Voting: Giving Blind People Sniper Rifles

For the past week I've been inundated with Facebook status updates along the lines of, Get out and vote. It's your civic duty. No it's not! Perhaps I'm arguing semantics here, but when I think of a civic duty, I think of something compulsory like jury duty. You know, something that threatens imprisonment for failing to comply. Paying taxes is another one, but not voting. No, voting is a civic right. It's something you're allowed to do, but not required to do.

It's no secret that social media sites like Myspace and Facebook aren't exactly catering to Mensa candidates these days. Considering the fact that these places are abound with idiots, should we really use them as a platform to urge people to go out and vote? I've seen hundreds of status updates in the past month regarding voting, but none talking about the actual candidates. I understand that we don't want to sway people to one side, but if your friends won't do it, then those misleading campaign ads will.

How much can you really learn about someone from a paid advertisement? Have you gone to a campaign rally? Did you fact check the candidate through your own research and observation? Do you even know who at least 75% of the people on the ballot are? I bet some people can't even tell you who their neighborhood representative is, yet they want to empower someone to become senator or president. If you can't provide a brief description of what the Councilman At-Large does versus the Shadow Representative then you shouldn't be allowed to vote.

Because our country's history is marred by the not so distant memory of people being denied the right to vote based on physical characteristics, we choose not to impose any restrictions besides age and criminal record. Look at some of the people that you see at these rallies and tell me that you don't think some kind of intelligence test should be given beforehand. If anything, telling them that there's a test coming may actually force some of them to study.

Until that day comes we'll continue to have people voting based on the emotion of the day, which nine times out of ten is related to an issue that's been blown out of proportion and has very little to do with the job itself. Just how many times in a given workday will a congressman be faced with a decision regarding abortion or gay marriage? Two, four or six years is a long time to guarantee someone a job based on two or three really pretty bullet points on their resume.

A misinformed, uneducated and (sometimes) purposely ignorant emotional person is just as dangerous when exercising his or her right to vote as s/he would be with a loaded gun. You don't see us going on Facebook urging people to exercise their civic right to bear arms do you?