More ignorance

The City Pages today has an interesting article about a teacher who conducted a mock presidential election in her classroom in Eden Prairie. Instead of voting for candidates, however, she had students vote on positions only, without saying who stood for what. Kerry's positions won in a landslide, to the surprise of some students and parents.

This isn't all that unusual. I have heard of similar polls that seek to measure not only what positions voters support, but whether voters even know what candidates stand for. One study that comes to mind showed that out of eight issues, voters preferred Kerry's on five and Bush's on three. What was most depressing, however, was that most voters can not match positions to candidates, so when they preferred Kerry's positions they ascribed them to Bush.

As I said before, ignorance is poison to democracy. No matter what you believe, these statistics aren't good.