There are a lot of people who don’t watch news, don’t read newspapers, live in their bubble, their friends are all through work where political talk is often avoided altogether, they might start listening to a few people a few weeks out from an election since they feel as though they have a civic duty to vote.
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Of course but I would bet a huge amount of money these people simply vote how they always have.
I’m saying there are essentially zero people in America who have no idea who they will vote for and are somewhat likely to vote either way.
Those people don’t exist.
I’d guess the low info voter you described is something like 90% likely to vote how their parents vote. Their team is just passed down like religion.
Undecided doesn’t mean if they will vote at all. It means they supposedly don’t know which side they will vote for. Those people don’t exist.
I mean, if you define a category by criteria that doesn’t exist then it is axiomatic that nobody will fit in that category, granted. However, every potential voter has some uncertainty regarding who they will vote for and beyond some threshold of uncertainty we can consider them undecided voters. I am telling you that I moved from highly undecided to mostly decided just within the past few weeks and that is a direct result of the campaign and my exposure to it. There are millions more people like me and that is how elections are supposed to work.
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I can’t find a poll, but I’d bet there is a double digit percentage of people who will vote in November who don’t even know who the candidates are now. Of course there are undecided voters.
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I suspect that for every “definitely going to vote, but not sure who yet” voter, there are a 100 “I might vote if the line isn’t too long and I can get off work, but really it’s never going to come down to one vote anyway” voters.
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There are surely more people who may or may not vote at all than people who don’t know who they would vote for. That’s why turning out your voters is more important than convincing undecideds, but it doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as undecided.
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I also don’t think people have a civic duty to vote if they truly can’t decide. I don’t vote for local judges and such unless I have some reason. Let the people who know who they are hash it out.
I could argue that the civic duty part is investing 25 minutes into doing some very basic research about the candidates so you can know who they are and can make an informed decision.
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I think we would be better off going back to the Athenian model of selecting government officials by lottery
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Are we talking 25 minutes for each state, county and city judge, comptroller, treasurer, etc? Or 25 minutes total? Because I don’t see how you can do much with the latter. I feel like a resurcher looking up vaccines on youtube.
I do see how, like in your case, voting against a psycho school board member is important. If I had a kid in school, I would definitely be researching school board members. Or if someone brought it to my attention that a psycho was running.
But stuff like judges are often both Democrat, and nothing in their bios is going to say “Hey I’m evil.”
Except people that don’t know who they are, or are corrupt, are voting. If you don’t, they win.
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Ok, I’ll paste my election packet here when it comes and you tell me who to vote for for county judge seat #9 between Democrat Bob Beamon and Democrat Ryan Paul.
“Bob believes in fairness with a firm hand…”
“Ryan tries to dispense justice with compassion…”
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I did the research on judges on the last ballot, I don’t think it was more than 25 minutes total. It can be as simple as checking their endorsements and their funding sources. Yeah it’s a pain in the ass, sure, but whether it’s 25 minutes or 90, it’s not the hugest lift ever. IMO especially with the “tough on crime” judges, they don’t try to keep it a secret. And keeping those people out has a direct impact.
I’ll take the first guy. He can probably jump really far. The other guy might be a former Republican VP nominee in disguise.
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But what if the people who actually know these people and really care about this stuff are making much more informed voting decisions than the people who just spend a few minutes trying to guess at who would be a better judge based on some cursory information?
It’s sort of like how we elect representatives to become experts and not put every policy decision to a popular vote (well at least in states outside of prop-happy California).
I’m not 100% sure I believe that. But at least that’s the argument.
Maybe with judges it’s easier to get unfiltered information. But with these props it’s fucking impossible to get stuff that isn’t anti or pro propaganda.
I feel like I just blindly vote for every “give more money to the homeless/anti-drug/after-school-program/whatever” because I guess/hope that it must be a good thing and not a boondoggle.
But it’s really freaking hard to parse through the propaganda on each side. And eventually we’re going to run out of tax levies. But not bond initiatives. Apparently those are an infinite well.
Dunno if you’re serious, but this 100%. I just mean what would be better. It would never happen. Hardly anyone wants to take any responsibility and then people think elections lead to better than random people and then their answer to problems with elections is always just to cancel democracy and have permanent rulers.
I think it would lead to better outcomes if the Congress was 538 randos. Randomly selecting a President maybe has too much variance, so maybe do that indirectly somehow or just make the President less powerful.
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Either way, POTUS should be vastly less powerful imo. Maybe the duties split and/or a small council instead of an individual.
I look at their past jobs and vote for the Public Defenders and not the Prosecutors.
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