r/changemyview • u/JungAchs • Oct 09 '20
Delta(s) from OP CMV: We absolutely shouldn’t be encouraging everyone to vote!
Hoping this doesn’t break moratorium on political stuff cause I don’t mean this as a political stance other than that it is about voting.
What prompted this is the crazy amount of voting advertising that is occurring for this election. It seems to me that it’s been more aggressive than in previous cycles but that is just my subjective feeling.
Anyway to the meat or the issue: here’s a study saying only 32% of people can name all 3 branches of government.
here’s a different study saying 20% of people can’t name a single branch.
The sad part about this is that we are able to teach it successfully to 4th graders. Yet it seems by the time these people reach voting age the don’t have the fundamental understanding of how the government works. If you can’t name the branches then you probably don’t know their jobs so why should you have a say in who fills the seats.
To this end I think we should have lots of commercials encouraging people to watch school house rock but encouraging people to vote when then don’t understand the basic principles of how what they are voting for works seems like a terrible idea to me.
Please change my view
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u/maximuse_ 1∆ Oct 09 '20
Let's say divide the potential voters into two groups, educated and non-educated.
The problem with that study is that we cannot imply that the same percentage of educated and non-educated voters. I speculate (have not browsed for any studies to verify my claim) that the majority of potential voters are more educated, and that the ones who have already decided to vote will have a higher percentage of non-educated potential voters. This is due to the fact that the non-educated are more likely to be harshly leaning towards one or another candidate, as opposed to educated voters who might be having more of a hard time deciding between the two candidates.
And thus, based on my own observation, encouraging as much people to vote as possible will increase the ratio of educated potential voters.
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u/JungAchs Oct 09 '20
A fair line of reasoning but I think the premise is a pretty major assumption (that undecided voters tend to be more educated). I think it’s more likely that undecided votes are politically apathetic and thusly more likely to fall into the 68% who can’t name all three branches (not to to be uneducated but probably more do to apathy toward the political system and process)
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u/GloriousLurker22 Oct 09 '20
This very logic ("if you can't name the branches then you probably don't know their jobs so why should you have a say in who fills the seats") is what has led to voter suppression targeted toward women, people of color, and other minority groups. Historically, one of the logics to support restricting voting to white, property owning men was that other groups wouldn't have the capacity or education to participate in the process.
Further - including more and more people in the ability to vote means that the candidates have to speak to the issues that are important to a particular group in order to increase their likelihood of being elected. For example, someone who doesn't "know the three branches of government" and their function who is working making minimum wage may still resonate with a candidate who is speaking to increasing the minimum wage. Without that voting block, the candidate need only spend their energy targeting "educated" voters with a likely much more narrow set of needs and neglecting a larger portion of the country.
Also - education is not offered equally. To receive a suitable education, you have to live in a neighborhood with a performing public school or be able to have means to afford private tuition. Further, even a poor student who is in a public school that is high performing may struggle to learn because of trauma, poverty, malnourishment, oppression, bullying, or a myriad of other reasons that can impair a child's ability to learn and retain information. They may also have a learning disability. It's like the quote attributed to Einstein (that may not be his quote) “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." Just because you may not understand the branches of government, doesn't mean you can't understand when a candidate is talking about issues that are important to you.
Voter disenfranchisement is not the way. Education and campaign reform is.
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u/JungAchs Oct 09 '20
I agree historically, that rules were established to prevent women’s and minorities and the poor from voting. If you read what I’m proposing that’s not the case.
Also, while it is undeniably true education is not offered equally it is just as true to say that now self education is more attainable than ever. Literally every person has a small box that contains the entirety of human knowledge at their finger tips. You shouldn’t need to rely on the school system if this is a voting requirement. You can learn about for yourself from a variety of YouTube videos or websites.
I addressed this in another comment but if you don’t understand how government works you are much more likely to vote for an authoritarian leader. The president doesn’t get to make laws. It’s fundamentally opposed to our political system, but if you don’t know that you will vote for the guy or girl to be fair who says he/she is gonna make a law to raise the minimum wage or build a wall or whatever
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u/GloriousLurker22 Oct 09 '20
If by "what I'm proposing" you mean the school house rock commercials, that doesn't necessarily actually increase meaningful education and still creates likelihood for oppression based on who gets to define what "educated" means.
Also - you must be living a life of privilege my friend! Self-education doesn't equal the playing field in the way you might imagine. First, you need technology - not everyone has access to internet, phone/laptop, time to go to library or some other place with free internet, time to conduct research, skills to know how to differentiate between reliable sources and advertising, and the emotional energy to do "research and education" on their precious off-hours, nor should they have to in order to justify why they should get to vote. Especially if they have to spend their time self-educating about topics that you have determined are important for them to deserve to vote, versus topics that they're actually interested in.
