Democracy concepts and applications

Democracy & Voter Knowledge

Can Democracy Thrive if Voters Are Not Informed About Elections?

Today's political campaigns seem to be more about using media (TV, radio commercials and Web sites) to distort the opposition's record than it is about extolling one's own record. Indeed, and unfortunately, Americans of late have been electing leaders based on sound bites and 30-second attack ads, which are, unfortunately, effective in many instances. Indeed, truth tends to get lost in the medium when hundreds of millions of dollars are raised by both sides - Republicans and Democrats - to produce very glossy ads that embrace propaganda and distort the truth.

Without an informed public that votes intelligently - based on a candidate's record and what specifically that candidate proposes to do when in office - the country cannot expect to enjoy the full fruits of democracy. And when the nation's voters are making their election decisions based on attack ads and 20-to-30 second sound bites produced in newsrooms more concerned with ratings than electoral fairness, the democracy is in trouble. It is in trouble because, if voters can be so easily manipulated by slick attack ads, as they were with the "swift boat" attacks on Senator John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, the country could conceivably slip into a kind of neo-fascism. The U.S. may be approaching a new kind of fascism at this very time. More on fascism will be discussed deeper in this paper.

LITERATURE REVIEW: Where are voters getting their information for presidential elections? According to Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, one of the most respected research and polling organizations in America, only one-third of the voting public turned to newspapers for background information on candidates during the 2004 presidential election. It is not a secret that far more information about elections and candidates can be found by reading newspapers and magazines. The best source of background information on the candidate's voting record, his or her positions in the past and in recent days, and other pertinent data about the campaign itself, are in the printed media - specifically, newspapers.

PEW reports ("Sources for Campaign News") that about 24% of voters rely on network TV news, 25% rely on local TV news for their political decision-making; around 31% get their election information from cable news on TV; and just over 30% rely on newspapers, as earlier mentioned. The overlap in percentages is due to the fact that some voters read newspapers and watch TV news for their information on elections.

And meantime, of those percentages of people who watch TV for candidate information, and those who watch a lot of TV for entertainment but cannot help but see the ads on TV for candidates, they are bombarded with propaganda and attack ads. Most political consultants - the people who are paid to produce ads for candidates and devise election strategies - interviewed by PEW say the news media "is the leading cause of voter cynicism" ("The Views of Political Consultants"). Why? Because the media pays "...disproportionate attention to negative tactics and is harming the system by discouraging good candidates from running," PEW explains.

Sixty-six percent of the consultants interviewed by PEW say Americans are "more responsive" to negative ads than to positive ads. (it is the position of this paper that poorly informed voters are easily swayed by attack ads.) and 42% of consultants say "with enough money in hand they can sell voters on a weak campaigner." Indeed, 44% of the consultants interviewed claim they have helped elect candidates "who [the consultants] were eventually sorry to see serve in office." In other words, show me the money and I'll get you elected, even if you are a scoundrel, liar, an incompetent or a thief. Around 82% of consultants say that it's all right and ethical to focus "primarily on criticizing an opponent" rather than concentrating on the positives of his own client candidate.

AN EXAMPLE of HOW ATTACK ADS CAN BE EFFECTIVE, if only to plant a tiny seed of doubt in voters' minds, is the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" attacks on John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential Campaign. News reports subsequent to that campaign confirm that Republican funding sources in Texas (linked to George W. Bush) bankrolled the veterans who put together a book and campaign ads attacking Kerry's service record. Moreover, of the veterans who claimed to have served under Kerry (who was an officer) - allegedly "fellow crewmates" and "the people who know him best" - in fact, according to research conducted by the New York Times (http://mediamatters.org)"none of the men had actually served on the Swift boats that Mr. Kerry commanded." There is much more in the way of empirical evidence to show that this attack campaign was false, but the point is made that lies wrapped in glossy TV commercials during election time can be effective. In Kerry's case, he chose not to lash out at the lies, but many now feel he should have. Ironically, it was Bush himself who should have come under investigation; he got out of going to Vietnam by having his father get him assigned to the Air National Guard, and he failed to complete his required service there.

Meanwhile, many younger voters are not getting their election information from TV or from newspapers; they are going online. A PEW report ("Young high-speed users flock to internet for campaign news") shows that about 21% of Americans now see the Internet as their "...main source of campaign news." Among people between the ages of 18 and 35, PEW reports that 40% use the Internet as their "main source" of election news. Is that good or bad? It may not be entirely good, according to a report in C/NET News.com (http://news.com.com);that is because the Internet is not subject to the same election accountability rules as TV and radio, which require a candidate to say that he authorized that ad that ran. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden has introduced legislation that would apply TV rules to Web advertising, because now, he says, "You go in, sling your mud, hit below the belt, and get the heck out of Dodge before anyone knows who did the dirty deeds," according to C/NET News.com.