Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Voting
Four years ago, I wrote a piece on why every vote counted. It was to counter the argument or rationalization that why go to the polls in an overwhelmingly anything district. Since everyone “knew” who the winners would be ones vote was wasted. This election I think it is time to deal with the idea that only the informed should be allowed to vote.
There are several issues that come together here, 1) is voting a privilege or a right, 2) If a right, are any restrictions meaningful, and 3) if a privilege, what restrictions are legitimate. One can argue from theory that it is a right, and from history that it is a privilege. At the risk of sounding like an ad hominum argument, thinking that only the informed should vote is has a very elitist flavor to it. I will not use that as an argument. Elitists can be right or wrong as often as anyone else, despite their pretentions otherwise.
The greatest difficulty in a discussion like this is to avoid falling into pragmatic argument—the uninformed are more easily swayed and that can cause mass migration to one candidate or issue, possibly to the detriment of the country, state, city. Results are not a valid argument, since they can change in another direction the next time. For that matter one cannot argue that only the uninformed or only the informed voted for President Obama.
One can easily surmise that for an elistist to think the uninformed should not vote, they are thinking that if all were informed they would vote just like me. Anyone voting differently from me is uninformed. It is actually a way of attempting to skew the balloting in their favor. However, if they think the uninformed will vote as they do, one does not hear the argument brought up. It is only when the ordinary people have a different idea on who should be in government.
So lets start looking at whether voting is a right or privilege. The Declaration of Independence states: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed,” The Constitution does not use the phrase “consent of the governed” but is clearly a document that was created by common consent. From the preamble: “We the People of the United States….do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
“The governed” are very obviously the total population of the United States and its dependencies, e.g. Guam and Puerto Rico. But just because someone is governed does that mean they also have the right to vote? This is where the concept of citizenship immediately comes into play. It is considered intuitively obvious that only citizens should be allowed to vote. The total population includes children, foreign visitors, people in the US illegally, people in prisons and mental institutions. Not all of them are considered citizens. Citizenship is automatically conferred by being born in the US, or becoming a naturalized citizen by demonstrating sufficient knowledge of the US and how it works, sufficient knowledge of the English language, and taking an oath of loyalty renouncing all former citizenship. I have seen the test for citizenship. Most high school and many college graduates who are born citizens could not pass it.
Constitutionally we have expanded the definition of being qualified to vote from being a male citizen, 21 years old or older, and non-slave, to all men and women of age 21 years or older, born in the United States, or naturalized as US citizens. Underlying this is the implicit understanding that until one reaches the age of 21, one does not have the judgment to consider who should be the people representing and governing us. (This is not the place to argue the age limits on voting, or any other activity for that matter, but it is an interesting question in and of itself.) We do not allow felons to vote, nor people in mental institutions, even though they fulfill the age and birth requirements, the former as having demonstrated a disregard for society and therefore forfeiting the rights and privileges of membership in society, and the latter for insufficient judgment.
Historically there have always been attempts to restrict voting on one hand or to extend it unreasonably on the other to allow fraud. Attempts to restrict who can vote included in the very early years a requirement that only land owners could vote. Later of course it was restricted to free men only, then after the Civil War there were the various poll taxes, literacy tests, and such, including outright physical intimidation, to prevent the newly freed and later not-so-newly freed slaves and their descendants from voting. Even most recently there was intimidation in Philadelphia in the last election, though it was the reverse, intimidation of whites by blacks.
At the other extreme we have efforts to prevent reliable voter identification, under the guise of not restricting minorities, but with the purpose of opening the vote to fraudulent votes. This has been a standard political ploy for probably most of the history of the US. Its toleration and encouragement comes from the desire of many people to win at any cost. Currently it would appear that Democrats are the main proponents because they see it as favoring them to open the polls to any and all. This is not to say that Republicans and their forerunners did not or do not engage in the same thing.
