By: Cyril Rikh
On Tuesday, November 7, almost two million New Jersey residents took an active role in their government. During the NJ general election, people voted on state representatives, such as senators and house members, and local representatives, such as town council members and school board members. These are important decisions, and society should reward voters for taking the extra time to make a wise decision. Without a significant number of informed voters, we may elect candidates who push for policy choices that can cost our societies millions without substantial benefit.
Voting gives citizens a chance to influence local and national policy. To make a wise decision on whom to vote for, the voters should know each candidate’s platform, as well as what policies that candidate wants to put in place.
However, social scientists agree people know very little about our government. Sixty percent of Americans can’t pass the citizenship test, which has a passing score of sixty. The citizenship test asks basic civics questions, such as “What is the supreme law of the land?” or “Who is in charge of the executive branch?”
But since the average American can’t answer these questions, promoting voting and asking them to make good decisions about what our government should look like seems like a long shot. Understanding our government and its policies takes knowledge beyond civics, such as understanding the economics behind policy decisions. So, making a well-informed decision on whom to vote for takes time, thought, and often an understanding of the social sciences. So, why do we push the general public to vote, rather than only the educated?
The reason for that is that we’re a democracy. In a democracy, power is vested and exercised by the people, often through free elections. A free election is one in which all citizens can vote for the candidate of their choice. Even if some vote without knowing what they’re doing, we believe their uninformed vote won’t matter due to the miracle of aggregation.
The miracle of aggregation states that when many people vote in an election, we can expect the outcome to be rational, rather than random. This miracle relies on the assumption that uninformed voters cast a random vote, just like how the outcome of flipping a coin is random.
For example, say half of the uninformed electorate votes for candidate A and half votes for candidate B. So, each candidate gets an equal number of votes from the uninformed. Therefore, these votes give no candidate the advantage. As a result, these votes are meaningless. For a more concrete example, suppose ninety percent of people are uninformed. Forty-five percent voted for Candidate A and forty-five percent for Candidate B. Let the remaining ten percent informed vote for the better candidate. The informed voter will get the better candidate up to fifty-five percent, yielding a rational result for the election, despite the uninformed voting.
The problem is that uninformed voters don’t vote randomly. People are biased. For example, suppose someone lives in a family that talks about politics extensively, and everyone in that family is affiliated with Political Party X. In that case, they might vote for the Political Party X candidate due to conformity, as they want to feel like they fit in. They might also have an expediency bias, meaning they will try to decide who to vote for as quickly as possible. For example, if there’s limited information online about a candidate, they might disregard the candidate altogether. There are also unconscious biases: studies show that uninformed voters tend to vote for better-looking candidates systematically. As a result of biases, poor policy outcomes can—and do— happen.
One example is California’s Prop 13, deemed law in 1978. Prop 13’s key provision states that “properties [are to] be taxed at no more than 1 percent of their full cash value shown on the 1975-1976 assessment rolls.”
For example, by modern standards, the current property tax assessment on the Los Angeles Country Club (LACC) is about $90 million. But as a result of Prop 13, the LACC only has to pay about $200,000 annually, meaning Los Angeles taxpayers subsidize the club by about $89,800,000. Additionally, the golf courses these clubs manage are private. This subsidization is a problem since dense areas of California, such as Los Angeles, have park shortages. This lack of access to parks makes life worse for LA residents.
If we stop subsidizing country clubs, they may have to shrink in size or shut down. This reduction in the amount of land taken up by country clubs could result in the government claiming the land and designating it for public parks. If we didn’t subsidize country clubs, we would also have more capital for essential services, such as homeless shelters or education. Overall, Prop 13 is unjust for the general public, even though they’re the ones who elected representatives that supported it in the first place.
One solution to helping voters make better decisions is offering a short exam whenever elections are near to test people’s knowledge of civics and candidate policies. If they pass, they should get a hundred dollars as a reward.
You might say, “teach civics in school.” But the problem is that people forget 95% of what they learn there. Therefore, initiatives like requiring civics courses to be taught in middle school are an inefficient use of schools’ funds. Instead, the government could spend that money rewarding people who take the government and policy exam. If even one school teacher in New Jersey didn’t need to be hired to teach civics, that’s an extra $60,000 saved for the government. Therefore, one civics course canceled translates to 600 exams funded and 600 informed citizens. One teacher can’t educate 600 students about civics within one year. So, the exam is a more efficient use of our tax dollars.
Note that students forgetting material doesn’t always justify removing a class. Some knowledge is necessary to be ready for college-level material, which people pay for on their own, unlike high school. Colleges rarely require civics courses.
To sum up, believing in the miracle of aggregation can lead us to make bad policy decisions that cost communities millions. The government should spend the saved money on more essential things like education, hunger prevention, or fighting the digital divide. I admit that creating more informed voters takes work. But with some time and effort, we can do it.
