Today in America, there is a major epidemic when it comes to voting. Many voters in America are some of the most uninformed people in the world when it comes to politics and the specific roles given to the people that are elected into power. As a democracy, it is the duty of the citizens to elect the best representatives possible for the government, and in order to do this, citizens must be properly informed. Sadly, most citizens are not informed enough, if even informed at all, on what the roles of government officials are, how government works, or what the true beliefs of those running for office. This can have catastrophic consequences on the way society and government is controlled. As citizens of the most powerful democracy, the United States of America, Americans are the most powerful voters in the world, and therefore should be the most informed voters in the world as well. By not weeding out ignorant voters, countless votes are being wasted in elections today, and could lead to the election of a candidate that a majority of voters did not want. These choices made by voters affect everyone and the less informed voters are, the more likely a wrong decision will be made. Politicians are able to prey on uninformed voters and never go deep into their policies because many American voters do not care about becoming more informed. Having more informed voters would only improve society and help positive change come more rapidly. Ignorant voters are a crisis because more Americans are voting blindly in elections that will impact everyone, politicians are hiding their true motives and policies behind potentially false advertisements, and these voters are impeding on the improvement of society. 

It is extremely important to first define what and ignorant voter is. An ignorant voter does not mean that the person is stupid, in fact many highly intelligent people know just as much about politics as those with an inferior IQ. An ignorant voter can be someone of any race, religion, background, or political beliefs. It is important to note that if the United States were to implement a law weeding out the ignorant voters of today none of these would impede a person from their right to vote, not even the inability to read or write, because of the Voting Act of 1965 (History.com). Only would the government be able to enforce a law to test people on the ways government is ran and who is running for office. The definition of ignorant is, “lacking knowledge or information as to a particular subject or fact, uninformed (Dictionary.com).” In an article about uninformed voters LZ Granderson uses the analogy of the government to the inner working of a car, he is not a stupid person but is ignorant and uninformed to how the engine in his car works so he must take it to his mechanic who is informed enough to make the correct decisions (Granderson). Therefore, when a person is called an ignorant voter, it simply means the voter is uninformed and therefore will have a much tougher time making the correct decision on who or what to vote for.

In a video by Diana Thomas, a professor at Utah State University, she gives many facts about the uninformed electorate and many reasons as to why this could be. In a survey that was conducted in 2010 only 39% of American voters knew that national defense was the largest factor of the United States national budget, and only 14% knew what the current inflation rate was (Thomas). How can the average American decide who the best candidate is for the country, and the possible budget cuts that may come under a new administration, if he or she does not even know what their tax dollars are going towards or how much the federal government is spending? Anthony Downs explains why it is completely rational for the average citizen to be ignorant and uninformed when it comes to politics. Downs says that in order to be a highly-informed citizen politically a person must invest much of their time to reading newspapers, watching their nightly news, and researching current events throughout the world today. Doing this at a person’s hourly wage they are paid to work proves to be very costly, and taking all of this into account he explains how the cost of being politically informed outweigh the benefits greatly (Thomas). After all, one person becoming more informed will not affect an election, nor make government officials better at their job, only if an entire society becomes more informed as a whole will the problem of uninformed voters and the consequences of them go away.

Uninformed voters in elections could have drastic consequences. The less informed a person is, the easier it is for a more informed person to influence them to vote either way. This simply put, proves that less informed people’s votes can be easily swayed and do not always go toward the candidate that most represents their ideals and morals because they were not informed enough to choose and instead vote for someone because of things such as party affiliation, race, religion, gender, or even because of the candidate’s home state. These things are commonalities the less informed find with a certain candidate and choose them because the average American voter will not take the time to research or be informed enough by the media. In a scientific study done by Anthony Fowler and Michele Margolis, they study the effects of if a person will change their party alignment once they learn what the party publicly stands for. Fowler says, “If uninformed voters sometimes make mistakes and vote for the ‘wrong’ party, election results will be biased away from the party that better represents the greater share of uninformed voters (Fowler and Margolis).” Fowler is simply stating that if an uninformed voter makes the mistake of voting for the “wrong” party, then the party that better represents them would have had more votes if they were properly informed. By using two different experiments Fowler and Margolis produced the same results. The more informed people are about party platforms, the more likely they are to switch from their original party preference to the other (Fowler and Margolis). In one of the experiments Fowler and Margolis ask the voters which party they would align themselves with at the start based off what they already knew. By giving each participant a quiz they were able to gauge the political knowledge of each voter that was participating. After this they chose half the group to be the control and the other half to read articles on the stances of the two political parties and the beliefs of their leaders. What they found in their results were that many people changed their party alignment upon reading and researching what the two parties stood for (Fowler and Margolis). 

