What's Wrong With This Election??

I've never been one for the show Dirty Jobs, but after reading what celebrity Mike Rowe had to say to a fan asking him to encourage his fans to vote, I instantly gained a massive amount of respect for the guy. While agreeing with his fan that voting is fundamentally important, Mike goes one step further and acknowledges what so many people fail to: that the very voters celebrities encourage to head to the polls are also some of the most ill-informed people. This touches directly on the issue of rational ignorance. Without using those exact words, Mike Rowe addressed one of the underlying issues with our political system. With such a large number of voters, a fraction of those people will be well educated and well versed in the major issues at hand each election cycle. To encourage those who do not take the time to study economics, history, politics, and other relevant subjects, is to encourage ignorant people to make decisions for the whole country.

Not only does Mike address the idea of rational ignorance, but he takes the stance that voting is not a duty or a moral obligation but is instead a fundamental right. With that, he likens encouraging people to go out and vote without first educating themselves to encouraging people who know nothing about guns to go buy an AR-15. Does this seem responsible to you? He pushes back against celebrities using their visibility to send people to the polls by saying that kind of ignorance is how we have arrived at our current predicament with two downright lousy presidential candidates. This is because the rationally ignorant voter is just as likely to vote for issues/candidates that are against their self-interest as they are to vote correctly in line with their beliefs. Mike would therefore relax the assumption in the Downsian model of no abstentions, and even encourage people to abstain from voting if they wish to remain rationally ignorant. He sees abstaining from voting as a positive if the people who would otherwise show up to the polls choose poorly. Because of these poor choices, now it is a game of 'who do we hate the least' instead of selecting the most qualified person for the job.