Students learn to 'vote smart' during Molloy College discussion

“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man,” Richard Kimball told dozens of people during a discussion at Molloy College on Oct. 25. He was quoting Thomas Jefferson.

Kimball, who once served in the Arizona Legislature and as chairman of the state’s Corporation Commission, ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat against John McCain for one of Arizona’s U.S. Senate seats in 1986. Six years later, he founded Vote Smart, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that gathers and distributes information on candidates seeking public office.

“You’re in charge, and it’s a matter of you deciding to be in charge again,” Kimball told the crowd. Noting the nation’s founders and democracy, he added, “These people wrote to each other, they talked with each other, they weren’t sure this was a great idea. . . . They were concerned about it in a way that we aren’t concerned about it anymore.”

The talk at Molloy was a stop along Vote Smart’s Facts Matter Tour, and highlighted the need to stay informed as the election season comes to a head on Tuesday.

“Things like this are more important than ever,” said Dr. Christopher Malone, dean of Molloy’s School of Arts and Sciences. “If we can’t talk on a college campus about issues like this and educate ourselves, then heaven help the rest of society.”

Drawing on his experience as a candidate seeking Barry Goldwater’s vacated Senate seat more than three decades ago, Kimball discussed the evolution of campaigning in American politics, which he said has become overwhelmingly more negative. Even news outlets, he added, have resorted to opinionated and sometimes misleading news.

“Lies are fun, they’re exciting, they’re crazy, they can be outrageous, they’re entertaining, they grab news,” Kimball said. “A fact is boring.”

He showed the overflowing room of attendees the political commercial that he said “changed . . . the direction in politics.” Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 advertisement of a 3-year-old girl counting flower petals and the subsequent countdown to a nuclear explosion came in response to the perceived willingness of his opponent, Goldwater, to use such weapons. It was considered to be an important factor in Johnson’s landslide victory.

The ad started a troubling trend of targeting people’s emotions and attacking a political opponent instead of informing people, Kimball said. Candidates collected a total of $260 million in the 1960 election, he added. That number rose to $5 billion by 2008, and $13 billion in the last presidential election in 2016. That year, 80 percent of the money was used to “trash their opponent,” Kimball noted.

“You cannot move people intellectually on an issue facing society and the options for dealing with it in 30 seconds,” he said, “so if you want to win, you better not try.

“It will not stop,” he continued. “We have to make you angry, even learn to hate.”

The percentage of election candidates who take Vote Smart’s Political Courage Test, an initiative to obtain answers about their attitudes on different issues, has declined from 72 percent in 1996 to 7.5 percent in 2016. “They won’t do it because they’re afraid of opposition research,” Kimball said of candidates of both parties.

Still, people can go to votesmart.org to analyze candidates’ voting records and use VoteEasy, an interactive tool that allows voters to see which candidates they align with on an array of matters.

Danika Porcenat, a Molloy junior, said she had never heard of Vote Smart and that the presentation was an eye-opener. “I’m registered to vote, but I’m not really sure what candidates to vote for,” she said, “so I’m definitely going to bring this with me and do my research.”

She was among the students who attended at the request of their professors, including Robert Goch, who teaches finance. He explained the political climate as “a lot of screaming, a lot of lying and a lot of negative campaigning,” adding, “I think it’s important for [my students] to go to an event like this to understand what it’s like to be a citizen in the true sense of the word.”

“Most of the media is very biased, on both sides, and I think that’s a huge problem nowadays,” said freshman Raul Fernandez, adding that the presentation shines a light on what to focus on.

A number of students told the Herald after the talk that they have a balanced news diet. Sophomore Pat McCarthy said he watches Fox, MSNBC and CNN to get different viewpoints, but that it’s often hard to know which narrative to believe. He noted that he trusts newspapers and online outlets to be less biased than television news media and emphasized participation in elections as vital. “If we want to get the right people in office, people our age need to go out and vote and not complain,” McCarthy said.

Roughly 20 students from Kellenberg Memorial High School in Uniondale also attended the discussion. History teacher Matthew Bursig said that he has taught his students that collecting facts is applicable not only in classes such as history, science and English classes, but also life.

“I always tell them, I don’t care if you’re a Republican. I don’t care if you’re a Democrat . . . as long as you base your argument in facts of some kind and you’re using that to make your ultimate decision,” Bursig said.

Caleb Pierre, of Baldwin, a Kellenberg junior, said Vote Smart can help people who think they aren’t informed enough to participate. “You can find information about anybody,” he said. “The best way to change something is start off local and you go bigger.”

Though Vote Smart is still unknown to much of the public, Kimball said, he stressed the importance of people who aren’t using it to at least seek unfiltered facts. “If it isn’t Vote Smart,” he said, “it’s got to be something where a right-wing conservative and a left-wing liberal can turn to and know it’s not tainted.”