Voter Apathy More Dangerous Than Voter Fraud

Is it voter fraud we should fear, or is it voter ignorance we should be fearful of?

Clearly voter fraud is an issue and can very well be the deciding factor in close elections. At very least voter fraud changes the margins of victories and losses. A bet-hedger or deck-stacker so to speak. But a far larger skewer of elections is the uninformed or otherwise not in tune with the reality of how our election process actually works in it current state.

Elections now are no more than a well orchestrated multi-media event. The masses of "We The People" are bombarded with what is fed to us by the media. And, sadly, many of us believe what we see in the media is wholly true and complete. Combine that with masses of uninformed people whose lazy patriotism or perhaps overwhelmed time constraints lead them to casting votes based on their limited views or, even worse, peer pressure or popularity.

Voter apathy, combined with voter fraud, threaten to undermine the democratic process. Photo Credit: David McNews/Getty Images

This results in elections being decided by the influence of big-money media and big-money lobbies that fund both.

The reality of today’s elections is that big money funds elections and they are what we call the special interest. The intentions of our forefathers were for “We the People” to be the special interest, but we are not.

So this raises the question of does the election process as it is today truly reflect the will of the people? Or does it reflect the will of big special interest funded by the elite money players?

Some may see our current election process to fraudulently represent the will of the people because it reflects that will in appearance only. This is due to votes being cast by less than fully informed citizens who just don’t take the time to seek the knowledge necessary to cast an educated vote.

There are numerous sites to help educate voters on how our system of government functions and how money influences legislation. Here are two, to just name a few: Open Secrets, and Follow The Money. After studying these you will hopefully be driven to seek more of the like. It is amazing to see where many members of Congress invest their money and that reveals to us why they vote the way they do.

As for voter fraud in it’s obvious definition such as multiple voting, non-citizens voting, and suppression of votes. Fortunately we have organizations like  True the Vote that make it their life’s work to bring integrity to our voting process and they will eventually succeed in reducing blatant fraud to near zero.

But it is up to us the make it our patriotic duty to eliminate voter apathy and cast votes only after being fully informed about the candidates and how the entire system works.

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