The Dunning-Kruger effect: This is why voting is broken in America

Marc Hoag
Age of Awareness
Published in
15 min readNov 2, 2020

--

SOURCE: Marc Hoag. All Rights Reserved.

Every time I vote, I try to wrap my head around how We the People are expected to make informed, educated voting decisions not just regarding the presidency, but on state and local issues too.

I try to educate myself as well as possible from the most legitimate, unbiased, academically-verified sources as possible. It’s a lot of work, but I think it’s my duty as an American, an attorney, a business owner, a husband, and the son of an 83 year-old U.S. Marine father with a PhD who taught me that education is the most patriotic thing we can do for our country.

I don’t really care what political party somebody subscribes too as long as their choice was a properly informed one; what alarms me is when people cast their votes based on personal feelings or factually false information, often, ironically, to their detriment. I leverage this concern against both Republicans and Democrats alike; my disdain for uninformed voting does not take sides.

With ballot initiatives that require deep academic understanding of economic, historic, legal, and social issues, never mind the impossibly tall order to make informed decisions on complex science and tax issues, how are we expected to make wise choices on these profoundly deep and far-reaching topics?

--

--