With University of Wyoming ASUW elections wrapping up last week, I find it pertinent to ask one simple question: Why vote?
Obviously there’s a simple answer to such a query: a person should vote in order to allow their voice and opinions to be heard and represented by candidates in our country.
However, it’s becoming increasingly clear, to our generation especially, that what we desire doesn’t really seem to matter all that much to our political representatives.
A recent study conducted by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, both analysts from Princeton and Northwestern Universities, has made the rounds on the Internet this past week. In it, they reveal findings that point to the conclusion that America is no longer a democracy, much less the democratic republic that was envisioned by the men we lovingly refer to as the “Founding Fathers.”
Rather, we have become an oligarchy, wherein a select group of citizens, holding elite status due to their money, essentially control government.
The study is creating a bit of a tumult on the ever-expanding and amorphous world of social media, but I don’t quite understand why.
First, let me clear something up: America has never been a democracy, nor was it ever founded to be one.
The original Constitution favored white, landowning males. In fact, if you didn’t fit into this select category of individuals, you were essentially a non-citizen.
Not much has changed, to be honest.
In Steven Rosenstone and Mark Hansen’s expansive book Mobilization, Participation and Democracy in America, the two men analyze who it is exactly that politicians mobilize to vote. Their findings support Gilens and Page’s study.
Because political campaigns are so costly, and it makes more sense to focus on mobilizing voters who will actually donate money and show up to the ballot boxes come election day, the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum are given quite a bit less attention than the more affluent demographic.
People with more money are the ones who donate large amounts to political campaigns, and more often then not are the ones who actually understand politics because, well, they have time to devote portions of their life to it.
Once these more affluent members of society aid in getting politicians elected, the “popular” representatives are obviously more beholden to them.
What’s important to note is that this is nothing new, and moreover, there is no large conspiracy by “Big Brother” to suppress the opinions of the masses. Rather, the political system we have in place is the result of our own advancement.
Politicians are forced to campaign across geographically large areas in order to mobilize their constituents, so it makes sense that they are going to dedicate the majority of their funds and time to speaking directly towards the sector of the population that actually can help get them elected.
With the recent Supreme Court ruling which sided in favor of eliminating the limits on how much money a single person can donate in any given election cycle, I don’t see money divorcing itself from politics any time soon.
However, we really shouldn’t be worried by any of this. At the local level, voting still matters quite a bit. And I don’t think any election is “rigged” simply because people can give all their money to certain political parties.
This brings me back to my original point: why vote? I’m sure those of you who plan on voting will continue to do so anyway, and those who don’t care enough to do so in the first place won’t start, but the question itself still demands at least some sort of contemplation.
If people who can offer the candidates money are more and more driving political campaigns, then it is up to the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum (so pretty much all college students) to start voting smarter.
Stop listening to the news about candidates and start looking up their voting records.
Stop looking at whether a candidate has a D or R next to their name on the ballot and start researching who he or she actually is as a person.
If we want to live in a functioning “democracy” again, then we need to take responsibility for being the complacent and all around ignorant citizenry we’ve become.
