It’s not exactly a hidden fact that few people vote during elections. In fact, the Pew Research Center found that only 53.6 percent of adults rolled up their sleeves and turned up to vote in the 2012 election.
So how are the powers that be supposed to get people to show up? The good folks in Philadelphia believe they’ve found a solution. Exploiting the fact that people love money (and lots of it), the Philadelphia Citizen offers voters a chance to win $10,000. The lucky winner is selected randomly. Sounds cool, right? Well, it pretty much turns voting into trying to win the lottery. The editors actually admitted that the move is “sorta icky,” but “desperate times call for desperate measures.”
Which brings me to why I wrote this. I think it’s dangerous to pay people to come out to vote. This makes the whole thing feel like a bribe, and it definitely shouldn’t be. It feels cheap, like it’s not about electing new judges, mayors, and so on. People are just voting to win, not because they care about anyone on the ballot. The Los Angeles Times pointed out that offering incentives like money and free food “perverts the motivation to vote.”
So what’s our next move? If it’s bad to shove money at people to get them to show up, what else is there? Well, it’s stupid to expect people to be super geniuses that watch and read everything political under the sun. We’re all ignorant about some issues, and we can’t expect perfection in any form. We can’t force people to care. I think what we should do is make it easier for people to vote. We need to go online. I think online voter registration is a great way to reach out to people who feel they’re “too busy” to register through other means.
Maybe I’m wrong. What do you think?
