Not a day goes by that the average American does not see an exhortation to vote.

Watching NFL football this past weekend, I saw many ads featuring football players repeatedly telling us to “vote!”

Ads on TV tell us to “jump on board” and vote; public service announcements routinely urge all eligible Americans to vote, vote, vote.

Earlier this year, Newark’s City Council voted to allow 16-year-olds to vote in local school board races, seeing it as a teaching moment for participation in democracy.

They are all over the place, ads that imply that if you don’t vote, you are losing a key opportunity.

The effort to convince audiences to vote, without directing the viewer on television or listener on radio whom to vote for, is intended to imply that the goal of increasing the electorate necessarily yields fairness, objectivity and fair-mindedness, and that more participatory democracy is an unquestioned good.

America’s most perspicacious columnist, George F. Will, on the other hand, has recommended that voters consider not voting to communicate “thoughtful disgust” at the low order of candidates available.

But there is another reason to abjure total participation in voting, a reason that bespeaks some voter humility: the fact that a given citizen may simply know too little or nothing about the candidates or the issues to have a valid opinion.

Several times, as I have stood in line to vote, I have heard others say to their friends or relatives accompanying them, “I am not even sure who is running.”

Other times, I would hear just small indicators of ignorance, such as, “Isn’t he (or she) the one who never paid their taxes?”

What do you do when you see on the ballot a list of candidates for judge whom you have never heard of? Or referenda on subjects about which you know nothing or, if you’re like me, topics that include impenetrable prose that leave you clueless: “An Amendment opposing the granting of a previous amendment that has given more power to the city auditor, disallowing other officials to issue subpoenas to any municipal officer, municipal employee, or any other person receiving City funds to produce documents and allowing the auditor to provide copies of agency audits to the agencies that were audited.”

There used to be a 19th-century group called the Know-Nothing party — misnamed because they didn’t believe that they knew nothing, and they were quite radical until becoming simply less committed voters.

I don’t believe there has ever been a significant group named after their ignorance of candidates, but if there were, it could be called “The Ignorants.”

Granted, there are few voters who would like to call themselves that, but if they wanted to, they could call themselves The Uninvolved. If The Uninvolveds unite, let’s hope they have sufficient introspection not to vote, or at least not to vote on topics or people that they know nothing about.

When I was an active professor, I always knew those in the teaching profession who told their students, “It doesn’t matter whom or what you vote for, just vote!”

I told my students, “If you know where your interests or your country or state’s interests lie, vote; if not, don’t.”

Richard E. Vatz (rvatz@towson.edu) is professor emeritus of political rhetoric at Towson University and author of “The Only Authentic of Persuasion: the Agenda-Spin Model” (Bookwrights House, 2024).