This type of blind voting can greatly impact an election and who wins if the electorate is not properly informed on the candidates running. This can change public policy greatly after an election and change the direction of where the country is headed. For example, look at the policies changes that have already been implemented under President Trump, these are drastically different from what President Obama was proposing and will shift the direction the country is headed. One of the biggest results of this election is the appointment of a new supreme court justice. If former Secretary Clinton won the presidency it is not wrong to say she would have nominated a “liberal” judge to the supreme court, shifting the bench to favor to the left for many years to come, as supreme court justices are appointed for life. Instead President Trump has nominated a “conservative” judge who if appointed will affect public policy for many years to come. Per the experiments done as mentioned above, could these elections have turned out differently? Look at the 2012 Presidential Election. If voters during the 2012 Presidential Election were more informed, voters could have had their votes swayed to one party or another. Another fact concluded from the experiments is that more uninformed voters tend to be a part of minorities, young people, and lower income earners who most of whom vote democrat (Fowler and Margolis). These were the demographics that President Obama feasted on during his two election wins. Could the election have turned out differently if only the people informed of policies could vote during the election? By only targeting the uninformed, politicians are able to sway voters without even telling them their specific policies or motives.

Aside from Presidential Elections where debates are nationally broadcasted, most people only hear about candidates running for congress or governor through radio or TV advertisements. These are made to put the specific candidate on a pedestal or put down the rival candidate with as little of information as possible. Sadly, these advertisements are meant to attract the ignorant voters who do not bother to look up and research more about the candidates they might be voting for. This is a strategy used by politicians to keep the uninformed from getting informed about their true motives and policies. An experiment done by Kenneth Williams to see the effects of endorsements is as follows, “The endorser, who is located at the extreme end of the dimension, announces which candidate is closer to her. After subjects vote for one of the candidates they are told whether they voted ‘correctly’ (in terms of the distance candidate positions are from their ideal points). […] Without historical information about the candidates, endorsements allow voters to partially mitigate problems associated with uncertainty. They need additional information to make correct decisions consistently (Williams 2-3).” This experiment is to show how if an advertisement of endorsement to a specific candidate is made, it is harder to decide whether the candidate has historically supported these ideals, therefore allowing politicians to use these types of potentially false advertisement to sway uninformed voters. Williams says, “This analysis shows that when endorsements are the only source of information, the location of the voter's ideal point on the dimension does affect the "informness" of subjects. However, this information proved to be an insufficient indicator of candidate location regardless of the location of voter ideal points. Even extreme voters performed rather poorly in terms of voting for correct candidates (Williams 7).” Williams is saying that the results of this experiment conclude that if the only information provided is advertisements of endorsement, without a historical record, it is hard for any voter to make the correct decision. This proves that the policies of a candidate are not properly shown through advertisements and an uninformed voter will often make the wrong decision of which candidate to vote for even though they feel strongly about a specific policy.

Ignorant voters are allowing politicians to hide their true motives and policies as they campaign before elections.

 In a journal from Stanford University, David Baron says, “Two characteristics of U.S. elections are the substantial campaign expenditures by candidates and the considerable voter ignorance of both issues and candidate positions on those issues. Some campaign funds are used to cover the costs of staff, transportation, supplies, and additional fund- raising, but a major portion of campaign expenditures goes for advertising and other informational activities that may influence or persuade some voters (Baron 33).” What Baron is saying is that two things that are found in every United States election are, uninformed voters, and money to persuade these people to vote for a specific candidate. Baron goes on to say that this need for campaign expenditures gives rise to interest groups who give large amounts of money for advertisements for a specific candidate (Baron 33). He goes on to explain how the large amounts of money spent for advertisements are only meant for uninformed voters to try to sway them, “To investigate the interactions among interest groups and their campaign contributions, candidate positions, and the electorate, two categories of voters are considered: informed voters are assumed to know the policy positions of the candidates and vote based on those positions; uninformed voters are assumed not to know those positions, and their vote is influenced by campaign expenditures (Baron 33).” Baron gives a clear connection between the uninformed voter and the reason so few politicians reveal their true motives and policies. There is no need for politicians to go deep into their policies and try to sway the informed voters because most of them have made up their mind. Thus, the uninformed voter is only shown what the candidate wants them to see and chooses based off the advertisements that their interest groups created for them. Uninformed voters can make the wrong decisions and by doing so can impede the improvements of government and society. 

