Reflection: Week Four

In our debate over the benefits and drawbacks of the election process this week, I couldn’t help coming back to an interesting debate demo round I watched one of the first days of Debate Society at AU. I had wanted to bring it up in class but it never quite fit into the trajectory of our conversation. The theoretical proposition related directly to this notion of populism vs. elitism, or more easily understood as the “people are dumb” debate.

In the debate round, parliamentary team proposed the existence of a magical machine that could read a person’s reasoning capabilities, knowledge of current events, and basic political intelligence. The team proposed that every American citizen should have to pass this magical intelligence screening in order to vote in elections. Benefits of this would include more informed election results, less pandering and smear campaigns by political candidates, and more healthy debate come election time. The opposition argued that this violated the values of democracy and disproportionately affected the nation’s poor. They argued that the common low-income citizen who is barely holding together two jobs and a family does not have time to keep up on current events and may be less educated. Both sides presented enormously valid points and by the end of the debate my head was spinning.

While this proposition of a magical screening machine seems silly at first, the resulting debate is a very basic dispute over the very essential ideals of democracy. The populist v. elitist debate continues to pull me in opposite directions intellectually. After all, the average citizen simply does not have the time or knowledge base to understand the complexities of tax structure, history of foreign countries in the Middle East, or economic recovery theories. And in this country, we don’t expect them too. The politicians and their staff are the ones with experience, education, and time to study and sift through these complicated decisions. Because of this, what tends to happen is politicians make the informed decisions and then try to sell it to the public as if it was their idea.

Throughout the week, I will be continuing to grapple with this debate that really gets at the core of the purpose of elections in our democratic system.