Every citizen who meets the basic requirements — adulthood, residency, and the completion of sentence after a felony conviction — can cast a ballot in North Carolina. There’s no test of civic knowledge required to exercise the civil right to vote, nor should there be. (Our state constitution still contains a Jim Crow-era literacy test to vote, but it’s vestigial and unenforceable.)
That having been said, effective self-government is difficult to sustain when voters lack basic information about candidates, issues, and our constitutional system. Surveys show such ignorance is especially prevalent among young people. In a recent poll of Americans aged 18 to 24, only a quarter knew the vice president breaks ties in the U.S. Senate. Most thought the Electoral College had responsibilities other than electing presidents, such as regulating campaign finance or certifying congressional elections.
Here in North Carolina, the latest High Point University poll tested the political knowledge of state residents. Some of the results, while troubling, fell short of catastrophic. Most respondents to the survey, conducted in late January, knew that Republicans currently control the U.S. House of Representatives, though 13% said the Democrats did and 22% were unsure. Two-thirds identified the GOP as the more conservative party and 55% knew that the U.S. Supreme Court was the federal branch empowered to declare a law unconstitutional.
But North Carolinians flubbed this question: “As far as you know, does the federal government spend more on Social Security or foreign aid?”
Just 21% knew the correct answer. Social Security accounts for one-fifth of total federal spending. Foreign aid is about 1%. Alas, most North Carolinians thought either that foreign aid was the bigger expenditure (41%) or that the U.S. spent about the same on foreign aid and Social Security (10%). The rest admitted they didn’t know.
I concede that civic knowledge isn’t a game of Jeopardy. Voters need not know which president prosecuted the Mexican-American War (North Carolina’s own James K. Polk) or was the first to be impeached (another native Tar Heel, Andrew Johnson) in order to exercise their franchise responsibly. Still, as America continues to stumble toward a fiscal crisis of unprecedented magnitude, far too few of us have a firm grasp on its primary causes and probable consequences.
If present trends continue, publicly held federal debt (excluding debts owed by one part of the government to another) will hit a record 106% of gross domestic product in 2027 and shoot up to 122% of GDP by 2034. Washington is now spending more on interest payments to bondholders than on national defense.
The U.S. House has just approved budget targets that, if fully implemented in subsequent legislation, would extend the tax cuts enacted during President Trump’s first term (generally good) and reduce future spending growth by trillions of dollars (also good). Unfortunately, under all reasonable scenarios, it also guarantees multi-trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.
Why aren’t voters more upset about all this? The reason isn’t a lack of concern. The vast majority say they worry “a great deal” or a “fair amount” about federal spending and deficits. The problem is that they misunderstand the causes and underestimate the necessary remedies. Far too many left-leaning people think it’s largely a revenue matter and can be addressed by hiking taxes on millionaires and billionaires. As I’ve pointed out many times, doing so might realistically nudge federal revenues up modestly as a share of GDP, by a percentage point or so. But our deficits are running closer to 7% of GDP.
Far too many right-leaning people believe combating fraud and axing a few programs like foreign aid will do the job. Nah. The sum of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, national defense, and debt service represents 76% of all federal spending. Eliminate every other federal expenditure and that still wouldn’t balance the budget (Washington currently finances nearly 30% of its budget by borrowing).
Voters deserve to know the truth. They deserve politicians willing to speak it.

Editor’s note: John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).