How Do More People Get Involved?

Okay so, as I discussed in my last post, democracy requires a lot of work by citizens for it to be fully effective. The question becomes, how do you motivate people to spend the time required? (Image: CNN) Well, the question puts the onus on the politicians and other concerned bodies to make people care. Though this is not how it should be, it is how it ends up being. How do we deal with this and make the best of it?

Politicians need to make an effort to reach out to the masses on issues that count and get people to believe they're serious. Though this can lead to these politicians being dismissed as all talk, a solid base needs a strong presentation to get anywhere. To see this issue in action we can return again to the often-cited case of Barack Obama.

Early in his campaign, Obama got noticed because he reached out to his audiences at speeches and debates by discussing issues they cared about in a way they cared about. He didn't jump into a typical political speech, but spoke of why these things mattered. This strategy was effective in gaining support early on and motivated some people who would otherwise not have have become involved in the presidential race.

This method got heavily criticized by his opponents during the primaries and general election campaigns for being not specific or substantive. The critics claimed that the message of reaching out and motivating people could not contain the complexity of the issues at hand. This attack is hollow in that it is simply not the case. It is hard to disprove it because there is no evidence to prove it. In the case of Obama, he did not sacrifice being specific for firing people up.

Some pundits, along with his opponents, drilled it into the minds of many that he was not direct and specific, but compared to all of his competitors he was the most substantive. During the election he was also criticized by some pundits for making lofty claims. These doubts too were shown to be false, or at least minor in comparison to John McCain's stubborn view on the supposed strength of the economy.

Though the efforts by some politicians to make the public more active in the process of democracy may leave them open to attack, the public usually makes the right choice at the booth. There is no way to measure the effect of Obama's strategy on voter turnout, but this election had a very high turnout during a grim time. Compared to Canada's turnout around the same time, the United States turnout is all the more impressive. This turnout results in a better democracy; the turnout relies on making citizens care.
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So, is it Really Just a Popularity Contest?

Following up on my wishful thinking on the student government elections at Western and my annoyed rant at partisan thinking, I got to thinking about the system in general. Is it really possible for politics to be anything but a popularity contest? (Image: The Huffington Post) If the answer is yes, how can anything ever get done without trying to win over or trick the public? What would make democracy not merely a popularity contest? Would it be viable? It really does open a can of worms to ask these questions.

I would take the position of many scholars who study the effects of media on democracy regarding the question of how there can be democracy in today's society. Simply put, this argument is that the voting public needs to be educated about the issues. The problem becomes that the educator in society on such issues is the media, which undoubtably has a bias.

Some believe that the Internet is a solution to the issue of bias because balance will result from the combination of many ideas and contributors. The general idea of this theory makes sense. There are problems, as I mentioned in an earlier post, due to an echo-chamber effect forming isolated groups of readers. In my opinion, the onus is on the citizen to break from these groups and educate themselves about all sides of the issue.

In democracy I believe the responsibility is in the hands of the citizen when all the tools exists because it would be undemocratic to force breadth on someone. They need to actively choose to venture onto other sites and seek out other opinions. Whether they do it to reinforce their own view or with a genuinely open mind doesn't matter. What matters is that they pay enough attention to be an informed voter.

If the information isn't available, the citizen is responsible to demand it. In this day of convoluted government and a mediating press, the citizen needs to be made aware that they are who the government answers to. They have a right to know and need to make themselves informed. The viability of a system of informed votes is driven by citizens. If they want their elections to be any more than popularity contests they need to step up.
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