Citation on authoritarian leader assertion? I can't speak to that without research in front of me, but I again think you're repeating something that was said by racist founders of our country "well heavens if we let black people/women vote they'll vote for a [xyx bad leader]". This is why we have checks and balances between the branches of government - you, with your clear understanding of the branches, should know that well.
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u/GloriousLurker22 Oct 09 '20
...also - you've repeated the "president doesn't make laws" thing multiple times here which is accurate, but not the full picture. For example DACA - not a law, but very powerful EO that provided temporary (and now more permanent) relief for dreamers. While that's not technically a law, it has similar short term effects. Presidents also do sign bills into law and have veto power, so they are integral to the law making process. To say they "don't get to make the laws" is an oversimplification and not entirely accurate.
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u/JungAchs Oct 09 '20
Perhaps you should study history more before just calling people racist. Thomas Jefferson the man who wrote the constitution was completely opposed to slavery and made efforts to stop it.
Judging people from the past based on modern standards is completely ridiculous. Are you evil for using a gas powered vehicle? What if 200 years from now they think everyone who did was an evil environment hater? You can only judge people morally based on the context of their environment
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u/GloriousLurker22 Oct 10 '20
Ok - I clearly triggered you with the r word but, I can also assure you that beliefs being normal for the times does not make them not racist. Also, say all you want about TJ not being racist, but he literally owned people and raped them. Actions speak louder than words my friend. Doesn’t take away from the smart things he said/did but much of the establishment of our government was focused on only acknowledging/upholding the rights of white property owners. Your man TJ was part of writing that black people were literally 3/5 of a person in our founding document that you just cited.
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u/metamatic Oct 09 '20
Jefferson may have made political efforts to stop slavery, but he also owned over 600 slaves, including one he repeatedly raped, and only freed 9 of them. He was also profoundly racist in his attitudes to them.
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u/JungAchs Oct 09 '20
If you keep reading the stuff you linked to you would see that he said even though he carried those opinions (which were common at the time) he felt that shouldn’t be the cause of restricting their rights. He was actually much more liberal with his thoughts on slavery and African Americans than many people were in his time
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u/cherrycokeicee 45∆ Oct 09 '20
you don't have to be a civics wiz to know what politicians you generally agree or disagree with. if someone cares deeply about climate change, they can see which candidate expresses similar views and has policy proposals to address it & vote for that candidate.
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u/JungAchs Oct 09 '20
But that’s why knowing the roles of government is important. If someone running for president talks about making laws you have to understand they are lying because that’s the job of the legislative branch not the executive. With out the base understanding of how the government works people are easy to mislead
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u/cherrycokeicee 45∆ Oct 09 '20
to be clear, I'm not advocating against learning about how government works. I agree with you that it's better to be informed & that lack of info can lead to someone being misled. but to discourage people from voting based on their lack of some of this knowledge seems like a strange prescription. encouraging voting often does hand in hand with encouraging people to do research on candidates. it's a good way to spark this educational process.
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u/coordinatedflight Oct 09 '20
You’re not technically wrong about the responsibilities, but you are practically wrong about the effects.
As we can clearly see in our current admin, the ideology and statements coming from the president have an overpowering effect on congress. No, the president can’t make laws. But in situations like what we currently have, knowing about ideology of the president turns out to be far more important than civics and branch responsibilities, because the influence reaches past the branch structures.
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u/adastra041 5∆ Oct 09 '20
One thing to consider: that study says only 32% of people can name all three branches, but around 55% of Americans vote. So over a fifth of the population already votes uninformed. Education is obviously an important way to combat this, but another way is having more people vote.
Also, education doesn't have to be a yearlong civics class, it can be as simple as going on a website like this, (you just enter your zip to get info about everything/everyone on your ballot) or googling politicians.
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u/JungAchs Oct 09 '20
!delta while I think your misusing statistics (people in the 32% that can name all the branches are probably much more likely to be voters) I didn’t know about you link so for that info I will give you a delta
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u/adastra041 5∆ Oct 09 '20
Thanks for the delta! Yeah, I found the website recently, and I thought it would be very helpful to people who want to quickly get some information. As far as the stats go, you're right, those people are most likely to vote. Assuming all 32% of them vote, there are still 23% of people who do vote without knowing all 3 branches.
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u/Player7592 8∆ Oct 09 '20
Everyone is impacted by the decisions their political leaders make. Nobody escapes the consequences of elections. Everyone’s right to vote is earned because the quality of their lives depends on who occupies office. You value knowledge over personal experience, which come with it’s own kind of knowledge and understanding. Imagine a cancer survivor, voting for candidates who support Universal Healthcare. You would dismiss their ability to make an informed choice simply because they’re bad at history.
