Why should voters vote?
Editor’s note: The contestants were given free rein for their second post of the day. You can read Robert Lehrman’s earlier post here. “People are idiots,” a friend of mine said. “Who said they should vote?” Well, the point of a democracy is that even idiots should be allowed to vote. But in the run-up to November, we shouldn’t romanticize what people know as they’re walking into the polling booths. Some facts. About half of American grownups can’t name the three branches of government. A third of Republican voters believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim – more, apparently, than believed it on Inauguration Day. Back in 2004, 72 % of Republicans – and if I remember right, 26% of Democrats — believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But the problem with what Americans know isn’t limited to politics. For decades, polls show about 20% of Americans believe the sun revolves around the earth. Enormous chunks of Americans believe that the movement of galaxies billions of light ye
