Getting Out the Vote – Good or Bad?

For a number of years, I have been of the opinion that Get Out the Vote drives were at best a waste of time, and at worst positively harmful. In general, those of us who are sufficiently motivated to register and vote all by ourselves also have sufficient initiative to make some effort to inform ourselves before voting. So what's the point of going out and rounding up the apathetic and the ignorant, registering them, and transporting them to the polls to vote upon matters about which they know nothing?

We all know the answer to that one, don't we?

Well, it seems that I'm not the only one who has been harboring such politically incorrect thoughts. In A Duty Not To Vote?, John Stossel makes an excellent case for the argument that the country would be much better served if the apathetic and the ignorant would just stay home on Election Day:

I keep hearing how important it is for everyone to vote.

Let me be politically incorrect and say that maybe some people shouldn't vote.

I know I'm swimming against the tide. Get-out the-vote groups now register young people at rock concerts. HeadCount cofounder Andy Bernstein told me: "We registered over a 100,000 people. It is so imperative that this generation's voice is heard."

But wait. Is that really a good idea? Many kids don't know much. At a HeadCount concert, "20/20" asked some future voters, "How many senators are there?" One said 12, another 16, and another 64. One girl guessed, "50 per state."

Most kids didn't know what Roe v. Wade was about. "Roe vs. Wayne?" asked one. "Segregation, maybe?" "Where we declared bankruptcy?"

Headcount's Marc Brownstein concedes, "there's a lot of uninformed voters out there." But he argued:

"Democracy is not about taking the most educated portion of the society and having them decide who's going to run the entire society. Democracy is about every individual having a voice."

I suggested that when people don't know anything, maybe it's their civic duty not to vote.

Go read the rest of it, and see if John Stossel's argument makes sense to you.