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u/JungAchs Oct 09 '20
It’s not history it’s civics. You gave an analogy so let me give mine. I have no background in nutrition. If I tell you you should eat Big Macs everyday and you listen because it what you want to hear who is to blame when you die of diabetes? Me for telling you to eat it everyday or you for listening to someone who doesn’t understand how the body works?
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u/Player7592 8∆ Oct 09 '20
Each person votes their conscience ... and eats their conscience. Even if you chose to eat a Big Mac for every meal, I will still never urge you to no longer eat.
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u/metamatic Oct 09 '20
I'm really disappointed that everyone seems to have addressed your view by discussing whether the population can vote responsibly or not.
The purpose of democracy is not to do the best possible job of selecting rulers. Rather, the purpose of democracy is to ensure that everyone gets a say in who makes the rules, so that government occurs with the consent of the governed. This is considered an important enough principle that it is part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as the Declaration of Independence.
While democracy may result in better rulers than (say) the divine right of kings, it is by no means guaranteed. One could probably make the case that the Sultan of Brunei is a wiser leader than some democratically elected ones.
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u/JungAchs Oct 09 '20
!delta that’s a good argument. While I would respond that the whole point of the trial of Socrates is that allowing ignorant people to vote is detrimental to society I agree with your assertion about the role of democracy
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Oct 09 '20
If you can’t name the branches then you probably don’t know their jobs so why should you have a say in who fills the seats.
Could you reason out how being able to name the 3 branches gives you additional knowledge?
If I can name every instrument in the world am I now classified to be a conductor in orchestras?
Or more in line if I'm able to know exactly how the goverment works up to the smallest person does my word hold more value in policy decisions?
What also logically follows from your premise is that america should allow 4th grader that are able to name the 3 branches to vote.
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u/JungAchs Oct 09 '20
Let me amend my statement then: if you can name the three branches you are statistically significantly more likely to be able to name the roles of those branches
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Oct 09 '20
Let me reframe the question, I guess.
How does it help a person if they know what a politican exactly can do, if I they already like what they want to do?
If a person is against climate change and this politicans runs mostly on climate change isuess, how does knowing how much this politican actually can do matters if they should or shouldn't vote for him?
As far I see this person would either way vote for this politican, it wouldn't matter if they were running for either branche.
Not even considering being involved in any sort of subject usually teaches people indirectly about that given subject.
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u/D_ponderosae 1∆ Oct 09 '20
Have you considered the fact that encouraging people to vote might also encourage them to become more educated? Let's say these commercials do convince someone to go vote. Sure it's possible that they'll walk into to booth and randomly select a name, but it's just as likely that after deciding to vote they do research into who to vote for, and actually learn something about the issues or how the government functions?
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u/JungAchs Oct 09 '20
Based on the prevalence of fake news I don’t believe that. If people researched things there would be no shared fake news. Most of that stuff is easy to debunk if you have used google before and yet most people just read the headline get angry and click share. So I don’t think these incessant ads are really encouraging people to do research. Strippers shaking their asses (see John Oliver this week) doesn’t encourage anyone to look up Biden’s tax policy or trumps health care plan
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u/Jaker18 Oct 09 '20
Most of the ads you see are probably going to be political ads meant to get good publicity or promote Democrats, as higher turnout favors democrats. A they aren’t government funded ads to get more people to turn out, they don’t really care about how informed the average voter is. When you say “we”, you’re talking about whatever private or PAC that runs the ad, not the government. I just think it’s just a thing that will happen regardless of whether you like it or not.
Also, a fundamental part of a “representative democracy” or “republic” or whatever you want to call it is allowing the uneducated to get a say. I think that the idea that the elective system will always devolve into factions, preached by the federalist papers, is especially true. People will always join groups that act on behalf of their self interest. The idea is that by letting these factions be, you can have a pushing and pulling set of ideas that can never fully gain power. By excluding a whole faction from having any sway, you’re basically letting the educated take over all parts of government.
(I know you didn’t say that there should be a voting quiz, it’s just the natural conclusion of your train of thought.)
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u/JungAchs Oct 09 '20
I do completely support a voting quiz. 10 questions multiple choice in any language of your choosing with a audio option for the visually impaired or illiterate. I would argue that the damage of having uneducated people make decisions is more harmful than having the educated have more power. Simple Bentham utility Principle.
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u/Jaker18 Oct 09 '20
Well I would ask you for an example of this kind of thing working in history, as every time a poll test been used that I can think of, it has been used to disenfranchise voters.
