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Voting Problems
The Problem with Voting
Introduction
As noted in The
Role of Government, perhaps we have
nobody to blame for our over-inflated government except ourselves. The
decision-makers were either voted into office by us or
appointed by those we voted for. However, oddly enough, this doesn't
mean that their decisions are condoned by most Americans. Do you
suppose that most people would really vote for a proposition on the
ballot that simply said, "Raise my taxes?" I believe that most people
would usually vote in favor of reduced spending and lower taxes. If so, then why does
government keep growing, and why do taxes keep going up? I'm afraid that
most elections are decided by less than 10%
of the registered voters, and many people are not even registered to vote.
Often only 3% of the electorate votes in local elections in my
community. We are suffering from a democratic phenomenon, that policy is being created by a minority rather than a majority.
Voting Anomalies
There are a couple of psychological factors that greatly influence
elections. The first anomaly that occurs in elections is that
some uninformed people will vote for anything. If we voted to
give computers to the homeless, some people would vote for it, based upon their compassion
for the poor, despite the fact that homeless people don't even have electrical receptacles.
Despite the record turnout in the 2008 presidential election, the fact
remains that turnout is still very low in most local elections. It
follows then that another anomaly with voting is that the small
percentage of people who are politically active are aware of how to manipulate the
system. I've seen this happen in my own community. Suppose there is a community
of 50,000 people with 25,000 registered voters, and one man decides he wants a
public swimming pool where his children can swim. He circulates a petition, collects maybe 100
signatures, and uses this as proof to the city council that there is a
lot of interest in a public pool. The city council decides to
put it on the ballot and, if approved, pay for it by raising taxes for everyone. The man
then rallies his 100 troops to each persuade five others to vote for it, by
targeting families with children who might like to swim. They also
ensure that these voters know when and where the election is. The election
is held and the result is 500 votes for the pool and 400 votes against
it. This man just succeeded in his cause even though he had the support of only 1% of the people. How is this possible?
There are several reasons for this. The man may have timed his
actions such that there would be minimal time for anyone to organize a
campaign against the pool. This man campaigns by advertising only the
benefits of the issue; i.e., a nice swimming pool, without even mentioning the
tax increase. The tax increase would have been targeted by an opposition
group, but there was little time. In other words, the aggressor has the
advantage (Luke 11:5-9). It's relatively easy for a committee
to grow tired of a persistent plea even from a small group of
people. However, we have few watchdog committees specifically protecting the interests of the tax payers.
Another related reason it is possible to win elections with only a
small minority of the population is that most people don't realize that
the issue affects them. The retired couple down the street
does see the announcement about the election in the paper, but they won't use a
pool, they don't focus on the tax increase, they have compassion for
the children that will use it, and they decide it's best just to let the young folks decide
the issue. In other words, almost all of the people in favor of the
pool (maybe 10% of the electorate) are very likely to vote, while those
opposed or not particularly in favor of the pool are not very likely to vote.
Convenience
Even if people were more informed about elections, I don't think that
voter turnout would rise significantly. Why don't people
vote? I believe it's because it is too inconvenient, and I'm
afraid that the people who are politically active also understand this
all too well. We live in a world of conveniences. Everything is made to be easy and
convenient. This is a credit to innovative ideas and
technology. Companies build and market products based on their convenience. They are in
competition with other companies to make their products the most convenient ones on
the market. In the 20th century, we quickly moved from radio to
television to color television to cable television to the Internet. We
found it inconvenient to get up and change channels, so we were given remote
controls. Then the cord on the remote control was found to be
a nuisance, so we were given cordless remote controls. Then we
were given VCRs with remote controls, and it was inconvenient to switch between the remote control
for the TV, the one for the VCR, and the one for cable, so we were
given an all-in-one remote control. Now our cordless all-in-one remote
control doesn't help us with our computer, so soon the TV and the computer will be integrated into a single entity.