Today, I have heard two versions of voting should be a privilege, 1) only informed voters should be allowed to vote, and 2) only tax-payers should be allowed to vote. There are two different motivations at work here, and each approach can be debated with some effect.
When I was in school, we were constantly given the image of the good citizen that read newspapers from both sides of the issues, and made judgments based on what he/she knew and read. It was considered that a person that did that would reach a good decision. This is a wonderful ideal, but in today’s world, it is extremely difficult to find the kind of reporting that such an ideal is based on. Actually, I suspect that the kind of reporting it was based on never existed. If we look under the surface of the argument, it is really saying that one should read the opinions of both sides of the issues. Facts are neutral, it is the opinions based on those facts and the background and beliefs of the writer that create sides or issues.
Even if one makes a large effort to be “informed” whatever it means, how does one test for it? Does one take a current events test prior to voting? The mind boggles at the openness to abuse that represents. For that matter what constitutes being informed, and about what is it important to be informed? Every person understands the same facts and opinions in different ways, and every person has their own ways of being informed. Every person has their own set of things about which they stay informed. The fact is that one cannot define informed other than what oneself is. Despite the arrogance some would have to believe they can state what is important to be informed about, it is their own perspective that creates the list of important issues.
So does that mean that every illiterate, drunken bum should be allowed to vote? With respect to the question of being informed, yes. In practice it won’t matter. The people who will vote are those who care enough to register and prove their citizenship and identity. (To me it is totally self-evident that to have the right to vote, one must prove they meet the qualifications. Despite arguments to the contrary, the requirements of proof of citizenship are easily met.) People who vote are informed to the extent that it is important to them to be informed. Part of the strength of this country is that we have, to date, run under a collective judgment of all the electorate. It would appear that sometimes they make mistakes, but generally then those are corrected. The US is longest existing republic in the history of the world, and people have been more or less well-informed throughout its history.
So let us look at the other argument, only tax-payers should be allowed to vote. This concept comes from a totally different problem—disparate taxation and dispensing of government services. Equality of citizenship means that all citizens participate equally in government. [I cannot resist the point—it is government that equality relates to, NOT the activities of private citizens.] Until the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment creating the income tax, all citizens were taxed equally. This is not to say that the government always dispersed the funds equally, but for the most part they did. (There is an excellent story about Davy Crockett running for re-election after making a vote to provide special funds to a widow. He lost at least one vote over it, not because of the intent but because it destroyed the equality under the law.)
Having established a principle of unequal taxation in the Constitution, politicians then acquired the ability to buy votes. They became generous with other people’s money. They could be nice to the poor by not taxing them, and then by providing services for free. Since voting was a right, politians bought their vote. After all, one cannot blame them for wanting to keep a good thing going. The concept became applied to other special constituencies until we have the cluster…s that are the Federal and state governments to day. By allowing those receiving largesse from the government to vote, they become in principle, armed robbers. They vote for those who give them the goodies, and those who give them the goodies use the power of government (which ultimately is a gun) to steal the money of the productive for the purpose. Just because there are those who cannot read anything without engaging in ad hominum attacks, let me state very unequivocally—I BELIEVE IN CHARITY, BY CHOICE, not by coercion.
Given the current situation, it is very understandable that those paying taxes would want to have the vote restricted to those with skin in the game. However, one cannot abrogate a principle simply because of other effects. The issue is not one of who can vote, but what is being done with those put in power by the vote. The solution is not to restrict the vote but to fix the bigger problem.
Voting is like the free market. It is the collective wisdom of the people none of whom have all the answers, but together have most or all the answers. Like the free market, it has swings, as people make judgments first one way, then another. Those who would turn voting into a privilege are generally the same ones that would regulate or skew the market in some way. Voting is a right of all mature citizens of the United States and should be kept that way. However, a right has to be protected from fraudulent use, or it will no longer have meaning. My desire is that all eligible citizens register to vote and exercise that right at all opportunities. To that end I believe in voter registration and unambiguous identification. Over the years, I have learned that true diversity leads to better results than selected participation.