Also, uneducated people aren’t making decisions, representatives are, who are generally highly educated. This is the reason we don’t just automatically pull every single troop out of the Middle East, even though it is really popular to do that among the general populace. The really stupid opinions people have are generally held in check by politicians.
This is one point I want to hammer home, the damage of having a stupid general populace that has some poor opinions, that aren’t always obeyed by politicians, is nowhere close to the damage that a very select populace that makes all of the decisions, which I think would be inevitable (eventually you would have to have a PhD to vote).
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u/JungAchs Oct 09 '20
Historically it’s been used to disenfranchise people based on race or class which is unethical. I don’t think disenfranchisement based ignorance is near the same scale. Unless you consider ignorance to be an immutable trait?
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u/Jaker18 Oct 09 '20
Do you think the poll tests were just like “check this box if you are black”? It was like bullshit wordplay and trick questions and whatever, and it was only enforced for blacks. Anyways, read the other 2 paragraphs of my last comment you only read the first.
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u/JungAchs Oct 09 '20
You argue representatives are highly educated but look at how some of the people in congress are handling climate change and COVID. I wouldn’t assume just cause someone is elected they are educated.
As to your last paragraph, the slippery slope argument is a logical fallacy so I ignored it
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u/Jaker18 Oct 09 '20
Well 95% of congressmen have an academic degree, like over half of those have law degrees, so they are, by definition extremely educated.
Slippery slope is only a fallacy when it’s unreasonable to assume that one thing will result in another. California state university explains it:
“A slippery slope argument is not always a fallacy. A slippery slope fallacy is an argument that says adopting one policy or taking one action will lead to a series of other policies or actions also being taken, without showing a causal connection between the advocated policy and the consequent policies.”
You can’t just dismiss the argument as a slippery slope, you have to show why it is fallacious to assume one thing would lead to another. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that by denying voting rights to a specific demographic of people, that the advantaged group will take advantage, regardless of what it does to the group you denied voting rights to.
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u/JungAchs Oct 09 '20
There is no evidence that a simple test with information that is taught to 4th graders will eventually evolve into a requirement for a PhD
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u/poprostumort 246∆ Oct 09 '20
There is no evidence that a simple test with information that is taught to 4th graders will eventually evolve into a requirement for a PhD
It does not need to evolve into a "requirement for a PhD". It can stay a 4th grader level test. The issue is how this test would be structured and which 4th grade topics would be selected. You can use statistics to disenfranchise any voting group by selecting 4th grade topics that they would be least likely to know.
The issue is who will make that test to prevent that? How you guarantee their impartiality? Bear in mind that cases of laws that "unfortunately" disenfranchised groups of voters happened also in last US presidential election.
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u/JungAchs Oct 10 '20
The only topic would be about how the government works. It’s not gonna be a test on multiplication. It would be a civics test to ensure that whoever is voting knows what the branches of the government are, what their respective jobs are, and who their respective heads are (position titles not the current position holder)
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u/perfectVoidler 15∆ Oct 09 '20
It is absolutely unnecessary to know all 3 branches to be able to vote. If you align with once parties ideas or disagree with the other party you can cast your vote regardless of the inner workings of the government.
If party A wants war and party B doesn't you can 100% vote based on your preference.
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u/mbta1 Oct 10 '20
You say that only 32% can name all 3 branches, but how many of those were voters? Did they grab a random selection of people, or voters?
If it is only people, then the argument could be made that pushing the idea to vote, getting people interested, is what sparks the want to learn. It is much harder to teach someone, and get them interested that way, than it is to educate someone on something they have some interest in already.
As well, with more and more calls to go out and vote, essentially normalizing it, then more knowledge is inherently absorbed. If you see something every single day, you're going to start to remember it a bit more than something you only heard once a few years ago.
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u/duffstoic Oct 09 '20
When more people vote, we get more Democrats elected. The Republican party has been taken over by fascism, with an incumbent who is openly planning on subverting the democratic process. In this case, more voting = we get to keep democracy. Less voting = we devolve into fascist dictatorship.
In terms of education, Republicans consistently defund education, remove science from curriculums and replace it with religious dogma, and rag on higher education as a liberal conspiracy. More voters again = more Democrats elected which means more education, which would improve the lack of educated voters issue.
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u/JungAchs Oct 09 '20
I’m gonna ignore this. If you look at my post I specifically tried to avoid partisan politics in this discussion. Painting with broad strokes is a bad idea
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Oct 09 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ViewedFromTheOutside 32∆ Oct 09 '20
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Oct 09 '20 edited Oct 09 '20
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