Reject Ignorance! Listen, Think, Decide

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A brief interlude into American politics.

The title of this post comes from the painting on the wall of the Electoral Commission in central Uganda. I think I may leave my comments about the transparency of the electoral system here and the legitimacy of the election process (in short: not so legitimate) but as I drove by the Commission this morning it made me think of the current controversy in South Carolina. We were watching the Daily Show last night (from Monday - takes a while to download things here) and John Stewart spent quite a while talking about the mysterious rise of Alvin Greene to the Democratic Party’s nominee for the 2010 Senate Elections. I was reading up on it this morning and I am seriously baffled. While theories abound, my (of probably many other people’s) favourite being that he was planted by the Republicans, I can’t help but thinking that it is a cut and dry case of people going to the ballots, not knowing either of the candidates and just choosing the name they like better. I suppose Alvin Greene does have a better ring to it than Vic Rawl.

So I guess it begs the question - is it better to be an uneducated voter and just vote based on an arbitrary system (whether it be the first name on the ballot or because green is a colour and Rawl is not) or just not vote at all.

Anyway, just some food for thought. If anybody has any thoughts/insight I would be interested to hear.

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