Fri 17 Oct 2008

What If You Had To Qualify To Vote?

It's been over six months since my last post about politics and the political process, so it might be safe to do another one. I got stuck on a thought experiment last night and wanted to note this down whilst it still fresh in my mind.

Following random links for no particular reason (I think I went from Catie's personal blog to her postgraduate one ) I ended up reading this post. I'm often distinctly undecided about the broader issue of compulsory versus voluntary voting, but I iked the author of that piece's characterisation of voting as including an expectation that people will vote in an informed fashion. That's what got me thinking.

Suppose a society took this to the extreme ends that you had to pass a test before you were permitted to vote (or maybe you had to sit the test and vote and its result would determine whether your vote counted, but you wouldn't know that result). The question is then, what would this test look like? I'm not thinking about a civics exam here or the sort of thing you might get on a citizenship test. Those are checking if you understand the basic ideas behind the system of government in the country at hand. Instead, how would you test to see if the individual had some grasp on the actual issues and, more importantly, on the candidates' opinions on those issues

Practicalities like needing to be able to assess the result quickly and, probably, automatically, mean long-form answers are out and it's likely to be multiple choice (and possibly more-than-one-choice). It seems hard to write questions that don't either give away the answer by putting the ideas in your head in the first place or that actually distinguish between the candidates. For example, "Have you heard Mr. X discuss topic Y?" is probably not a good discriminator. If topic Y is at all significant and Mr. X's opponent mentioned it, it's a safe bet that Mr. X responded to his opponent simply because the media tend to ask questions based on the oppositions' statements from the previous day or hours. So there's often a lot of correlation between what all the candidates are talking about when looked at over the course of an election campaign.

On some issues there are probably sensible questions like "Mr. X's position on education could be best described as: (a) ..., (b) ..., (c)..." I have a hunch, however, that concisely and accurately summarising a position on a major policy issue in a length that could be on a test would be very difficult. Major issues are nuanced and there's not a lot of room for naunce in a two sentence summary.

There also might be a problem with the test influencing your opinion, rather than measuring it. What if a question brought up an issue or statement you had forgotten about? Now it's in the front of your mind and you even attach some significance to it because you realise you had forgotten or not known about this. Maybe it makes you worried about that candidate. Maybe it makes you certain they're the right choice. Probably it'll be less influential than that, but an ideal test measures and doesn't change the subject being tested.

So think about this. How could you test a potential voter's understanding of issues without influencing them? You can't necessarily draw examples from politic polls, since they are often striving for a measurable comparison, rather than testing understanding. It seemed like every question I came up with had some hidden dark side to it.

Maybe the lesson is simply that we shouldn't hope for that particular future.

Topics: politics