Apathy and the Electoral College

Before I get started, let me apologize for my absence. The Wizzle and I just spawned a third child, I've been hammered with school, and I mixed in some training for a Grand Canyon hike. So I've been a bit busy. Things have settled back down a bit, and I should be joining the fray on a more regular basis.

Back in March, Mike led a discussion of the pros and cons of the Electoral College. I have long been a critic of the Electoral College. It gives way too much influence to people who live in "swing" states - the Ohios, Floridas, and Virginias of the world. I hate that I will be voting for John McCain whether I like it or not, simply because I live in Arizona.

But I'm starting to think the Founding Fathers may have gotten it right after all. A Pew Research Center survey published last week revealed that a paltry 18% (yes, EIGHTEEN PERCENT) of Americans could correctly answer the following three questions:

1) Which party has a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives?
2) What is the name of the current U.S. Secretary of State?
3) What is the name of the current Prime Minister of Great Britain?

That is unbelievably pathetic. Even excusing the last question (how dare we be expected to know anything about a foreign country?!), only 53% could recall the Democrats as having the majority in the House, and only 42% could name Condi Rice as the Secretary of State. The goal of the survey was actually to determine how consuming different news sources affects one's ability to answer these basic questions. As it turns out, readers of highbrow publications like The New Yorker and The Atlantic and regular NPR listeners (woohoo - that's me!) were most likely to be able to correctly recall this information ... but still at only 48% and 44% success rates, respectively.

The framers of the Constitution did not trust average American citizens to directly elect the President, much less actually govern themselves, ala ancient Athens. Instead, the framers provided for citizens to elect Electors to actually choose the President. Granted, the late eighteenth century provided drastically fewer opportunities for average Americans to consume news and commentary on current events, but I'm not sure the additional information is doing anybody any good.

I suppose this is more of a rant than anything, but seriously - what is there to be done about an American voting public that is so apathetic that it doesn't even know who its leaders ARE, much less what they stand for and what policies they espouse?

13 comments:

Unknown said...

1. The Dems
2. Condi
3. Gordon Brown (might be making a fool of myself here because I'm going to post my answer without checking to see if I'm right)

Good post, Dave, and welcome back and CONGRATULATIONS - mostly to the Wizzle, of course, but you too, I guess. :)! I guess having kids is more important than posting on politicaLDS...

The thing about the electoral college is that it's nothing but a pro forma process. We're not picking electors whose judgment we trust, we're picking electors whom we've never heard of or heard from and who are 100% in the tank for their candidate. So it's not like we're choosing the best among us to choose the president. Perhaps they should just let the House Reps and Senators be the electors?

In this age of 24-hour news and the Internet, there are fewer and fewer excuses for the ignorance of the populace. I think one of the big problems is that so many people are just totally turned off by politics in general - the tenor of campaigns, the divisiveness, the tendency of power to corrupt. I quote my boss, who said this to me via e-mail (though I doubt he's uninterested in politics):

"I now (a position arrived at just in the last ten years or so) feel about all politicians in a way that is analogous to Groucho Marx's statement on belonging to a particular club. He said, 'I'd never want to belong to any club that would allow me to be a member'. My corollary to that is, 'Any one who wants to be in elected office, can't be trusted on that basis alone'. I'm not talking about your local city council or school board here, I'm talking about someone who seeks for power, real power, because even if their motives were initially pure, the saying is true that 'power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely'."

Even though I consider myself to be pretty darn political, we were going over the ballot last night and there were questions on there about school boards and stuff that I had no idea how to answer.

Unknown said...

Funny enough, I went from here over to MSNBC and "Is it time to scrap the Electoral College?" was the headline. Check it out.

Stephanie said...

Have you heard this Howard Stern bit? Sal asked people why they are voting for Obama and which of his policies they support (except that he used McCain'spolicies). One time he found a guy who said he would vote for McCain, but he attributed Obama's policies to McCain. Hmmm.

big.bald.dave said...

We're not picking electors whose judgment we trust, we're picking electors whom we've never heard of or heard from and who are 100% in the tank for their candidate.

That's true now, but it wasn't true in the formative years of the country. Most of my post was sarcastic - I do still want the Electoral College to take its place alongside the dodo - but I have a hard time trusting the voting public to do anything right given how obviously retarded we are as a collective.

Stephanie said...

And I have to admit that I wasn't thinking and answered Tony Blair to the last one. Sigh.

The Wizzle said...

Ha, Mike, I have said that exact thing so many times! Anyone who wants to be President/Senator/whatever, and has "what it takes" to get elected, is pretty categorically not a person that I could respect or want to represent me. More than likely. It's a very cynical position and I am NOT a cynical person generally, but that's what I think. I will be thrilled to be proved wrong if it ever happens.

Anonymous said...

Well, I am a cynical person, though I've been trying to reign myself in of late, and I've also had that very same opinion for so long - its long bee my belief that politicians are corrupt, simply because of the nature of being a politician. I can't really get behind anyone. Could it be that after 232 years of Politicians and the garbage that they put us through, the US in general is just sick of politicians - hence the (and I've said this before too) truly disconcerting apathy. US politics is, to me anyways, like the boy who cried wolf. Instead, though, we'll say the boy who cried "change!"

The Wizzle said...

I know, I keep hearing that people will elect a Democrat this time because of the economic climate. What does that have to do with anything? Even if "Democrat" was a useful, meaningful designation (which I really don't think it is at this point), what indication do we have that Obama or any Democrat is so much better qualified to "fix" the economy than McCain or any given Republican? They're just people - individual people - and this mess has been a long time in the making with plenty of blame to go around on both sides. I almost think people just have this vague idea that Democrat=more money for the little guy and it's continually repeated in the media so it's reinforced. But really it's just a vapor, a mist of an opinion based on FDR and smoke and mirrors. I'm very surprised people are still falling for it, too, because we elected a Democratic majority (barely) in Congress as a statement that we didn't like the direction things were going, and NOTHING HAS CHANGED. Nothing. What makes people think a Democratic president will make a difference?

I hope it does, but I'm not really optimistic. I hope Obama is as kind and competent and level-headed as he appears and that he knows a lot of really smart people!

big.bald.dave said...

I know, I keep hearing that people will elect a Democrat this time because of the economic climate. What does that have to do with anything?

Well, I should have written that it favors the challenger - the incumbent party is always gets the credit/blame for the economic situation. However, it does help that Democrats are generally pro-regulation and Republicans generally against it. It's clear that comprehensive regulatory reform is going to be necessary to pull us out of the mess we're in, and I think the public at large generally trusts the Democrats to implement that regulation, as opposed to the party who has typically favored free market principles.

Stephanie said...

Even though, IN THIS CASE, it was the Republicans who were calling for more regulatory oversight and the Democrats who were mocking them. Still, the free marketers are going to take the downfall. Argh. The insanity of it all.

Anonymous said...

I have to agree that the majority of voters are un or at least under-informed as to what and why they are voting the way they are. The electoral college is a way to make us feel like every vote counts, without it actually being true. Kind of like caucases. I can't spell that word by the way.

The Wizzle said...

Oh, good point BBD. I gotcha. BTW, you're gonna need a new handle here! You're still bald, and you're still Dave, but you're not so big anymore you know. ;)

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