Essay --

I am mad. Wait, mad might not be the correct word. Perhaps I should have said angry, but does that truly evoke the complete image of my present emotional state? I think not. Exasperated, agitated, and resentful come to mind, but again, individually, they all fall short of expressing the complex set of emotions experienced when I feel I have been cheated or stolen from. What makes this even more emotionally demoralizing is the fact that those responsible for doing the cheating and stealing do not even recognize that is what they are doing. So who am I referring to, how are they cheating, and what have they stolen? They are the uninformed voters and they are cheating the system by having the same amount of control in election outcome as those who have taken the time to become involved and knowledgeable about the issues. But what are they stealing? In short my vote. Simply put, due to lack of interest, understanding, and participation in the electoral process, uninformed voters wh o should be awarding their support from a foundation of insight, preparation and knowledge are instead casting votes even they do not agree with. Ok, so what if a few people get confused and make a wrong vote, just how bad can it be? ‟According to political scientists Richard Lau and David Redlawsk in their book How Voters Decide, the authors find that, in the best case scenario of a choice of two candidates, approximately 70 percent of voters choose correctly†(Belt 643). Now take a minute to really think about the implications of that statement. In a best case scenario, 30 percent of the voter’s choice was for someone or something he or she did not even agree with but was too uninformed to know it. One might ask how could there possibly be this d... ...that regardless of which side of an issue one may support, award that support from a foundation of insight, preparation and knowledge. Somin in his book Democracy and Political Ignorance, and Their Ignorance is willful! states, ‟few will take the time and effort to assimilate more than a small amount of political information.† For this reason he states elsewhere in his book, we should be grateful that voter turnout is as low as it is, because increased turnout is often likely to increase the electoral effects of political ignorance by encouraging the unmotivated to vote (More Media 1). Realizing that all the time and effort I spend to discern the issues and candidates’ positions can be made futile by one uninformed voter, maybe our best hope is, come Election Day, the uniformed voter is so uninformed they will not be able to find the polling location.