The Responsibility Of Voting In The United States

In western democratic societies, people have gotten used to almost absolute freedom: of speech, consciousness, self-expression, gender roles, and so on. Freedom of political will is among the benefits American and European societies enjoy as well; no one can be forced to vote this or that way, and even though during elections politicians fall over themselves to convince the electorate to vote in their favor, there are no guns pressed to voters’ heads: a person is free to vote any way he or she likes, or to not vote at all. At the same time, voting is not just a right: it is also a great responsibility of every member of a society, because each vote contributes to the results of elections, which in their turn will define the way society will

But, for example, how many Americans unsatisfied with Donald Trump’s rule are there? How quickly has his rating dropped since the moment he was elected a president of the United States? This data can be gathered on the Internet easily, so there is no point in discussing it here; what is important, however, is how Trump became president, and what was his target audience. Attentive observers must have noticed how primitive and naive his speeches were, how easily he blamed everyone, promised to build those infamous walls against migrants, and “Make America great again.” Probably knowing that complicated problems do not have simple solutions, Trump and his electoral team still chose such a form of informing society about their political agenda that would appeal to the majority of their electoral base: uneducated or ignorant people who got used to blaming others for their own misfortunes. If his electoral base was not so ignorant and craving for quick solutions, it would question their candidate more, and would probably find out that there was no solid basis behind his loud words; as a result, America might have had a different president now, and the whole political course of the country could have been

For example, a test—not the one that would completely remove certain groups of society from voting, but the one that would ensure voters know what and why they will be doing during the elections. The right to vote would still belong to everyone—but a person would first need to prove that he or she knows (at least in bare outlines) how the American political system works, how the economy works, why and how things in the country work or do not work. Failure would not mean being banned from voting for life, but would require a person to learn more about the country he or she lived in, and then try to take the test again. And again, and again, until this person is competent enough to decide the future of the society and country he or she lives in. Besides, it would be fair: immigrants, for example, need to pass a similar test when moving to the U.S.—so how are the rest of the Americans privileged to not know how their system works? Currently, there are many advocates of the idea to implement testing before voting in the United States, for example Jonah Goldberg, a syndicated columnist and editor-at-large of the National Review Online, the conservative columnist Ann Coulter, and the former U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo (ThoughtCo). If what they suggest works out one day, the United States’ society could be sure that its life depends on educated, well-informed people, not on marginals demanding quick solutions to