It looks like many of you have pulled some great quotes from the book and it looks like most would agree that Whytuesday.org completely misses the boat as far as finding an answer to this. I would have to agree 100%. As many of have said, the answer for the problems with democracy is not more democracy... and our problems with the voter turnout is not more voter turnout. I believe the solution is a more educated/passionate voters. It is my belief that if you don't know what the hell you are talking about then you don't have any business letting your option permanently effect another person. If you think the grass is green because the guy who designed the matrix wanted it to be then that's great, but you are severely misled and have no business voting on such false information.

And if someone doesn't have enough energy to get out and vote on Tuesday, its because they don't care. And if they don't care its because they don't have a clue what is going on and they have no business voting. Maybe moving the election days to Saturday would even be a bad idea. Sometimes I feel that the people we have running the country are already off the mark enough, who's to say we need "wholly uninterested" individuals participating? Not I. Those uninterested individuals are the ones who get representatives elected and have no idea why. They selected "all republican or democratic" on the touch screen and ruined the progress of those who thought through each individual candidate. That's my $.02

As badly as i wanted to be different; to say Lippmann would approve of whytuesday, I think the fewer people voting the better for Lippmann. It is important to note that Lippmann believes that the common citizen shouldnt vote because "he has been saddled with an impossible task and is asked to practice an unattainable ideal"(pg 29); Lippmann never says the common man is inferior or incapable, just that he doesnt have the time or interest. The question posed is what we presume a particular man would think based solely on his 80 year old writings. If Lippmann had lived 80 years later in our world of talk radio, NPR, CNN, FOX, internet and its oh so wonderful daily blogs, might see have seen things differently. The success and abundance of these forums shows that more than just the intellectual and cultural elite is showing an interest in the happenings of the government and world around us, and while it may promote the intense partisanship along with blowhards in bowties shouting at each other from across a table, Lippmanns prediction that "men, even if they had a genius, would give little time and attention to public affairs"(17) loses ground. The modern citizen may not always be able to direct, or understand, and there is still no universal moral code, but he can see and he can react to changes and problems with a much greater speed than the people of the 20s. Its a different world from Lippmann's that we live in, and while his writing may have interesting and relevant thoughts and ideas. To try to impose his two chapters of his work from the Phantom Public directly onto WhyTuesday.com might help us see better into the mind of Lippmann, but is otherwise pointless.

Given the tough stance that Lippman has made in his first two Chapters with regards to voter participation and reasonable expectations of citizens in a democracy, it would be easy for him to dismiss the Why Tuesday organizations position.

The Why Tuesday site explains that "'too busy/schedule conflicts' was the most cited reason for not voting." If this is the primary reason given for an effort that would change the voting date, I doubt Lippman would buy into it.

In chapter 2 page 26-27, Lippman states that "If the voter cannot grasp the details of the problems of the day because he has not the time, the interest or the knowledge, he will not have a better public opinion because he is asked to express his opinion more often." Lippman would not feel that changing the date could change the underlying apathy that the public has towards political discourse. So, Lippman may not care about what day the election is held, but he would not agree that changing the date would do much, if anything at all, to increase voter turnout.

I believe that Lippmann would see whytuesday.org as using bubble gum to fix a leak in a dam. It may work momentarily and give the bubble gum repairman a sense of accomplishment however over time more and more leaks will pop up and if we rely on the bubble gum to solve our problems the dam will eventually give way to the forces of nature and collapse. However do we really want to go against Mother Nature and try and stop her from putting water where she wishes? By saying “There is nothing particularly new in the disenchantment which the private citizen expresses by not voting at all, by voting only for the head of the ticket..." (10) I see Lippmann as saying that perhaps it's not a massive problem that all people do not vote. Maybe only people that learn and understand both sides of a certain issue and truly care about it should try and solve it. Do we really want people who have no interest in voting going to the polls and randomly choosing which policy sounds better just to increase voter turnout?

While I believe whytuesday.org is making a nice effort, I think that Lippmann would wholeheartedly disagree. He goes so far as to say that men, "even if they had genius would [still] give only a little time and attention to public affairs" (p. 17). At this extreme, it could be argued that even given a national voter holiday, voter turnout would not drastically improve. whytuesday.org argues that much has changed since Americans have lived in an agrarian society. As early as the 1924 election however, some Americans (surveyed) were already openly admitting they were "wholly uninterested" (p.8), not to mention claiming 'too busy' (they didnt even have soccer practice back then). Anyways, this is entirely beside the point. I agree with the above comment that it is not about low voter turnout. the fat man couldn't care less about ballet.

