quote:As to whose "assessment" it is, the best place to get a list of platform points is from the candidate him/herself, no?
Not necessarily.
quote:On a more serious note, maybe have a rule that a candidate must have some type of platform included in the voting booth associated with their name so that people who have never done an ounce of research might actually be able to see what that person stands for at least once.
Or at least what they claim to stand for.
Hmm. I don't know why you think that is relevant.
I'll point out that the idea isn't to accurately divine the intentions of the candidate, but ensure the voter has some familiarity with what the politician's claims are.
If the politician was actually lying about his intentions, that would be good to know, but you'd be hard pressed to have that insight without actually knowing what the politician said.
As a method of ensuring the voter knows something about the person they are voting for, I think requiring them to identify the politician's stated agenda is a reasonable method.
It doesn't even have to be a test of prerequisite knowledge. Merely provide the information in one step of the voting application flow, then have the voter match it up in the next step. Just enough to confirm the voter has actually read the basics of the stated platform.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Hey, 5 years ago, didn't you argue that it's not worth it for you to vote at all?
For me, and for the presidential election, yes. As I live in NJ, our electoral votes are going to the democrat no matter what, and we don't have the ability to split our block like some other states. So, due to the existence of the electoral college, many voters are in essence disenfranchised (myself being one of them).
That's not to say I wouldn't vote for a Democrat (I have in the past, and likely will again at some point), but that it doesn't really matter if I vote for president at all, because the state leans so heavily in one direction.
However, all *other* elections are very important, because they still are decided by popular vote. Everything from Senators, Representatives, and Governors... all the way down to local school board.
And while senate/governor candidates bash it out in huge television campaigns, those smaller elections (Freeholder, mayor, school board) don't usually have that kind of money. So many people go in to vote, and have little to no idea anything about the candidates.
If nothing else, I think it would be important for there to be a brief blurb about what each candidate says they stand for so that the voters can get an idea while they're in the voting booth.
Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Well, she was just returning the same insult that Tom had just applied to people with college degrees, so it's not like it was unprovoked.
Except that Tom qualified his statement. Read it again:
quote:Not many. In fact, depending on how you define "require," possibly not any. There are a few for which a degree system of some kind -- as opposed to a vocational certification system -- might still be useful, maybe. But even then I'm left thinking that the degree winds up being a measure of self-important fluffery instead of actual qualification.
As opposed to Rabbit's overt generalization:
quote:That' exactly the kind of self-important fluffery and rationalization I'd expect from a college drop out.
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