In the April 23 Viewpoints section, Ross Lissuzzo argued with Wednesday Journal’s Our Views editorial, “Term limits won,” asserting that a “notable majority” of River Forest voters approved the referendum.
Lissuzzo called “notable majority” hyperbole. His contention is that no such majority prevailed because “the Yes vote received 14% of registered voters.” He contends that a 117-vote margin is not notable or clear “in a town of roughly 12,000 residents with a voting population of 8,400.”
Fallacies can take many forms, and statistics can hide the existence of a fallacy. In this case, basing an argument’s validity on something that did not happen is the problem.
Lissuzzo notes that 6,170 voters didn’t vote. It is their absence, apparently, that calls the Wednesday Journal’s citation of a “majority” into question.
Those 6,170 voters did, in fact, make their collective choice on the referendum. They left it up to the other people, those who did vote, to determine the outcome. Or, in all likelihood, they didn’t care one way or another what happened with the referendum or with anything else on the ballot. So like it or not, they are in no way part of any discussion of what constitutes a majority. Including them, even in the murky background of this argument, is invalid.
The logical fault in this case is known as the Red Herring fallacy. It invokes an irrelevant topic as misdirection — in this instance that the referendum’s majority is not remarkable because of those who didn’t vote. The burden of the argument lies in the silence of those non-voters.
During the run-up to the election, a number of distractive assertions were made in opposition to the term limits referendum, including the dire warning that its success would impinge on the rights of voters. Now we have the specter of non-voters who somehow are casting a cloud over the result.
Lissuzzo continues on in his One View, taking umbrage at Wednesday Journal’s approval of our village getting in step with Oak Park on term limits. In no way did WJ suggest that “River Forest voters are not intelligent or engaged enough to properly vote an elected official in or out of office” or that “only Oak Park voters have such capacity and wisdom.”
It’s worth remembering that what’s often between the lines is blank space.
Ed McDevitt
River Forest