There are several issues that come together here, 1) is voting a privilege or a right, 2) If a right, are any restrictions meaningful, and 3) if a privilege, what restrictions are legitimate. One can argue from theory that it is a right, and from history that it is a privilege. At the risk of sounding like an ad hominum argument, thinking that only the informed should vote is has a very elitist flavor to it. I will not use that as an argument. Elitists can be right or wrong as often as anyone else, despite their pretentions otherwise.
The greatest difficulty in a discussion like this is to avoid falling into pragmatic argument—the uninformed are more easily swayed and that can cause mass migration to one candidate or issue, possibly to the detriment of the country, state, city. Results are not a valid argument, since they can change in another direction the next time. For that matter one cannot argue that only the uninformed or only the informed voted for President Obama.
One can easily surmise that for an elistist to think the uninformed should not vote, they are thinking that if all were informed they would vote just like me. Anyone voting differently from me is uninformed. It is actually a way of attempting to skew the balloting in their favor. However, if they think the uninformed will vote as they do, one does not hear the argument brought up. It is only when the ordinary people have a different idea on who should be in government.
So lets start looking at whether voting is a right or privilege. The Declaration of Independence states: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed,” The Constitution does not use the phrase “consent of the governed” but is clearly a document that was created by common consent. From the preamble: “We the People of the United States….do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
“The governed” are very obviously the total population of the United States and its dependencies, e.g. Guam and Puerto Rico. But just because someone is governed does that mean they also have the right to vote? This is where the concept of citizenship immediately comes into play. It is considered intuitively obvious that only citizens should be allowed to vote. The total population includes children, foreign visitors, people in the US illegally, people in prisons and mental institutions. Not all of them are considered citizens. Citizenship is automatically conferred by being born in the US, or becoming a naturalized citizen by demonstrating sufficient knowledge of the US and how it works, sufficient knowledge of the English language, and taking an oath of loyalty renouncing all former citizenship. I have seen the test for citizenship. Most high school and many college graduates who are born citizens could not pass it.
Constitutionally we have expanded the definition of being qualified to vote from being a male citizen, 21 years old or older, and non-slave, to all men and women of age 21 years or older, born in the United States, or naturalized as US citizens. Underlying this is the implicit understanding that until one reaches the age of 21, one does not have the judgment to consider who should be the people representing and governing us. (This is not the place to argue the age limits on voting, or any other activity for that matter, but it is an interesting question in and of itself.) We do not allow felons to vote, nor people in mental institutions, even though they fulfill the age and birth requirements, the former as having demonstrated a disregard for society and therefore forfeiting the rights and privileges of membership in society, and the latter for insufficient judgment.
Historically there have always been attempts to restrict voting on one hand or to extend it unreasonably on the other to allow fraud. Attempts to restrict who can vote included in the very early years a requirement that only land owners could vote. Later of course it was restricted to free men only, then after the Civil War there were the various poll taxes, literacy tests, and such, including outright physical intimidation, to prevent the newly freed and later not-so-newly freed slaves and their descendants from voting. Even most recently there was intimidation in Philadelphia in the last election, though it was the reverse, intimidation of whites by blacks.
At the other extreme we have efforts to prevent reliable voter identification, under the guise of not restricting minorities, but with the purpose of opening the vote to fraudulent votes. This has been a standard political ploy for probably most of the history of the US. Its toleration and encouragement comes from the desire of many people to win at any cost. Currently it would appear that Democrats are the main proponents because they see it as favoring them to open the polls to any and all. This is not to say that Republicans and their forerunners did not or do not engage in the same thing.
Today, I have heard two versions of voting should be a privilege, 1) only informed voters should be allowed to vote, and 2) only tax-payers should be allowed to vote. There are two different motivations at work here, and each approach can be debated with some effect.
