Some of the most auspicious voting irregularities in U.S. history have come out of Chicago. Auspicious, that is, if you’re a friend of the mayor. So when I heard about some problems at a North Side polling station on Super Tuesday, I figured we were going to see another stellar turnout for the zombie demographic. Fortunately for those of us who oppose brain subsidies to the walking dead, the problems were relatively mundane and confined to only about 20 voters. Unfortunately for those of us who oppose brain subsidies to gullible citizens, the irregularities have sparked an outcry for increasing the minimum level of intelligence needed to participate in a democracy.

The problem, as reported by the Chicago Tribune, was that some voters were mistakenly given electronic stylus pens (which are only used for electronic voting machines) and told to record their vote in “invisible” ink.

Now, before you go slack-jawed with incredulity, most of the voters did inform the poll workers about the high level of silliness they were feeling while furiously rubbing a piece of paper with a tiny plastic nub. They were reassured by the election judges that these miracles of modern technology were functioning as intended. They maintained this fact even after the electronic vote counter rejected the ballot as blank. Twenty times in a row.

Well, let’s not conclude that liberal democracy is a failed experiment just yet. Everyone has their failings in the common sense department. Plus, it is a well-documented trait of the human species that we are unable to resist the allure of authority figures. If you’ve taken a psychology class, you might be familiar with the Milgram experiments. They were a series of tests conducted in the early ’60s to determine the extent to which a person would be willing to follow an authority figure contrary to their conscience. The results weren’t good. Look it up on YouTube.

Even excluding the issue of how bad our training for election judges must be, there are important questions to be asked in the wake of “invisible-ink-gate.” On the surface we might simply ask of those twenty disenfranchised voters, “Why couldn’t you just stand up for yourself?” This kind of question comes straight out of the libertarian corner of our hearts: the same part that is constantly demanding independence from the rest of our heart. And as much as I’d like to buy into the enlightenment ideal of every person being as fully capable of rational self-determinacy as the next, this just does not seem to be the case.

At almost every level of individual decision-making we must inevitably defer to authority on some level. Other people just know more than we do about a lot of things. Like particle physics. Or the weather. Or why we don’t need habeas corpus. Or magic pens.

Regardless of the kind of information we need, we are forced to rely on sources that have some amount of qualification greater than our own. This especially includes the esoteric realm of public policy, which happens to also be fundamental to our lives as citizens.

And that leads us to the really important question: “Is our eagerness to heed authority problematic for democracy?” The answer is invariably, undeniably: yes. For the most part we are very good at figuring out how reliable another person is. But do not pretend that submission to authority is endemic to neoconservatives, radically fundamentalist Muslims, or Germans circa 1933. It is a quality inherent to any community in which individuals must rely on the testimony of others.

So are we justified in scoffing at those voters who happily rubbed away their right to vote? Probably not. But are we justified in urging other members of our society to not always defer to a higher authority? Definitely.

As Mr. Churchill understood it, “Many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

Justin is a senior in religious studies. Think for yourself. Question authority.