The Voter Rewards Initiative, also known as Proposition 200 on this year's ballot, aims to increase voter turnout by offering voters in Arizona's primary and general elections a chance to win $1 million by being "randomly selected" in a post-election raffle.
I've always been fond of using the ends to justify the means.
Still, while I appreciate the goal of Proposition 200 - stimulating voter turnout to ensure equal representation and promote functional democracy - I'm not sure if the scent of money is a positive or constructive means of coaxing voters to the polls.
Funded by the Arizona Lottery's unclaimed prize fund, the initiative is the brainchild of failed gubernatorial candidate Dr. Mark Osterloh, who has included provisions to make it retroactive for this year's elections.
You don't have to be an eye doctor like Osterloh to see how gimmicky Proposition 200 is.
While its intentions are noble, the end results of the Voter Rewards Initiative will not serve to improve the democratic process, let alone justify the mockery it makes of that process.
Osterloh promises in his blog that people he lures into voting booths with prize money will be knowledgeable voters, not haphazard ballot-casters.
He explains his position with an analogy, which he says is a summary of human nature.
Osterloh claims people become knowledgeable about televisions when they enter the market for a TV, and similarly, citizens learn about candidates and issues when they become voters.
The comparison doesn't provide for everything, though.
The key problem with Proposition 200 is the voters it would generate.
People who are sucked into the voting booth by the initiative won't be buying anything or looking to preserve their values. They will be participants in a million-dollar promotional raffle, and they will behave accordingly.
People who enter promotional contests to win money, in a voting booth, a TV store or anywhere else, will simply fill out the paperwork as fast as possible, cross their fingers while submitting it and walk to their cars imagining what they'll do with their winnings.
That is human nature.
The people who don't cast ballots fail to vote because they aren't educated about how the system works or because they lack the basic resources to do so.
Proposition 200 does nothing to address these real factors, which effect the problem it hopes to fix, and it merely subverts democracy while serving as the catalyst for some pretty tragic social commentary.
Have we failed so completely as a society that we need to reward people for doing their civic duty and make the words "voter" and "contestant" synonymous in the process?
Which fundamental responsibility will we make a raffle out of next?
There are initiatives on this year's ballot that aim to raise the minimum wage, ban public smoking, free the veal calves and define marriage as a heterosexual privilege.
Surely voters can find their own incentives to head to the polls on Election Day.
Daniel Raven is a junior majoring in journalism. His columns run on Fridays and he can be reached at Daniel.Raven@asu.edu. Be gentle.
