Mike Rowe Shares His Wise Opinion on Voting

His closing paragraphs say otherwise.

Somewhat ironic considering he suggests "studying American history" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test

not really. he seems to be suggesting everyone go do their own research, determine what's well-reasoned to them, and then vote.

I disagree. I think it's a very important point to be considered that most people voting know little to nothing about politics, law, or the issues at stake.

Look at Brexit-- there was an article in the Independent this week with this title:

> Leave voter who wants to 'control our own laws' can't name single EU law

You don't think it's a problem that our countries are being guided by people who haven't got a clue whether the thing they're voting for lines up with what they profess to desire from their government?

Personally I consider it the single largest problem with democracy and one of the most difficult issues of modern times. How can you simultaneously allow everyone a say, yet filter out all the noise of people whose opinions are simply invalid ?

If the task at hand is to build a bridge, and you have a group of 100 people composed of 5 structural/civil engineers and 95 other people, 10 of whom genuinely believe play-doh is a viable material for large-scale construction, should all votes on how to go about building the bridge truly be weighted equally?

No, it is't. He's saying you don't need to encourage people to vote. If you have done your research, presumably you will want to vote. If you haven't done your research, then maybe you will want to vote still, or not, but you shouldn't encourage people who haven't researched to vote.

I think it's more about uneducated votes (which you could argue are unqualified), but I wouldn't want to impose voter suppression laws to fix this. Hopefully they can come up with a way to educate people enough that it raises the quality of the votes, without reducing them quantitatively. :)

We see this kind of thing in The Netherlands too (which I'm from); a referendum about a trade agreement between Europe and Ukraine. Large amounts of "no"-votes were based on the argument that Ukraine shouldn't become a member of the EU. Which is really not what the referendum was about. Although in this case it's maybe less uneducated and more fear-based.

Mike Rowe from what I can recall is very pro-union which doesn't typically vote republican. He's also a San Francisco resident, whom collectively also aren't typically republican.

Given his general audience, I'm guessing that many of them are conservative, and will vote Trump. So I don't think he'd have an issue if he came out pro Trump in that regard.