My problem with questions like these is that I can so easily see both sides of the issue that I have a really hard time deciding what I think. However, after some thought on this question, I believe that in a democracy, any vote is better than no vote - no matter how informed that vote is.
First of all, “uninformed” is a subjective term. What one person might consider uninformed, another person might consider a perfectly reasonable amount to know before voting. There is only so much that anyone can know about a candidate, and many people don’t have access to all of that information. Many people won’t know a candidate’s stance on specific issues, but they don’t necessarily need to. This is why political parties exist - so that a candidate can align his or herself with a party that most accurately describes their views, and then make that affiliation known so that voters do not need to do extensive research on candidates before knowing which one they agree with most. In this way, the minimum voters must know is what party they themselves are aligned with. Then they can vote along those party lines.
Second, this country was built on the principles of democracy, one of those principles being that everyone has a say in the government. True, it did not start that way, but for many decades now, every adult citizen has the right to vote. Therefore no one should feel excluded from voting just because they are not as informed as most voters about the candidates.
That being said, I don’t believe that we should make people vote if they have no interest in politics. Only people who actually care about the state and future of the nation should cast a ballot. I guess what I’m trying to say is that an uninformed vote is better than no vote, if and only if the voter knows his or her position on politics and the candidates. I do not believe that people should vote completely blindly, as that would not be an accurate representation of what citizens in this country want.
I have to say, I really enjoyed readying this post. It made me think. In my blog, I defined uninformed voting as knowing nothing at all. But after reading your post, I realized that in a sense, all voting is informed voting because of the political parties. However, I wonder how legitimate political parties are now-a-days because it seems that many politicians who represent, or are a member of, one party make decisions against their party's beliefs. It seems that political parties were more helpful in the voting process a couple decades ago, or even centuries ago, when American was just a baby and it had few issues to disagree upon.
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