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Should everyone vote?

Ash Navabi

October 18, 2015

It’s election time in Canada, and as usual ad campaigns on TV, radio, print, and even Facebook are urging “everyone” to vote. But is that such a good thing?

To ask it another way: Is it really a good thing to tell people who are ignorant of law (so they don’t know which proposed policies are illegal), and/or ignorant of economics (so they don’t know what the actual outcomes of proposed policies will be), and/or ignorant of political science (so they don’t know which proposed policies are politically feasible with the actual people and institutions we already have)?

If politics is serious business, shouldn’t people have more than causal understanding law, economics, and political science before voting? How are people supposed to judge platforms otherwise-by what “feels right”?

Imagine you’re on a panel to choose a team of rocket scientists to send a spaceship to Mars. But let’s say you’re ignorant of the general laws of physics, the specific laws of rocket science, and the knowledge of project management knowledge of how different teams of engineers are supposed to work together.

How would you judge which engineers to hire?

By what the engineers merely say they’ll do? That doesn’t work, since you have absolutely no framework for what is and isn’t physically possible. They might be suggesting breaking the laws of physics but you’d have no idea.

By what the engineers have done in the past isn’t a good metric either. Sure they may have sent a rocket to space before, but what if they did it really economically and wasted a lot fuel and other resources? They may have also had a rocket blow up mid flight-but what if they didn’t even expect the rocket to ignite and so it was a great feat of engineering that it went up at all?

What’s even worse is if people not only are ignorant of the required knowledge to judge candidates, but have psychological biases that make it even harder for them to distinguish good from bad. If people had a false understanding of physics-for example, that helium balloons prove the law of gravity wrong-they’re not only more likely to believe an engineer who panders to their false understanding, but also to brush off legitimate scientists as kooks or crooks.

I’m not saying that voting should only be done by experts, or that no one without a PhD shouldn’t vote.

What I am trying to say is that politics is a complex problem and to understand it requires several proficiencies. Most people do not have these proficiencies-through no fault of their own, since there’s more to life than politics and economics. Asking people to contribute to solving a problem when they lack the basic tools of understanding the problem is unlikely to lead to a good outcome.

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Cary Oler

Come on! Get Serious!! When you start removing freedoms from people (and voting should always be hailed as fundamental) because of profiling, you might as well already be a dictatorship!!

This was a STUPID article that should be spat upon by every freedom-loving person who reads it, including those WITHOUT masters or doctorate degrees!!

Shame on you, Ash Navabi! Double Shame!

You’re proof that education doesn’t necessarily improve thought processes.
- Ash
  
  Hi Cary,
  
  Please point out where I said that anyone’s freedom to vote ought to be “removed,” or that people should be profiled before voting. I think you’ll have a hard time since I am definitely not in favor of taking away anyone’s right to vote.
  
  To be clear, my position is that everyone should have the *right* to vote. No one should lose their right to vote because they don’t have a formal education or some other arbitrary certification.
  
  But not everyone should be *obligated* to vote-especially those people are ignorant of basic economics, political science, and law. Some people want to make voting mandatory, while others are pushing campaigns urging “everyone” to merely vote. I think when most voters are uninformed and have biases that are contrary to the main findings of social science, then bad outcomes are to be expected.
  
  Can you explain a mechanism where uninformed and biased people vote for self-interested, and perhaps malicious candidates and good outcomes can be expected?
- dmoney
  
  Cary,
  
  He’s not proposing that they take away your right to vote - it’s simply a philosophical point being made to illustrate the deficiencies in the voting process, specifically when uneducated people vote based on flawed logic, ignorance, biases or (most commonly) a combination of all three.
  
  You clearly didn’t read the entire post. Luckily for you, it’s still right there and you can go back and read it.
  
  Cheers.
Frank Zeleniuk

A universal democracy will indeed lead to tyranny. Seems to be where we are headed.
http://olduvai.ca Steve

Or, to give a slightly different perspective: Is voting just supporting and condoning what could arguably be considered a criminal activity by a criminal class (who have no better understanding or insight into solutions than the voters)?
- Frank Zeleniuk
  
  Voting in a democracy is considered an obligation by the majority, I believe. In most places a very high percentage, sometimes reaching a majority, choose not to fulfill the obligation and don’t vote, realizing the futility of it or simply out of apathy. In which case, democracy has become a sham. Feelings of futility and apathy are justified because it has devolved into a process of satisfying the demand of and granting privilege to special interests and not an exercise of the right of an individual to maintain his freedom and liberty along with the freedom and liberty of all his fellow citizens.
  
  That is my argument that it does become a criminal activity and the argument at this point in its devolution becomes one of equality and a struggle for the attainment of the egalitarian society through social justice. A much better means than revolution to achieve the totalitarian state, wouldn’t you say?