Citizen Competence

The Lodgesteen article assesses claims of conventional voter inattentiveness measured in terms of how much a voter could remember from a campaign. This memory-based model of voter attentiveness is discarded and replaced by an “On-line model” that suggests that rational political conclusions stem from events during the campaign despite the fact that 60% of voters could not mention the gist of a candidate’s platform. This rather optimistic view of voter competency follows that facts are not as politically relevant and do not influence an election in the direct way they are thought to. Lodgesteen and Kuklinski almost blatantly say that facts are not as important as people hold them political outcomes and offered a more practical, heuristic model.

They did not address this at length, but I couldn’t stop wondering what the effects of ‘no facts’ would be on our cultural norms in the arena of political debate. Pundits pride themselves on the ability to enumerate facts, figures and their significance. A few authors this week, while refusing to condone the alternative, almost give citizens a carte blanche to make bold political statements and cast votes without the capacity to verbalize a few basic supporting claims. It reminded me of the “I know it when I see it” clause that Justice Stewart used to evaluate the level of obscenity in a case before the supreme court. X% of the time an efficient, rational outcome is achieved. My concern is for the value that our nation places on information. Would it be acceptable to be “ignorant” provided that you’re always given the benefit of the doubt? Yes, I appreciate the aberration from the incessant theme of voter incompetent that instills little hope in our democracy. But an argument can be made that this would send us in the wrong direction.