Modern Civics

Give them the answers and let them try again. Yep, and then you can go and vote based on your conviction that the person is lying. All we can do is make it so that people know what a candidate has proposed and said, what the voter and the candidate do after that is entirely up to each of them.In the case of the candidate, however, we would then have a record of his/her promises and stances. If they deviate, we'll be able to ask them about it and have them explain it for the next election. If nothing else, it gives a bit more accountability to the candidates.For example, Romney has been shown saying one thing to one crowd and another to a different crowd. He says whatever he wants to win over the people in front of him. If he had to write down an answer to a questionaire that would then be read by every voter in the country, he couldn't get away with that.

Understood. You're right. I could do those things, and get my message out...assuming I have the money to do so. Running for school board, I'm basically stuck with whatever cash I have in my bank account, and assuming I want to keep my house, my car, and my health, I really don't have any extra to spend on billboards and such.But that still doesn't address the fact that as a voter, rather than a candidate, unless they do those things, and I am made aware of a meeting, there is no way for me to learn about a candidate's positions.

It would be one more requirement for voting, much like providing proof of residency. It doesn't need to affect how you vote at all. As I've said, I don't mean to remove stupid votes, only uninformed votes. I fully realize that not every possible issue could be covered. What I would include on the quiz would be the top 3-5 issues concerning the voters in this election, as revealed by an average of any polls (possibly excluding outliers) conducted within the affected region. For a national election, this would obviously be the entire country, and polls of this sort are already carried out ad nauseam. If this issue became one of the top five issues in the nation, sure. But, obviously, this quiz would not take the place of current national media, indeed, if the current national media were better at its job, this would not even be an issue for me.In my scenario, the "Macaca" comment would still have been reported in the media as it was. When voters appeared at their voting places, they would have already seen (or not) this issue and vote accordingly. The quiz would only allow them to see their candidate's positions on the issues that (statistically) they care about most.If I recall correctly, the "Macaca" comment ultimately led to the candidate dropping form the race. Or, at the very least, he was not the one on the final ballot, so the whole issue is moot as far as my scenario is concerned.

Pretty much all of our local elections have two people running, one a Republican and one a Democrat. In some instances, we have someone running unopposed, but they are still, almost always, identified as R or D.But, if you're running for school board, unless the election has been given national scope, like maybe in Dover after the ID court case, or some place like that, the national party won't give you any money, only a local chapter will, and all they can give you is what they can raise, and what they can raise is directly related to how important people think the race is. School board races in this area rarely make any waves at all. That's a very solid answer. However, most people will vote for every race on the ballot, and in the absence of any information, usually go with party affiliation. If that doesn't work, they go for anything else that can be deciphered by the candidate's names. I know one person who, if he knows nothing else about the candidates, votes for the person with either a female or minority name.Requiring all candidates to answer a questionaire, and making every voter at least glance at it would give people more reason to vote for someone than the above.

I've explained this before. The quiz comes from one source, a questionaire that all candidates on a ballot are required to fill out in order to be on the ballot. The questions in the questionaire are derived from the 3-5 most important issues as revealed by polls asking for the most important issues in the district in which the candidate is running. Seeing as how people can and do lie, especially politicians, the process outlined above is the best I could come up with that would be unbiased. A side-effect of requiring the questionaire to be filled out would mean we would have a record of the candidate's answers. If s/he doesn't conform to the stances or promises layed out, they'll have to answer for that during the next election...or possibly a recall election.Also, the candidate couldn't pander to different groups. The answers would be the same for the deep south, the northeast and the midwest.

I guess I could track down the names of the people on the ballot, try and find their phone numbers (assuming they're not unlisted) or their e-mail address. Contact them and try and get them to answer my questions, again, assuming they're not in the middle of something when I call, or that they even bother to reply to my e-mail.But at the very least, offering their answers to a mandatory questionaire at the voting place would be much easier, and affect more people than just me and the few people I tell about my conversations with the candidates.

If the media did their job, I'd be willing to let them handle all of the issues. The fact is, the media doesn't do its job, so something else has to take its place when something as important as the running of our country/state/city are concerned. I would say, after whatever current deadline exists for receiving enough signatures, to ensure that the people are actually going to be on the ballot. Not necessarily. I would assume the candidates would have a well-thought out plan for the major issues facing the country.It could be as simple as "What is your plan for taxes?" The incumbent could say, "I intend to reduce taxes on anyone making less than $200,000 / year and raise it by 3% for those making more." BUt some of the most important stuff he said at campaign rallies was not, or barely reported on the TV. And that's my issue. He mentioned in one rally that he would try to remove collective bargaining, but it wasn't reported. Almost no one I know even knew he had said it. Then they voted for him, and were shocked when he went ahead and removed collective bargaining.Now, it's entirely possible, he would not have mentioned removing collective bargaining as a way to reduce the deficit (which was definitely one of the major issues ion the campaign) and the results would have been the same, but then we could call bullshit on his ads claiming that he only did what he said he was going to do. If he had intended for people to know his plan, he would have put it on the questionaire. So you prefer to go in with less information than you could have to vote? Sample ballots would be useful, at least I would see if there were any tricky worded questions or people I had no knowledge of.But if you absolutely don't want to learn anything more just before voting, then all you'd need to do is copy the answers and go about your way.

That's the way it currently is. Do you honestly think this is the best way to run things?I don't. I'm not entirely sure my idea is the best way to address this, and it may even be a terrible idea, but I'm just floating an idea I've been contemplating for a while now to see if we can make this country's government better. It's quite obvious the government is broken, and in a "free democracy" we can only blame ourselves. So that implies we need to fix ourselves before we can fix the government.

Great, and this is one way we can do that, by making people more informed.

No. The whole point is that he didn't lie, people just had no way to know what he said he'd do. Had they known, they may have voted differently. The recall procedure exists to remove an office holder from office for whatever reason we want. If someone were willing to petition and could get enough signatures to oust someone because they wore white after Labor Day, they could do that. But after spending thousands of dollars of taxpayer money in order to fund an election. And after the cows have already left the barn, so to speak. The thing people are upset about, the collective bargaining, labor busting, has already passed, and it will take a long time for it to ever be fixed. Had the people who are upset about this turn of events known that he wanted to do so, as he said he did, they may have voted differently and we wouldn't have to be going through this.

Very true. We can never get rid of stupid voters. But we can make the highest possible number of informed voters that we can. They don't do that around here. I think it would be a good first step, cuz it would at least help people like you, who are willing to read through it.

Not even ther founding fathers wanted one. That's why the dumb Electoral College exists. It's to protect the process from the stupid, uninformed masses...

That is exactly what I have proposed. If you have a way to make that goal more likely, I'd love to hear it.

I think he's hung up on the possibility of my quiz idea being used to bar people from voting, and doesn't like any system that reduces that chance of someone being able to vote.I understand the criticism, and I have tried to make it as improbable as I can...and if anyone has a way to make it better, I would love to hear it. But he needs to realize that the goals of the writers of the constitution were not to have everyone vote. They only wanted those people they considered would be informed and would make intelligent, if opposing, choices.The history of this country has expanded that group to now include anyone over 18. With the exception of the Electoral College still existing. I'm certainly not advocating the removal of anyone from voting rolls, but making the voters more informed, perhaps even despite their wishes contrariwise, is, to me, a good goal.

How does elementary school inform anyone about the specific resolutions and candidates on a ballot, especially since voters are, usually, no longer in primary school any more?