Political Litmus Test for Voting Rights

In today's day and age with the growing threat of international terrorism, economic uncertainty, rising energy cost, and the resurgence of the former communist superpower, American politics is more important than ever to the average American. With the evidence of the typical voter turnout, most Americans pay little attention to political campaigns. I can certainly understand this sentiment. Most political campaigns are full of deceit, personal attacks, and cleverly disguised innuendoes of personal experience and qualifications for the position the candidates are seeking. There are never better examples of these distasteful things than in presidential campaigns.

Candidates sling mud and oversell themselves throughout the campaign. For those who keep themselves aware of the actual positions and records of the candidates, all of the extracurricular gibberish is just that, gibberish. However, for the majority of Americans that pay little or no attention to such non-important facts like actual positions and records, the gibberish many times is perceived as fact. I ran across one shining example of this at a recent Christmas party. I happened to overhear a conversation between two people that were the typical non-political, uninformed Americans. One was explaining to the other that in 2008, when she was president, Hillary Clinton was going to give every American $4000.00 per child just for having the child. I knew what he was talking about because this was about the time when Hillary Clinton was attempting to buy a few uninformed votes from people like this by proposing something like giving federal funds to families for new children. When I heard this I asked this person if he planned to vote for Hillary because of this proposal she was making. He said that he would vote for anyone that would give him that much money.

This comment sparked a conversation between he and I where I asked him a few basic ideological questions. How do you feel about taxes? How do feel about government inserting it's self into you life? What about abortion, and personal values, and Christian morals? After he answered these and a few more question, I explained to him that he sounds like a fairly conservative person. I then explained Hillary Clinton's position and record on the same questions. He was shocked that he did not know any of that information about her. I explained that it was no surprise that he did not know this information. Most politicians try to keep the knowledge of their records and positions on certain topics, a guarded secret from those that base their voting decision on one or two advertisements that they see spewing the gibberish of the campaign.

There are certain number of people that know what they believe, and know what the candidates believe, and will vote for the republican candidate and about the same number of people that will vote for the democrat candidate. That means that our presidents are elected by those people that are just like the guy at the Christmas party, people that see a couple of commercials or overhear a conversation of people talking politics. This is a terrifying circumstance for people like me that understand the importance of American politics in today's world. I believe that it is tragedy that so many Americans take for granted one of the most important rights that we have as Americans. Because of its importance and worldwide ramifications of our elections, I believe that every American should be required to demonstrate that they understand the issues and are casting an informed ballot. I know that some people will say that this will disenfranchise some people, but I don't care. When a person casts a uniformed vote, they are causing more damage to this country than the restriction of voting rights to those who take the time to educate themselves about the issues and the candidates. I believe that this country would be better served if our national politicians were elected by a majority of the informed voters, not just a majority of voters.