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Ignorance and Democracy
By Ravenhawk | November 15, 2007
Last week there was a local election for three positions on the city council. The signs had been up around town “Vote for this person!” “This person is the best!”
However, besides seeing names on yardsigns, people-standing-on-corners signs, and the occassional scarf, I really knew absolutely nothing about the candidates. Which in other words means I knew nothing about the candidates; City council elections are non-partisan, so you don’t even have lame, uninformative party names to judge the value of a candidate by.
And yet I still voted. As opposed to the last election i voted in, (which was the first I was able to) this election did not leave me with a sense of pride. In fact, voting in this one, I felt rather ashamed. For, with my lack of knowledge about the candidates, my voting was almost random.
I felt almost relief at the fact that none of the people I voted for won.
Representitive Democracy is supposed to be a system of government where the people elect people to make their laws who represent the views of the people. However, voting responsibly requires you to know about the views of the person you’re voting for, to know if they really match yours. If you don’t know enough about who you’re voting for, you might as well not be voting.
I’ve always paid very close attention to the people who were running in national elections. My excuse for this local election would probably be something along the lines that I did not have time, what with school and work. But I’d be pathetically lying.
In the information age, it does not take any extensive amount of time at all to find out what the views are of those on the ballot. And if any representative democracy wants to survive, it’s citizens better take that time and know what they’re voting for… ….
Tags: Politics, Democracy, Elections, Representitive Democracy, voting
Topics: Politics |
December 11th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
It can be hard to learn about local candidate. Many of them assume that everyone already knows them and what they stand for because they are local. I have lived in one town for a couple of decades now and can finally sort out some of the candidates in local elections.
Sadly, most of them seem to have agendas that I can’t support. Finding someone to vote for instead of against is then the challenge.