I just voted. Via mail. From beautiful Sedona, Arizona. But maybe I shouldn’t have. I’ve never heard of half the people on the ballot. Never met them. Don’t know anything about them. Don’t know what they look like or what they stand for. And yet their political future and the future of the city of Scottsdale, Arizona rests in my hands.
Halloween is just around the corner but what’s really scary is the thought that the vast majority heading to the polls in the coming days have no idea what they’re doing either. They don’t know who most of the people are. They aren’t educated about most of the propositions up for vote. They don’t know legal precedents or understand complex tax codes. We hope that at the very least they have common sense and make the morally appropriate choice for President but about half the country couldn’t even do that last time.
Due to their lack of knowledge most people vote strictly according to party lines or just follow what their friends or family are doing. They may even just pick the first name they see in each section or not even fill out the entire ballot if they even vote at all. Clearly, there ought to be a better way. A way to ensure that all voters are educated when they go to vote. And I think I know such a way: have professional voters.
It’s an idea that’s similar to my proposal to eliminate Jury Duty and replace it with professional jurors. Here’s what I had to say about that at the time: “Rather than have juries filled with people who don’t want to be there, people who may not understand how the legal system works or who may not understand the specifics of the case, shouldn’t we have well trained, full time jurors who know what they are doing and who will take their jobs very seriously? Not only would we be improving the legal system but we’d also be creating jobs.”
Similarly, this time around we’d have professional voters who are well-trained, knowledgeable, and committed to learning everything they can about all the candidates for all of the positions. They wouldn’t be voting according to party lines or taking the easy way out. Rather, they would be hell bent on making the best possible decision they can, for themselves and for their communities.
To be clear I’m not talking about having only a small group of highly educated voters. I don’t want a close-knit group of like-minded individuals deciding elections. Nor do I want a group that can be easily bought out or is susceptible to corruption. The group of professional voters that I am talking would number in the hundreds of thousands and possibly even in the millions. All states, ethnic groups, genders, ages, education backgrounds, religions, job sectors, and socio-economic demographics would be represented. The playing field would be even.
It’s just that not everybody would get to vote. Not because they’re a woman or a minority, like in years past, but because they, simply put, aren’t qualified to vote. Aren’t educated enough. If they want to vote in the future then they can apply to become one of these professional voters. Or maybe instead of an entire professional voter system we do something that may be far easier to pull off yet just as extreme: we make people pass a qualification exam to prove they are up to the date on the current issues before we let them vote.
I understand how extreme and unpopular this idea is likely to be. Throughout history people have literally died for the right to vote. I don’t say any of this lightly. But at the same time the current system clearly isn’t working. When we let everyone vote, literally everyone with a pulse, when we turn elections into popularity contests, we get weird results. Like a reality TV star becoming President. Results that have disastrous consequences, not just for America, but for the future of humanity.
That’s why we owe it to ourselves, and to future generations, to take a long hard look at how we vote and try to figure out a better way. And then after we’ve figured all that out we owe it to ourselves, and future generations, to get rid of the Electoral College as well. But that’s a story for another day.
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