As a little girl, every summer brought a giant new bucket of sidewalk chalk. I drew butterflies, robots, sunflowers and the most intricate hopscotch courses ever seen. Only a few years have passed since my eyes were opened to the other side of sidewalk chalk, the dark side. Used for shameless and unrelenting propaganda on an endless concrete canvas, sidewalk chalk screams up at you with every step.
All right, that's a bit melodramatic. But sidewalk chalk messages are a popular method for communicating with the masses, especially during election season. Usually promoting an innocent event or fundraiser, during election times, chalking is seen as just one more campaign tool and a smart public relations move in a world where the key to political success is to getting your name out there.
I wonder how many found something disconcerting with that last sentence. The ""key,"" really? Is that all it takes to be elected, to have the most people recognize your name? I suggest readers turn to their own voting experience to answer that question. I've heard countless confessions of voting based on name recognition. Do voters understand the harm done with uninformed box-checking?
Along with barrages of sidewalk chalk around election time, well-meaning volunteers knock on doors and approach perfect strangers reminding us to vote. On the big day, red stickers glare off breast pockets and volunteers seem to have multiplied to inexplicable numbers. Guilt sets in and off we march to our nearest polling station.
Ponder this: If you vote the name you recognize most, chances are you're voting for the candidate with the most money to print posters and brochures; the most funds for advertising on television and the Internet. Completely oblivious, voters may even be voting for a candidate whose name has peppered the news for poor choices and policies.
The candidate with the most money and most press coverage is in no way the same as the most qualified, and there may even be a good chance you wouldn't support their policies if you fully understood them.
Sadly, voting based on name recognition seems to be a fact of life. A poll conducted by Public Policy Polling in May found that the majority of Wisconsin voters believe Gov. Scott Walker would, ""prevail by three points [in a recall election]
based mostly on name recognition."" This should not be an accepted reality. What is the benefit of having a free and democratic government if this is the way we utilize it?
Voting should only be done by those who have taken the time to familiarize themselves with the current political agenda. They say that one vote can make a difference, and it can. An uninformed vote based on name recognition can be the one vote that gets an ignoramus into office.
Former Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry may be the perfect example of this problem. While serving as mayor, Barry was caught smoking crack cocaine on video. He was convicted and jailed. Scandal is nothing new, but the kicker to this situation was that after his release from prison, Barry was re-elected to a second term as mayor of D.C. and currently serves as a member of the city council.
The nine Wisconsin recall elections this year have been the biggest batch of recall elections in United States history. Democrats succeeded in narrowing the margin of the Republican Senate majority by two seats, and have announced plans to mount a recall effort of Walker next year. With stakes like these, we can't afford carelessly marked ballots.
In Walter Lippmann's 1922 novel, ""Public Opinion,"" he claims the world has grown too complex for the average citizen to understand. Lippmann noted that people aren't motivated to understand the larger political issues, and are only concerned about pressing local ones. He suggests the development of a governing class comprised of topical experts whom we would entrust to make all the decisions. I don't endorse this plan of reverting to Ancient Greece, but he raises a valid point.
Having every citizen cast a well-researched vote is the obvious but impossible ideal. There must be a happy medium between this voting utopia and the illogical mess created by uninformed voting. Whether it is based on name recognition or what color tie a candidate is wearing, citizens do more harm than good when they place a vote just for the sake of voting.
Democracy is a blessing, and as such voting is not only a right but also a duty that should be respected. My plea is not for everyone to stop voting, but rather for citizens to educate themselves before doing so.
Heather Heggermeier is a junior with an undeclared major. Please send all feedback to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