When I was in school, we were constantly given the image of the good citizen that read newspapers from both sides of the issues, and made judgments based on what he/she knew and read. It was considered that a person that did that would reach a good decision. This is a wonderful ideal, but in today’s world, it is extremely difficult to find the kind of reporting that such an ideal is based on. Actually, I suspect that the kind of reporting it was based on never existed. If we look under the surface of the argument, it is really saying that one should read the opinions of both sides of the issues. Facts are neutral, it is the opinions based on those facts and the background and beliefs of the writer that create sides or issues.
Even if one makes a large effort to be “informed” whatever it means, how does one test for it? Does one take a current events test prior to voting? The mind boggles at the openness to abuse that represents. For that matter what constitutes being informed, and about what is it important to be informed? Every person understands the same facts and opinions in different ways, and every person has their own ways of being informed. Every person has their own set of things about which they stay informed. The fact is that one cannot define informed other than what oneself is. Despite the arrogance some would have to believe they can state what is important to be informed about, it is their own perspective that creates the list of important issues.
So does that mean that every illiterate, drunken bum should be allowed to vote? With respect to the question of being informed, yes. In practice it won’t matter. The people who will vote are those who care enough to register and prove their citizenship and identity. (To me it is totally self-evident that to have the right to vote, one must prove they meet the qualifications. Despite arguments to the contrary, the requirements of proof of citizenship are easily met.) People who vote are informed to the extent that it is important to them to be informed. Part of the strength of this country is that we have, to date, run under a collective judgment of all the electorate. It would appear that sometimes they make mistakes, but generally then those are corrected. The US is longest existing republic in the history of the world, and people have been more or less well-informed throughout its history.
So let us look at the other argument, only tax-payers should be allowed to vote. This concept comes from a totally different problem—disparate taxation and dispensing of government services. Equality of citizenship means that all citizens participate equally in government. [I cannot resist the point—it is government that equality relates to, NOT the activities of private citizens.] Until the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment creating the income tax, all citizens were taxed equally. This is not to say that the government always dispersed the funds equally, but for the most part they did. (There is an excellent story about Davy Crockett running for re-election after making a vote to provide special funds to a widow. He lost at least one vote over it, not because of the intent but because it destroyed the equality under the law.)
Having established a principle of unequal taxation in the Constitution, politicians then acquired the ability to buy votes. They became generous with other people’s money. They could be nice to the poor by not taxing them, and then by providing services for free. Since voting was a right, politians bought their vote. After all, one cannot blame them for wanting to keep a good thing going. The concept became applied to other special constituencies until we have the cluster…s that are the Federal and state governments to day. By allowing those receiving largesse from the government to vote, they become in principle, armed robbers. They vote for those who give them the goodies, and those who give them the goodies use the power of government (which ultimately is a gun) to steal the money of the productive for the purpose. Just because there are those who cannot read anything without engaging in ad hominum attacks, let me state very unequivocally—I BELIEVE IN CHARITY, BY CHOICE, not by coercion.
Given the current situation, it is very understandable that those paying taxes would want to have the vote restricted to those with skin in the game. However, one cannot abrogate a principle simply because of other effects. The issue is not one of who can vote, but what is being done with those put in power by the vote. The solution is not to restrict the vote but to fix the bigger problem.
Voting is like the free market. It is the collective wisdom of the people none of whom have all the answers, but together have most or all the answers. Like the free market, it has swings, as people make judgments first one way, then another. Those who would turn voting into a privilege are generally the same ones that would regulate or skew the market in some way. Voting is a right of all mature citizens of the United States and should be kept that way. However, a right has to be protected from fraudulent use, or it will no longer have meaning. My desire is that all eligible citizens register to vote and exercise that right at all opportunities. To that end I believe in voter registration and unambiguous identification. Over the years, I have learned that true diversity leads to better results than selected participation.
// posted by Bill @ 5:22 AM 
