Voting: Quality over Quantity
LINK:Â https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/04/us/politics/apps-public-voting-record.html
In the recent election, many have been urged by friends and peers to go out and vote in the election. With politics becoming increasingly vocal, apps have been created to show everyone’s listed voting records. People’s voting records, party affiliation, phone number, and name are all becoming increasingly public information with address and additional personal information included too. Other than being utilized by campaign groups, this information is now being used in apps like OutVote and VoteWithMe as well where all of one’s contacts will be shown with whether they voted or not and what party affiliation they are. This kind of information being made public will encourage more peer pressure in terms of both whether to vote and what party to choose. While people may have only voted if they felt strongly before, they will now be urged by friends to vote by reminders. There are also voting apps that are skewed towards Republicans or Democrats that will list those in their own party first to urge one’s contacts in the same party to vote. But while it is good to encourage political representation in all people, this kind of reminder and publicizing of information is borderline infringing on privacy and encouraging a coercion/ peer pressure culture. This kind of app, while meant for checking with friends, has also been used to check and publicize the information of public and political figures. For example, when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat running for House did not vote in 2014, she was found out through apps like these and publicized and criticized for it while in truth, it was because she was going through a period of depression at that time due to having a premature birth.
This kind of culture of overly observing everyone on their every move is unhealthy and will just create a more stressful culture like already imposed through social media. Also, not only is this kind of culture unhealthy and overly stressful, it will possibly skew elections in favor of one’s network or more vocal connections rather than having one truly follow what they believe in. Following the principle of information cascades, one may have believed a certain politician or a certain campaign belief because they believed it was correct or more in line with their moral beliefs but with enough of one’s network following the other politician or principle, they may believe that their connections know better or know something that they do not and will change their voting or beliefs to that of their connections. Also, Baye’s rule also begins to increasingly apply with the increasing vocality and scrutiny of strong feeling voters. If a person is on the edge of voting for one party or another, or even, if it is a person sure about voting for one certain party, if their network is all voting for one certain party and can see who this certain individual votes for, the individual is bound to follow the crowd since they will not only have to evaluate their personal beliefs anymore; they will also have to consider their personal image and the benefits and consequences of either choice such as the tightening or distancing of relationships between friends who see the political affiliations or voting of their friends. This kind of effect will be especially prevalent in the younger generation who are more vocal about politics and more bound to use social media apps like these. The younger generation will also have larger social networks and more feel the peer pressure to follow their friends to be accepted. With all these in combination, politics will be very easily skewed in favor of the majority political party in the younger generation even without real political stances or such being understood by all individuals. This system will be one with both pros and cons. It will increase political participation, thereby increasing the opinions given by those within the country, but on the down side, the increasing political participation will not be truly the opinions of the individuals, but rather the opinions of the overall networks and regions.