Being an uninformed electorate does not allow the United States to be an effective democracy. With elections being swayed because of the countless votes that are being casted blindly, it is tougher for the United States to reach its highest potential. Voting is a sacred right that needs to be taken seriously because the direction of the country hangs in the balance. It is imperative that voters become more informed because voting for candidates without knowing what their policies and motives are is extremely dangerous. This hinders the United States from making great improvements to millions of lives. “Never have so many people with so little knowledge made so many consequential decisions for the rest of us (Harsanyi).” This quote from David Hansanyi, a senior editor at The Federalist, captures exactly what is going on in America today. In his article, he states that a survey done by Newsweek recently showed that when one thousand voters were asked who the Vice President was, 30% could not name him (Harsanyi). The participants were also asked how long was a senator’s term in office and more than 60% of them did not know the answer (Harsanyi). In another survey done by Anneberg Public Policy Center, it concluded that only 36% could name all three branches of the government (Harsanyi). However, Hansanyi goes on to state how the electorate probably is no less ignorant today than it was 50 or 100 years ago, but he points out a key difference. He states there should be no excuse that voters are ignorant now because there is an unlimited amount of information on the internet that anyone can look up. With this unlimited information at every voter’s fingertips there must be a solution to the problem of the uninformed voter.

There are many proposed solutions to the problem of ignorant voters, such as a civics test. Several people are proposing a civics test to be implemented into the voter registration process (Granderson). This would require everyone at the age of 18 to take a civics test I order to register to vote. Others point out to other nations of the world such as China. In China, the elections at the local level are done democratically and the higher the complexity of the issue the more educated a person must be to vote on it (Bell and Ziliotti). Requiring a civics test is not against the Constitution because it does not violate the Voting Act of 1965. 

Many people will would shoot down the idea of voter tests after looking back on the 1900’s when African Americans were discriminated against by the Jim Crowe laws and literacy tests that prohibited many people from voting, but the Voting Act of 1965 protects everybody’s right to vote. It says, no person can be discriminated against for their race, religion, gender, background, or political beliefs. This Act also made it illegal to use literacy tests to determine whether not a person was allowed to vote (History.com). Voter Registration tests would be different from literacy tests because it does not matter whether a person can read or write, but only that they know the basic concepts of government and the roles that candidates will be elected to. In the United States in order to immigrate and become a citizen to exercise the right to vote, each person wishing to gain citizenship must pass a civics test. This test is made up of multiple choice questions about anything from the history of America to how the government works in the United States. It doesn’t make sense that those who immigrate to the United States will know more about the government than the people that were born and raised in America. Others will say that in a democracy everyone has the right to vote and that right should not be taken away, but no one’s right to vote is being taken away. Every person will still be treated as equal, and their rights will not be taken away. All that a civics test would do is ensure that every citizen is doing their civic duty in becoming informed enough to know how the government works. Citizens must be tested to do many things in this country, such as driving or going to school, why not test people before they can take part in the most important task as a free citizen? This will not get rid of the ignorant voter completely, but will certainly inform every citizen that wishes to vote on how the government works.

Uninformed voters in America are a problem because they are changing the outcomes of elections by voting blindly, allowing politicians to hide their motives and policies behind advertisements, and making it harder to bring positive change to government and society. Voters in America need to become more informed so that the right decisions can be made. Researching politicians and learning what their true beliefs and motives are will stop the false advertisements from influencing elections for the worse. It is every citizen’s duty to their country to become as informed as possible when it comes to making a decision that will impact the country as a whole. Civics tests will ensure that citizens are doing at least the minimum to know what is going on in their country. The most logical reasoning is to look at why every citizen must be at least 18 years old to vote. By then people should be educated enough to make their own decisions, but the flaw in this is that many people are not politically informed regardless of age. If a person knows as much as a five-year-old child does on an issue, should they be allowed to vote on it?