I agree that Lippman would probably see the efforts of Why Tuesday? as a superficial and ineffective attempt to propel a disinterested public into action--into caring about and questioning whether or not they are actually governing themselves. I think it is also interesting that he describes the "various remedies" that suggest "voters are inherently competent to direct the course of affairs" as "a false ideal" and then says, "I do not mean an undesirable ideal" (28-29). I haven't decided if this is an indication of a hopeful outcome or simply a footnote to let us know that Lippman is a good guy. Without reading further, I feel like Lippman might not appreciate me trying to extrapolate how he would feel about anything.

How do we get citizens to vote? Wow, I can’t say that it’s an easy question. I think Lippmann put it best when he said “the citizen gives but a little of his time to public affairs, has but a casual interest in facts and but a poor appetite for theory”. It’s true isn’t it? Citizens don’t care about what’s going on in the political arena unless it truly hits home with them. Do you think that public transportation bills draw interest from the SUV drive’n middle-class? Or that corporate tax cuts appeal to those on welfare? I’m going to go ahead and say, no! That’s why Lippmann explained that people have to discover some “rational ground for fixing his attention where it will do the most good”. This simply means that people don’t care, and can’t care, about every issue.

How does this tie into which day we vote? Well, it all has to do with caring. If people don’t want to vote, they can justify their absence at the polls with any excuse. You know, “I was too busy with work”, “I didn’t have enough time because of class”, or even “I had to pick up my kids from school”. The sad fact is that people just don’t care. We can always make it home on time to see the OC, but we can’t get out for 30 minutes, or at the most, an hour to simply vote? That’s crazy…isn’t it? I think that America’s attitude toward voting is plagued by lame excuses and a lack of enthusiasm or hope. And, I disagree with Lippmann. I think that we can be conditioned to appreciate voting. But I’ll wholeheartedly admit that I don’t know how to even begin conditioning folks.

So, you ask why Bill O’Reilly and Wolf Blitzer short blurbs on the big networks appeal to people. It doesn’t make them think. And, generally, people who tend not to want to think just don’t care. Call me a cynic; I’ll just call myself real.

I agree with what has been posted so far. I think the issue comes down to the fact that Lippmann has no faith that the "public citizen" will ever want to vote, in other words, he has a cynical outlook, while whytuesday.org maintains a more optimistic point of view on voter turnout. I believe Lippmann's response to whytuesday.org would be skeptical. Lippmann offers no real hope for a better voter turnout mostly due to there being a general disinterest of governmental issues in the public. Whytuesday.org argues there is poor voter turnout due to an inconvenient voting day. The site, however, is hopeful that if the day is changed, the problem will be solved. Though Lippmann also agrees that a lack of voters' time plays some part in the lessening of votes, he believes the source of the problem lies deeper and could not be solved by a simple voting day change. Regarding the "private citizen", Lippmann states, "You cannot move him...with a good straight talk about service and civic duty, nor by waving a flag in his face, nor by sending a boy scout after him to make him vote”(5). So, according to Lippmann's perspective, whytuesday.org's attempt to change the voting day would render just as little of an effect.

I agree with several of the above the post. It is obvious that Lippmann would not agree with the goal of why Tuesday. Changing the day of the week isn't going to solve anything either. Anyone else ever worked on a weekend? One of the reasons that Lippmann lists off as their reason for not voting was, "They were needed at work," but he also lists several others.

If Walter Lippmann hadn't died in 1974 and lived to see the whytuesday.org site I'd imagine he'd feel a lot like a Cubs fan at the end of any season in the last 97 years, disappointed. He would say, as he essentially says in chapter one of his book, that the reason people do not vote is not because of difficulty getting to the polls. He describes the voting turnout of a Chicago mayoral election in which only half the eligible voters participated. He states that only 30 percent of those who abstained had "an insuperable difficulty about going to the polls." In my opinion, Lippmann's tone seems to say that he did not believe the voter excuses. This is because he closes the paragraph with the sentence "About a quarter of those who were interviewed had the honesty to say they were wholly uninterested." To Lippmann, the problem of low voter turnout is not that getting to the polls is difficult or impossible because election day is on Tuesday and people have work. The reason is simply that the public doesn't give a shit for the most part. Whytuesday seems to miss the very large elephant in the room with the big ambivalence sign on it. Lippmann in his first 2 chapters is just describing the disenchanted man and the unattainable ideal. In other words, he is just describing the problem but has yet to offer any solutions. However, the solutions that he may or may not offer in the following chapters will certainly not be to offer more opportunities to voters. He mentions in chapter 2 the fallacy that the "cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy." He states basically that the problems of people's apathy toward voting will not be cured by giving them more apathy opportunities. If you move voting to Saturday instead of Tuesday, all that will happen is that now the people who used to say that they couldn't vote because they had to work, will now say that they couldn't vote because they had to go out of town. Lippmann would be disappointed because whytuesday and sites like it are missing the World Series, the point, the main reason why people don't vote. This being that they simply don't care.
Even though it is true that someone can attain a high level education and devote their lives to civic duty and attempt to vote on every available opportunity possible and have informed opinions about at least most of what they are voting on, I agree with Lippmann in that it is absolutely, categorically and freaking impossible for all of the people in the United States to attain that. It is an "unattainable ideal." Lippmann would also say that even if more people did vote if you moved the day of voting to Saturday, that vote would not necessarily be informed. That a mass of people just blindly punching ballot choices would not make democracy better.
Democracy doesn't seem to work and this was something that the founders of this country noticed and that is why this country is a republic, or representative democracy. The 'representatives,' although if anyone were to take a gander at federal politicians they would probably not find them statistically representative of the population, are who actually governs the nation because it is their job to care.

