Celebrity Endorsements Bring Out the Lazy Voters - Is That What We Want

 

Taylor Swift's Harris Endorsement Drives Hordes to Vote.Gov.

Hordes of the otherwise non-curious in participating in and understanding democracy. Is this what we want? Lazy voters who require a pop singer's encouragement? Does that help the cause of a better and wiser self-government?

Why would it?

When a nonpolitical actor like a celebrity endorses a candidate, it is interference in democracy because we let anybody vote regardless of their knowledge of our history, our civics, and our true, current events. The result is an encouragement of typically disinterested persons who are fans of a celebrity who will vote based on their endorsement of a potential representative; that is the opposite of what the Founders wanted, an informed public of individuals using their own minds.

That this occurs is an example of how this nation takes for granted the privilege of voting, not respecting it, because voting is supposed to be an intellectual process conducted by individuals. Its outcomes are not supposed to be determined by hordes of the politically lazy who will see an entertainer's choices and go along.

- James, HME