Why not just ask 100 five-year-olds to pick a president? Ridiculous, you say. They know nothing of the world, the issues, the problems or the candidates. Their vote would be pointless, worthless. It would be undemocratic. But then, are we doing any better asking ten million voters to vote who have little better grasp of the issues and candidates than the toddlers?

To try to blunt the obvious assumptive leap, this isn’t to start an argument about testing voters knowledge as a qualification to vote. Not only would that be unconstitutional, but there is no way it could be accomplished without abuse. It would be a terrible idea and I suggest no such thing, even if all the recent talk of voter suppression pushes your perspective in that direction.

No, my focus stems from the same talk, but takes a different path. Is the failure to enacted two laws, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, a catastrophe of voter suppression in the making? Do you know what the acts provide? You can look it up, read the text, ponder its implications. You can familiarize yourself with the new voting laws in red states and compare them with the old voting laws in blue states. You can read the studies showing that these law have minimal impact on voter turnout or election outcomes.

But did you? And yet you likely had an opinion about them, just as you did about the infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better bill, the latter bill alliteratively B-named because Pork For Poor People did play well in the focus group.

The point is that even those of us who want to know the issues, the laws, the arguments, find it very difficult to get sound information. We’re fed a law with a nifty-name and a slogan that purports to capture all we need to know, and told to devote ourselves to our saviors. And before the lefties go all “whatabout” on me, it was far worse when the most Trump could offer in support of whatever scheme popped into his head was that it was “beautiful,” like his Obamacare overhaul that was kept secret by his Canadian girlfriend.

If you’re here, reading this, you’re one of the few sufficiently interested to make an effort to be aware of issues. You may be no political genius, but that’s not required of a voter. You may find law hard to understand, but so do most people despite their effort to try. But you are willing to put in some modest degree of effort to be informed, and that’s very much to your credit. And the same is true of people who read elsewhere, even if their preferred sources do little more than validate their priors. The issue isn’t whether your political leanings are right or wrong, or whether you’re capable of making some ethereal “right” political choice, but that you care enough to be informed. Even a little bit.

Most people don’t. The uninformed voter may have a right to vote, but contributes nothing more to democracy than the 5-year-olds. It was merely an extra lever pulled, or now a circle filled, to add one more vote but no more thought. Historically, the nature of voting in America weeded out the disinterested voter by requiring people to make the effort to register, to request an absentee ballot or to physically go to the poll to vote. For the voter who didn’t care, the effort was more than they were willing to expend.

As has been argued, there were interested voters for whom the old ways were a burden. Whether because they merely forgot to perform an act required of them on time or were constrained to work on election day, or suffered any number of legitimate excuses that prevented their exercise of their civic duty, they were interested in voting but couldn’t. It’s entirely fair to recognize their plight and remove the burdens that made voting too difficult.

At the same time, we’ve forgotten that many people who are eligible to vote didn’t fail to do so because of problems, but just didn’t care enough to be bothered. They didn’t care enough to be informed. If there were no party designations next to the names on a ballot, they wouldn’t have a clue who to vote for. And even with party designations, the closest they come to a reasoned vote is whoever last promised them glory, whether that’s saving America from the commie pedos or a free lunch.

The point isn’t that they should be allowed to vote but that we’ve forsaken the concern that the practice of democracy depends on an interested and informed electorate. Not only does that go unmentioned, with constant emphasis on numbers and little talk of winning a citizen’s vote by promoting polices that they support, but there is a concerted effort to keep voters in the dark, putting catchy names to laws, selling them by simplistic slogans and shocking hyperbole like “Jim Crow on steroids.” Politicians don’t tell us. The media doesn’t tell us. And for those who aren’t interested at all, but whose votes are crucial to outnumber the other tribe, the battle line is drawn over how little effort can be required to harvest their vote, not because they support a candidate or policy but because they’re there and get a vote.

If you’re entitled to vote, then you get to vote, even if you’re dumber than dirt, easily manipulated and misled, and lack the ability to make a better decision than a 5-year-old. But do not confuse the fetishization of empty numbers with a healthy democracy. The facilitation of effortless voting has removed a hurdle the disinterested refused to leap, which may well be the right thing to do as the same hurdle prevented voting by those who are interested but have real problems making it to the voting booth. But the dearth of serious information, accurate media characterizations, and concern only with quantity rather than quality of our voting public isn’t good for the health of our democracy. We need to push for better informed voters rather than just more warm but disinterested bodies. After that, we get the democracy we deserve.