by Kayme Moon

Created on: April 18, 2009

Voters are notorious for both complaining endlessly about the officials they have elected and doing very little about it. Often the most outspoken are those who understand very little about how politics work, or at least have a large part to play in the irresponsible voting habits common with most voters. In the end, it's not the politicians who are responsible for bad politics, but the voters, who have some rather unfortunate tendencies when it comes to putting their candidates into positions of power.

The first and most unfortunate tendency that voters tend to take on is that habit to believe anything that is told to them. Voters will accept anything they see on television or hear on the radio without question, and this will affect their vote in the end. Obama is a terrorist? Well gosh, that's terrible. McCain is 107 years old and going to pass away any second? Well that's no good! Countless rumors are started about candidates simply because people know what somewhere out there other people will believe it, and choose not to vote for that candidate. This also means that many of the lies politicians may tell about themselves, often little spins on the truth with the intent to put themselves in a more favorable light, will go unchallenged.

Another troubling issue that's pretty closely related is the bandwagon ideology. This is very common to see on website communities, where people generally will follow the same ideology, many times whether they agree with it or not. This can lead to many people voting in accordance with what everyone else is doing, not because they agree or support them, but because they're simply doing what everyone else is doing. It's a problem that's very well known and also taken advantage of, as many news stations and other media outlets will play with the voters by over exaggerating their favorite candidate's approval and success ratings. Closely related to this is the tendency for voters to switch sides in the blink of an eye, having little to no stability in the side they support.

Another troubling vice of voters is the lack of research. This is also somewhat related to the first point, because if voters cared to do any research on the candidates, they would often learn more than what the media outlets gave them, and by comparing multiple sources could also get the most unbiased and truthful information. If even half the current voters performed a little more than basic research into the candidates running for any position, many of the votes would probably find themselves on different sides purely for the reason that the voter would actually know their platform and what they were talking about.

Essentially, voters are to blame for bad politics (and have little room to complain) because of the way many of them so lazily toss out votes without proper knowledge of the candidates they're voting for. Voters need to do more independent research and get more information about candidates than just what they are given by the mass media.

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