Let's Get Political

Conventional wisdow is wrong. There is something worse than not voting - casual voting (ie. voting if you don't have a clue or couldn't care less about the issues or candidates on the ballot).

Watching the election results scroll across the bottom of my TV screen as I tried to enjoy my shows last night, it was perfectly clear that people do not understand the ramifications of their participation in the political process. I could have predicted these results in my sleep, mainly because they are what I would have voted if I hadn't read anything except the ambiguous amendment language on the ballot. There is absolutely no way you could have known anything about the implications of each amendment simply by reading one fancy sentence. Clearly, people had voted as if they were answering some stupid survey in a mall for a free gift (Ironically, the only amendment on the ballot that probably had a democratic result was the gay marriage one). This is what must have happened Tuesday night...

Proposition 1: Blah blah blah ponies blah blah blah. FOR or AGAINST?
Voter's thought process: Hmmm... well I like ponies. Ponies are pretty. FOR.

Meanwhile, what Mr. John Q. Public actually voted for was to allow wild ponies to freely wander through government buildings. It's all cute until you're the one who steps in the pony crap on your way to traffic court.

This brings me to my next point, which is that the majority of the things we are voting to ADD TO OUR STATE CONSTITUTION are completely unnecessary. Hate your neighbor? Well why don't you propose an amendment that requires him to call you "sir" every time you meet? If you think I'm joking, then you obviously didn't vote on Proposition 8 yesterday. What incentive do voters have to really think about any of these issues if it doesn't seem like it will affect them? The name of the game is "as long as I don't have to pay for it". More debt - sure, means you're not raising taxes right? Cap interest rates - sounds good to me. Release land titles in Who Cares County - yes, down with government! Whew. That was easy. Now let's go home and complain about how bad our city is.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not getting on my high horse here. I fully acknowledge that I have been one of those ignorant, lazy voters too. There was a time when I voted for someone just because they had an Asian last name - guilty as charged. I did a little research this time, read what little was available on each of the City Council candidates (education, previous leadership positions, and one quote in the Chronicle). The whole time I was voting, I was reminded of that trivia game they had in our high school history books - the one where it lists facts about a few prominent figures in world history and asks who you would pick as president. Inevitably, based on only those facts, you end up picking Hitler to run the free world. I guess I may have voted Hitler back into an At Large position, but at least I didn't do it because he had a cool name. Is that better?

In conclusion, this sorry exercise of the democratic process has me thinking of starting a new movement - the "Don't Rock the Vote" campaign. We've got it all wrong - trying to get apathetic people out to vote, trying to make voting easier (for goodness sake, we've made the ballot into a giant Gameboy!). I say, make voting harder. We only need people who have a stance on the issue to vote. How about...

Making the ballot short answer form. The choices would be "FOR" or "AGAINST", and then "Explain why."

If you think that would discourage too many acceptable voters from going to the polls, then how about including some quiz questions on the ballot. Not like an IQ quiz (although that might help), more like a couple questions to weed out the people who just like to click the big 'Enter' button on the big Gameboy (sorry, the eSlate). For example, if you vote for M.L. Khan for City Council District F, you must answer the following question correctly... "Is M.L. Khan a male or a female?" If you get that wrong, then your vote doesn't count. That's more than fair right?

I guess you can tell that last night's results really got to me. I'm starting to think the whole electoral college thing isn't such a bad idea. Maybe we should allow voter intimidation tactics too. Beating some of these voters with a bat is sounding kind of appealing at this point. Hell, things can't get much more ridiculous. You might as well just let people vote while they're wandering around the mall with their 4 kids looking for the Build-A-Bear store and trying to remember what's on sale at Sears (vote for your local city council... and enter for a chance to win a Suburban here!). I bet the results would be the same.