Here’s an article about a mildly interesting finding that low-information voters are more likely than others to vote for the best-looking candidate: Face Value: Looks of Political Candidates Are Key Factor Influencing Low-Information Voters.
In more blunt terms, these low-information voters can be described as willfully ignorant and morally irresponsible. I’ll make an impolite request to these voters (not that any such creatures would be reading my weblog): please stay home on election day and then maybe, just maybe, the votes of more responsible citizens would be worth something. By “responsible citizens,” I don’t mean those who read the pamphlets from the major national parties or the unions or the AARP or the national business groups. I don’t even mean those who listen to speeches by one of the small number of politicians who don’t stink of corruption. I mean those who might take the time to go on the Internet or — still better — go down to the public library to find out something about the latest country invaded by our evil bozos in Washington. Is it even a real country or just a paste-up job by a retreating British Empire? Is there any verifiable reason to believe that country is any real and imminent danger to the United States or any of our allies or does this seem — at least possibly — to be another discretionary war to the benefit of the military-industrial complex, including the war-mongering foundations and the ‘charitable’ foundations set-up and run by the power-elite? There are lots of such questions that will start to pop up in the heads of those who learn something about the world and then try to make sense of what they’ve learned.
I tend to fear that many Americans who are proud of having voting in recent national elections probably don’t know what continent Afghanistan is on and probably have an image of a country populated by evil wretches created by Satan for the specific purpose of killing us morally pure Americans. But we can-do Americans can rescue them. We can-do Americans can turn those Afghans into good people, if only they’d stop shooting at heavily armed American soldiers who suddenly show up in their villages with weapons pointed in the general direction of the villagers’ children.