However, how convenient is it to vote? At one point in recent years, I
voted in three elections in a three-month period, and all three voting places were in
different locations. The municipal election was at the City Hall, one mile north
of my house. The state/county primary was at one of the eight
elementary schools in town, one mile south of my house. The runoff for the primary
was at the city hall in a neighboring town ten miles away. I learned
about each election by reading three different newspapers. Although it
was relatively easy to determine when each election would be held, nobody I
called seemed to know where I should vote. I got lucky on two of them, based
upon where similar elections were held in the past. However, for
the runoff, I was stumped, so I unsuccessfully tried the two locations where I had
recently voted. The third person I was sent to at City Hall finally
made enough phone calls to be able to direct me to the city hall in the neighboring
community. I made the twenty-mile round trip through cross-town metroplex traffic in about an hour and a half.
Some counties have helped the voting situation by incorporating early
voting or mail-in ballots. However, most still put voting off until
Election Day. Many people need to be at work before the polls
open at 7:00 AM, and many are still at work when the polls close at
7:00 PM. Many might squeeze out some time during the day, but probably
not if they believe it's going to take a couple of hours. Our daily
jobs are so important that we can't miss work. Voting,
though very important, is not an event that fits easily into our day-to-day
schedule. We sometimes feel that we have to choose between our jobs and voting.
How to Fix Voting
How can we make voting convenient? I think that the answer is obvious,
and the solution is quite easy: Use the Internet. Today it's convenient to use the Internet to
purchase and receive groceries and other merchandise without ever leaving our homes. Of course, we're
all aware of the many illicit activities on the Internet which are as
close as our fingertips. Why is it then that the very first Internet
activity devised by the government was not voting? With all of the
other activities we have on the Internet, why can't we vote there? Of course, if
Internet voting was implemented, the polls would still remain open as they do today, as an alternative method of voting.
Imagine the convenience of this scenario: An election is approaching on November 2nd. One week earlier, on October
27th, I open my e-mail and notice a ballot sent to me by my government. I
open the ballot and see that I have one week to complete it. I have a few minutes,
so I make a couple of informed choices, but then I see a name with which I'm
unfamiliar. I click on the name, and I'm presented with a personal
profile for this candidate. I click on "Issues" and I read all about where
this candidate stands on the issues that are important to me, if this
candidate chose to tell me. I go back to the ballot and make another informed
choice. My wife reminds me of our dinner engagement, so I save the ballot and go to dinner. Two days later, when I logon
again, I'm reminded about the pending ballot, and that I have only five days left to submit it. I open it, finish voting, and select "Vote". I
have just voted. I can't vote again because the same cryptography used
to encode and protect credit card transactions is used for
voting. Furthermore, I can go to the Election URL and view the election results so far. I
can also review my ballots for the last ten elections, and I can review the
total results and demographic breakdown of those elections. At the Voting
Registration URL, I can register to vote, re-register if necessary, or change my status between
Republican and Democratic for the next primary, if I'm legally allowed to do so.
If our government is justified by its massive size, then why can't we
vote on the Internet? Why is it ten years behind in
technology when it has such inflated budgets? Why have we put
the Internet in classrooms and libraries, but we still can't vote
on the Internet? Well, I'm not sure they want
voting to be that convenient. The voter registration drives
spearheaded by certain politically-active groups may seem noble, but more often than
not, they are one-time efforts to promote a particular
cause. They don't want everyone to vote. They want only the ones who will
vote the way they're voting to vote. They use the
political tactics described above to influence elections with a small group of inspired
troops. I believe the morally right thing to do in a free republic is to
encourage everyone
to vote, and that voting on the Internet would result consistently in increased voter turnouts.
Polls
A final word about voting concerns polls, such as Gallup
polls. Because of peculiar polling techniques and sample
sizes, we should take the results of these polls with a grain of salt, as we
learned during the exit polling of the 2004 presidential
election. There is a possibility that the people conducting
the polls are adding their own bias, whether intentionally or not, because
they don't seem to be polling a representative cross-section of the constituency. I
recently had a discussion with a friend who leans toward the left
politically, while I lean toward the right. It is very
peculiar that my friend had been asked to participate in six to eight
political polls recently, while I hadn't been asked to
participate in any at all. I realize this is a small sample size, but some
news reports have confirmed that this is indeed a problem.
Owen Weber 2009 |
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