By Selwyn Duke

“I'm guessing that as soon as I walk into the voting booth,
I'll probably make up my mind then.” So said
undecided voter Kerry Ladka, appearing on Greta Van Susteren’s program after
the second presidential debate. He had just compared and contrasted the
candidates, giving Mitt Romney the edge on the economy, Barack Obama the nod on
“social issues,” and saying that the choice was, at least then, a 50/50
proposition for him. So it’s clear Mr. Ladka isn’t exactly two whiskers from
politics-wonk status. Yet there’s something else that can be said about him. He
also misunderstands his civic duty.

Imagine you went to a doctor and he said, “You know, you
either need an appendectomy or a triple-bypass — I’m not sure. I’m guessing
that as soon as I walk into the operating room, I'll probably make up my mind
then.” 

Would you think this practitioner had any business wielding
a scalpel?

Or might you recommend he refrain in deference to the
Hippocratic principle, “First, do no harm”?

What’s forgotten in a political zeal manifesting itself in
get-out-the-vote drives and appeals to political engagement is that the same
principle applies during elections. For it is not our civic duty to vote.

It is our civic duty to become informed so we’re qualified
to vote.

Of course, we all know about political operatives — such as
those doing the Ohio Somali
vote-steal — who encourage uninformed voting because, were it not for the
ignorant, they’d have no constituency at all. They are enemies of America. But
it’s also true that there’s a common belief that greater voter participation
yields a healthier republic. We’ll hear lamentations such as, “Isn’t it
terrible that, with all our rights and freedoms, last election’s turnout was
only 50 percent?” One of the most important rights, however, is the right not
to make a stupid decision. And, frankly, the ideal turnout would be about five
percent.

Why? Because low electoral participation indicates low voter
interest, and this is when only the interested
go to the polls. This yields better government because interest is a
prerequisite for competence. After all, did you ever hear someone say, “Man,
golf was so boring to me that I hit the links once every decade and won the
Masters”? Has disinterest ever bred excellence in anything, from science to sports
to music to marriage? Politics is no exception.

Nonetheless, we will still hear talk about getting people
“engaged in the process.” And this would be fine, except that’s not what those
aspiring to turn out the tuned out actually do. A process is, writes
Dictionary.com, “a systematic series of actions directed to some end,” and, in
the case of elections, the end is casting a wise vote. But what is ignored is
the preceding series of actions, which amount to a period during which a person
learns to care and then cares to learn. Then voting takes care of itself,
becoming a reaction catalyzed by the individual’s passion and knowledge.

So even good people will consistently confuse “one man, one
vote” with “one man, one obligation to vote.” In fact, nations such as Belgium,
Argentina, and Australia have actually made voting compulsory,
reflecting the notion that quantity begets quality. But would we apply this to
anything else? Would air travel be improved if everyone got a chance at the
helm of a 747? Would it comfort you if your neurosurgeon, prostrate before the
god of democracy, gave every orderly and kitchen worker a chance to poke around
inside your cranium (hey, with ObamaCare….)? Enough treatment like that and you
might emerge from the operating room a left-leaning voter — maybe of the
Chicago variety.

Returning to an earlier point, none of the above matters if
your desired end is not health, but power. Then your “process” is different,
beginning with propaganda and ending at the polls, a transformation of the
visceral into votes. You then just want warm bodies (cold ones suffice, too).
This is what breeds laws such as the one
lowering the voting age in Argentina to 16, signed by the nation’s leftist
president with aging-soap-opera-star looks, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner; and
the “Training Wheels for Citizenship” proposal
in California, which would have extended voting rights to 14-year-olds (can you guess which party conjured up that little gem?).
Children, felons, foreigners, the foolish; they’re all good to go. Hey, give us
your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning for free rides.

Speaking of masses, it’s well known that lower turnouts favor
Republicans while higher ones benefit Democrats. So what does it say about you
liberals when you have to rally the idiot vote to win? And, no, I don’t have to
worry about offending anyone with that characterization; they are the idiot
vote because there isn’t a chance they could read this article.  

The real minority vote is that portion of the electorate
that actually knows what it’s doing. As for the undecided as represented by the
Van Susteren interviewee, if you’re making “up your mind” upon entering the
polling station, you’re not making up your mind at all. You’re making up your
vote. If a person hasn’t learned enough to make an intellectual decision during
an interminable election cycle with 24/7 news coverage, the gray matter won’t
suddenly boot up in the voting booth. He’ll simply be making an emotion-based
decision and may as well just go, eeny, meeny, miny, moe.

So with an election coming up, remember to do your civic
duty. If you’re not reading this article, please don’t vote.

      Contact Selwyn Duke or follow him on Twitter 

        © 2012 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved