Too Dumb For Democracy?

A recent Yahoo! News article says,

…incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people’s ideas…

…no amount of information or facts about political candidates can override the inherent inability of many voters to accurately evaluate them…

I like to think that Scottsdale residents and voters are above average in the competency department. For some time now I’ve blamed our political problems on lack of good reporting by our only remaining newspaper. That, in turn, I’ve said is caused by the inherent conflicts of interest between the management of the paper and the power brokers in the Scottsdale Area Chamber of Commerce.

However, this article is rather disturbing in provoking thought that the problem isn’t “them”…it may be “us.”

Certainly, apathy due to relatively comfortable living in Scottsdale leads to neglect of civic awareness and participation. I covered that in an earlier post on the subject.

But the possibility of the voters being too dumb for democracy is troublesome. Particularly with an election just 4 days away, it is so troublesome that I don’t want to think about it right now…but I’ll get back to you.

Meanwhile, your thoughts?

UPDATE: I was criticized by Mayor Lane at the DC Ranch Mayoral forum last night (31 July 2012), where he said that I think the voters in Scottsdale are dumb.

I’ve taken the liberty of adding a question mark to the title (which I thought was already there), to help clarify this as an expression of query rather than a statement of opinion. I hope this will be helpful for folks who might read the title and not the substance, let alone click through to the original article.

I’d also point out once again, that MY article is a commentary on an article published elsewhere, from which I quoted in my article.

As when I originally published this article I welcome your thoughts on this subject. If I thought you were dumb, I wouldn’t ask for your thoughts.