I cannot see how anyone could say Lippmann would answer positively to the whytuesday idea. But then again, I cannot see how the Cubs can go 97 years without winning the World Series. Perhaps someone in the class will come up with a different response. And maybe someone will start a bringjohnnyeversbackfromthedead site.

I agree that Lippmann would see whyTuesday.org's mission as mislead. Regarding his argument, whyTuesday.org is a futile attempt to engage a public that will not govern because they cannot govern. Lippmann's argument relies on the notion that Americans do not vote because the nature of democracy is incomprehensible to them, undue to a lack of time or inconvenient polling locations. I presume that Lippmann would think whyTuesday.org is missing the point and perhaps creating an even worse situation. The professor fable clarifies his idea that even if the people got there on Tuesday, would we really want them voting anyways?

I think that Lippmann would not only disagree with WhyTuesday's movement, but would also refute its mission. From their "Mission" page on the website, WhyTuesday seems primarily concerned with getting the average person to vote by removing any scheduling barriers they may face. But I believe Lippmann would see this mission as one that entrenches the assumption that 1)there is a public view (collective view of individual voters) and 2) the public view is sovereign (in terms of citizens actually wielding the power to govern). However, Lippmann's argument would be that citizens "[live] in a world which [they] cannot see, [do] not understand, and [are] unable to direct" (pg. 4). He is largely disillusioned by the "one man-one vote" ideal, and realizes that our system is not meant to work that way. In fact, the ideal is so flawed that he has never met anyone "who came anywhere near to embodying the accepted ideal of the sovereign and omnipotent citizen" (pg.11). As Peter mentioned, Lippman notes how ill-equipped the average citizen is to govern-- he/she would not even have time to keep up with the issues. Thus, Lippmann calls for a rejection of the ideal, or the mindset, that true democracy is where every average citizen has a representative voice. He wants to persuade the reader that "the Voice of the people" cannot govern.

Although I believe that whytuesday.org makes a good point, based on his first 2 chapters, Lippmann would think that changing the day would be a waste of time. Lippmann does cite several excuses for why people miss voting, such as “they were needed at work,” “detained at home by a child,” or “the polls were inconveniently located” (Lippmann pg. 8). However, he does not believe that this is the reason that a significant amount of people are not casting their vote. Instead, he suggests that it is the lack of time than an individual has to devote to every single issue, combined with a feeling of helplessness and a confusing sense of “truth” and “right vs. wrong.” Lippmann states that it is impossible to “ to find time to…know what is going on and to have an opinion worth expressing on every question which confronts a self-governing community” (Lippmann pg 10). He feels that it is very difficult to make a fully informed decision on a single issue without denying the other thousands of issues, that also demand your attention. Not only does he find a lack of time to be a factor, but also the question of truth and right vs. wrong. Lippmann illustrates this point with Darwin’s story of the cats and the clovers. By taking different points of view, one can see that there are no universal definitions of good and bad. (What may be good for the mice, is bad for the cats, and so on.) This concept can be very disconcerting for many people, and even force them to give up on voting all together. In addition to these things, Lippmann also says that today’s voters feel like a “deaf spectator in the back row” (Lippmann pg 3). Instead of seeing the problems as their own, they feel that they are only watching what happens to other people, and are only reminded of their participation when a war starts or when it comes time to pay taxes. Lippmann says that there are no schools that teach the average man how to imagine themselves in the big picture and no newspapers that make the problem real enough to inspire a person to act. This surreal feeling turns to apathy as time goes on, until finally a person feels that they are merely watching a movie about someone else’s life. Whytuesday.org makes the argument that because the US Constitution does not require voting by law, and the fact that Tuesday was selected as the voting day in 1845, people are not turning out in as great of numbers as they should be. Lippmann would argue that while this may apply to a few people, it is actually the larger issues that keep voters at home and not at the polls. Being overwhelmed by issues, conflicting ethics, and a fast paced society are what really hold the voters back.