about how the government is working in their opinions. However voting has some downfalls that include voter turnout.

Voter turnout is the proportion of either eligible or all voting age Americans who actually vote in given elections. If people do not go out to vote, their opinions are not shared and they do not have a voice in the evolution of the government. The reasons why so many people choose not to vote is the idea that their vote does not make a difference, which as we have talked about in class, most of the time, your vote will not sway the decision. However, voting is a privilege and I believe that we should make sure to take advantage of the voting opportunities.

Although some people say, let those who do not want to vote, not vote. This is because many people who are voting are uneducated and know little about the issues at hand. They go off of what their family or friends believe and not what the actual candidates represent. This is a major issue when it comes to voting, the amount of uninformed people in society is scary, why should they be affecting what our country will look like if they are just haphazardly voting. In a Forbes article, Ilya Somin stated “Only about 34% of Americans can even name the three branches of the federal government: executive, legislative, and judicial. With some of the public not knowing simple things like this, is it not scary to think that they are affecting our government. And according to Jared Meyer, “one third of Americans think that foreign aid is the government’s largest expense, and nearly half of Americans think cap and trade has to do with healthcare or financial regulation instead of the environment.” The uneducated public is a problem, even if the lack of education is due to that economic differences in our society, we need a way in order to inform every American so we do not have people who know nothing determine our governmental changes and policies.

Even though voting is a privilege that every American should have the opportunity to act on, they also must hold up their end of the bargain and become educated in order to vote intelligently. This is the only way for our governmental policies to be truly based on what the informed public thinks is best, not what people who are uninformed randomly vote on.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaredmeyer/2016/06/27/american-voters-are-ignorant-but-not-stupid/#16787b007ff1

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/04/12/granderson.ignorant.vote/index.html

4 Responses to "Voting"

Matthew Lidz says:

November 1, 2017 at 8:46 pm

I do not think that voter ignorance is the only reason why many people do not exercise their right to vote. Rising cynicism and disgust with the political process as a whole is another reason for low participation rates. The constant partisan bickering and subsequent gridlock in Washington is an important reason for low participation rates as well. Doubt over the government’s ability to work together to solve big issues and concerns that Congress ignores the wishes of everyday Americans in favor of lobbyist favored measures will cause people to not vote. Why spend the time and energy to vote if past election have changed little? The ugliness of political rhetoric today is another reason for low voter participation rates. Elections today are not civil affairs between two parties who have fundamental agreements on key issues. Both parties in elections today cast themselves as the only thing between the dystopian future if the other party held control. Ignorance is a major cause of low voter participation rates, but the tone of civil discourse today is in my opinion a more important reason why.
Hannah Dunn says:

November 4, 2017 at 9:14 pm

While I do think a lack of sufficient information and discouragement are reasons why some choose not to vote, I think a larger factor is lack of connection with the candidate.

As we read in “Going Negative,” voters that fall in the middle of the political spectrum feel unheard and ignored as candidates’ rhetoric reaches further toward partisan poles. In the 2016 presidential election, the disdain for both major candidates was extreme. Many voters opted for the independent candidate, giving their vote to someone they knew would not win but represented their views more than Trump or Clinton. Many view this action as throwing a vote away and claim that voting differently could have changed the outcome of the election.

On the other hand, many Virginia democrats are concerned that Dr. Northam is not progressive enough to be the next governor, and therefore will not vote for him or any other candidate in Tuesday’s election.

The issue is not necessarily that people don’t know what they want, but that we have such diverse preferences that two, maybe three, candidates are not enough to represent all of those views. When the best representative isn’t in the running, many choose not to vote for someone with whom they do not agree.

https://ivn.us/2016/11/09/independent-voters-flipped-entire-presidential-election-trump/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/11/03/progressive-group-pulls-aid-virginias-democratic-candidate-governor-over-gutless-position/829401001/
Alyssa Holt says:

November 5, 2017 at 12:57 pm

I do agree that fostering a higher participation rate and making sure the public is informed about current political issues is very important; however, your statement about our duty to hold up our end of the bargain as citizens by making sure we are informed is not something I totally agree with. One of the conditions of popular sovereignty was making sure the public was educated, yet one of the problems our democracy has maintaining these conditions comes from our inability to provide good information to the entire country. While I do think you highlight the reasons having such an uniformed public is a problem, I struggle with your comment placing the blame for this lack of education on each individual rather than the structure of our country. I would argue that it is the media and government that are responsible for reaching each citizen that wants information and offering it to them in a clear and simple way. So while yes having an uneducated public is a problem I do not think it is solely the responsibility of each person to make themselves informed. There needs to be better and more equal distribution of this information.
Omar Ibrahim says:

November 5, 2017 at 9:27 pm

You bring up a lot of good points following your statement of how uneducated people are about government. For example, last Fall I was walking around a local city helping people register to vote for the presidential election. One of the people I approached, a middle aged man walking with his children, was very confused. He asked me who was running, and when I told him Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton he said, “I think I’ve seen him on a TV show” and “Wasn’t she married to a former president?” You could describe my reaction as shocked, at the very least. I went away from the situation wondering how many people are fully aware of the political atmosphere of the country. There have been countless things in class that we have discussed that can attribute to this. Is it the education system’s fault, because of the discrepancy of education level amongst voters ? Is it a lack of objective reporting from the media? Or does the blame fall back on the citizens? The founding fathers only wanted the educated political elite to vote. The argument can be made that this is still happening today, on a much lesser scale of course, and maybe the government wants it that way.

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