Dr. Forbush Thinks

In reading the recent AP-poll I came across the term persuadable voters.

The term struck me as being a truth, yet not a desirable truth. I began to think that we should all be persuadable voters, and it is a sad day when we monitor such a statistic. In an ideal democracy we should all be persuadable voters considering both sides of the argument. We should go into an election with an open mind and listen to the arguments and asking the important questions. We should have in mind how a government should be run and we should listen to how each candidate proposes he will make the effort himself.

Sadly, there are many people who don’t care enough to follow the campaigns, ask the questions or try to understand what each candidate brings to the table.

I can’t blame these people to much, because I don’t always know everything there is to know about each candidate. In the California primary I was asked to choose between two candidates who had more similarities than differences. Both were former mayors of local towns. Both had grown up in disadvantaged areas of the area. And, both had the same first name, although spelled differently. Searching the Internet yielded little independent information. The only difference I found was that one candidate spent a lot more money advertising, and she won the election. So, the questions become, how can the average person get independent information? How much time should one spend trying to get the straight stuff?

In this one race I was certainly a “persuadable voter.” Both candidates were from the same party, and stood for the same ideals. Up to election day I was gradually swayed to vote against the candidate that spent all the money on advertising. But I could have been persuaded to vote for her if she had only had an independent source of information that I could use to compare the two candidates.

But, should we all really be “persuadable?” I am not so sure now that I think about this again. For example, after scientists have come to the conclusion that evolution is in fact a scientific theory that is based on scientific evidence should be easily grant someone without scientific evidence and a religious theory equal weight? Should we really be that persuadable? It seems to me that we should have some issues that we are not willing to give ground on. We should not vote for a candidate that is indifferent to the protection of our city, country or the world. But, we need to understand the priorities candidates place on each of these.

So, maybe I have come full circle on the nature of the persuadable voter. Perhaps the persuadable voter is a person who has not spent the time weighing the issue and determining which political party supports their view of the world. Perhaps the persuadable voter is just the lazy voter who hasn’t put forth the effort to be a responsible citizen. But, this does not seem to fit. If a person were really lazy, they most likely wouldn’t put in the effort to get to the polls on election day. However, there must be a class of voters that find that they agree with one party on a set of issues and the other party on the remaining set of issues. In this case they could easily be persuaded based on the candidates emphasis of the issues favored by the candidates in question.

Perhaps the more important question is: Who are these persuadable voters, because they control the outcome of the elections?






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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


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