By JOSHUA THOMAS

C-S-E Editor

I recently witnessed a conversation between an acquaintance and one of their friends. The conversation began with the acquaintance lamenting the needless abundance of political signage. He noted that he felt too many signs had been erected locally for one specific candidate. The other party in the conversation stated that he believed it’s often the property owners that place the signs, not the candidate. The acquaintance stated in response, “I didn’t know that. But one thing I do know is that if he gets into office, it will be very bad for our economy.” His friend replied, “How come? What do you know about the candidate? Have you been reading up on him?” The acquaintance stated that “no”, he had not read anything about the candidate in question. “I’ve seen a commercial about him on TV,” he responded, “and it told me all I need to know.”

After more discussion, I realized I’d seen the same commercial. Numerous times actually, and I had researched the claims stated in it, only to find that they were (as I suspected) misleading, and in one instance, misleading to the point that I considered an accusation false. Personally, I watch those commercials with the assumption that I’m being misled, and then I research the claims to familiarize myself with the context.

What I realized though, is that a lot of people don’t.

Prior to hearing this conversation, I only had the reactions of my friends to judge by. Watching television with a room full of friends recently, as soon as that commercial ended, two of my friends inquired if there was truth to the commercial’s accusations. I didn’t know yet at that point, but the simple fact that they were also under the impression that they were being misled, and were interested in hearing the truth, made me hopeful that everybody does the same.

I also recently overheard a conversation between two people I didn’t know where one individual stated that the government should test peoples’ intelligence and knowledge of candidates before allowing them to vote. It took all my might not to insert my opinion, and state the multitude of reasons that would be unfair, unconstitutional, and would cause a whole different series of problems, etc. The person they were speaking to agreed with the statement, calling it a “good idea”. The conversation continued, with both parties agreeing that “ignorant” people shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

And still, as ignorant as I found that comment, and no matter how frustrated I was that the acquaintance in the original conversation was content to seek no further information, I hoped in the back of my mind that both of these people — however limited or skewed their knowledge of what they discussed — would go out on November 6 and vote. I hoped that the mere fact that I was hearing these conversations was signal enough that they would show up at the polls and pick a candidate. In that sense, I was encouraged.

It doesn’t matter how ignorant I think a person is, or if I think a person is voting based on ridiculous reasoning — that’s their right. We have the right to vote ignorant, or vote blind. As long as we vote.

We live in a country where we can vote for the candidate whose hair color we most admire, or the one who most resembles one of our relatives. We can vote because we like somebody’s name, or we can vote based solely on what others tell us, even broad commercials that consider only one view. We can all be disturbed by each others’ reasoning, and that matters not. What matters is that we’re able to make this choice based on whatever reasoning we choose, because we have the right to, and as long as we have that right, the important thing is to encourage each other to exercise it.