silentfool.com

Lorie Byrd at Polipundit.com has a great blog about the uninformed voter. All I can say is “AMEN!” Here it is:

“National Review Online has a teaser for a Kate O’Beirne piece that appears in the current print issue of National Review (do magazines still publish paper copies?). O’Beirne’s piece is listed on the online index as “Will ignorant people decide who’s president?” Well, I will be glad to answer that. The answer is yes, of course they will.

In 2002, I was not able to convince a friend to vote for the Republican candidate for Senate, but I was able to convince her that she knew so little about the issues and what either of the candidates stood for, that after talk ing to me she decided she would prefer not voting, to casting an uninformed vote. She was not interested enough in politics to want to take the time to get informed, so decided it would probably be best if she didn’t vote at all. I felt a little guilty about that, especially when every media outlet in the country encourages EVERYONE to vote. (Since Nickelodeon’s viewers are below voting age, and therefore too young to “rock the vote,” this year they are instructing children to “nag the vote.” I am not making that up. They tell kids to nag their apathetic parents and other relatives to go out and vote. )

As I said above, I felt a little bad about my discussion resulting in my friend not voting. I actually felt bad about it for about 30 seconds. Then I realized what a shame it is that so many voters are so incredibly uninformed. The best solution would be for voters to take advantage of the unprecedented volume of information available via television (C-Span, anyway), radio, books and the internet to learn all they could about the issues and the candidates’ records, then to cast an informed vote. But for those who don’t want to take the time to make an informed vote, why should they take the time to vote at all? “