Fighting Voter Apathy

Voter apathy in this country has been a growing problem for many years. Not only troubling in terms of the younger generations, voter disinterest in politics and government can lead to a whole host of problems, including the tendency for technological somnambulism and legacy thinking to prevail. As students of STS, our goal is steer the development of science and technology to the most favorable social outcomes. A government that cannot adequately adapt and evolve to regulate or foster these new developments is likely to fail us in our goal. Therefore, it is in our best interest to not only consider the design of a better democracy, but also examine ways in which we can motivate thoughtful participation that is representative of all the citizens. From lecture and supplementary reading, we identified a number of possible reasons for voter apathy based on research. Some of these included: “general disgust”, remoteness, capture by rich and powerful, and overall cynicism of the current system. I believe that these are the symptoms of two primary problems. First, the corruption and inequality of the system due to the controlling elite. We have thoroughly identified the connections between large corporations and politics through channels of lobbying and “revolving doors” between industry insiders and political positions. Secondly, the challenge of the “small voice in the large crowd”. This describes the tendency for citizens to abstain from voting because they see their contribution as having very little value or pull in the huge number of election votes. While our lecture proposed a push towards more participatory or direct democracy to combat these effects, the merits of a sortition (or pseudo-random) democratic process appears to be uniquely suited to meet these needs.

Our current representative form of democracy is plagued with problems of transparency and industry lobbying. The vast majority of voters do not feel represented by their elected officials, and yet the process of removing and replacing ineffective politicians is lengthy and difficult. While, in theory, a purely representative democracy presents a highly efficient way to make decisions, many of its pitfalls appear in the logistics. The Iron Law of Oligarchy is perhaps one of the most succinct ways to describe this challenge. It states that regardless of how democratic an organization may start, it will inevitably begin to fall prey to oligarchy thus eliminating true democracy. This is emphasized especially in large bureaucracies, which produce hierarchies of individuals with different levels of power. Power has the tendency to corrupt, and when those in power are corrupted, it becomes extremely difficult to remove them from that position. Furthermore, those in positions of power (in our current government) are by large majority white males. This distribution is not indicative of the population they are trying to represent. A sortition based process eliminates much of this problem. Voting power is given randomly to a diverse group of individuals who are representative of the overall population. Seen as a responsibility or civic duty rather than a career, those in this position would be expected to put their full effort into developing and voting on good policies for the public. Since this position in only temporary and always changing, participants will not be dis-incentivized from solving issues by the temptations of campaigning or elections to maintain their position.

The disinterest of young voters has been well publicized. Many of us are familiar with the “Every Vote Counts” campaign among many others. Encouraging people to vote, however, does not address the underlying issue of why so many feel that their vote does not count. In 2012, approximately 1.29*10^8 people voted. Although the process is not quite so simple, in effect every vote contributed to only 7.74*10^-7% of the decision. While not entirely logical or rational, there is a tendency to think that if only a tiny fraction voter’s opinion affects the output, why would she or he put in more than an equally small fraction of effort? There is some validity to the effort argument. If everyone who voted put in a week’s worth of dedicated, objective research into their decision, we would probably make far better choices for the country. This is neither practical nor realistic, however. Most individuals couldn't take a week off of work and productivity to pursue this, and the short term effects on the economy could be devastating. Basic economic theory tells us that when people specialize in one area of work, overall economy-wide efficiency improves. A sortition process helps to improve this efficiency. As described in one section of our reading, the sortition based process adopted by the coastal district of Zeguo in China has been using this process successfully for a number of years. As described in our reading: “if the public think their voice actually matters, they’ll do the hard work, really study their briefing books, ask the experts the smart questions, and then make tough decisions”. When people know that their decisions make a big difference, perhaps we would get a small but diverse group of informed decisions rather than a huge pool of half-informed ones.

"Voter Turnout in the United States Presidential Elections." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2015. 

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections>.

"Iron Law of Oligarchy." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2015. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy>.

Klein, Joe. "How Can a Democracy Solve Tough Problems?" Time. Time Inc., 02 Sept. 2010. Web. 12 Mar. 2015. <http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2015790,00.html>.