Comments
by Scoper...
Voting For Dummies
It's hard to tell who's been
having more fun with "America's Constitutional Crisis:" late-night comedians
or ordinary net-surfers like you and me. Most of us, I'm sure, have
one or more e-mail friends who send us off-color jokes and kinky cartoons.
It's good to know that Presidential Election 2000 (known in Germany as
Die Unendliche Geschicht) is well-represented and respected for the wicked
seed of satire that it is.
Here's my personal favorite:
You can even make a play
on the title. Did we all vote for dummies, or was it only dummies
who voted? I wish I knew who created it; I'd give him or her full
credit for this masterpiece.
But this touches on something
slightly more serious. Even in a presidential year, it's no longer
possible to get much more than 50 percent of the electorate to show up
at the polls. But of those who do, how many should?
In response to declining
voter turnout over the past 30 years, government
has continually made it
easier, less demanding and less time-consuming to register and cast a ballot.
(On November 7, I didn't even have to show ID.)
"Poll taxes" and literacy
requirements disappeared generations ago. And many states now
have "motor voter" provisions that, in theory at least, registers every
one who gets a driver's license.
In North Carolina, voters
had most of three weeks to drop by most any
elections board office or
public library and vote absentee, even if you were going to be in town
on Election Day. "No excuse voting," they called it.
In Oregon, you didn't even
have to leave home to vote. It wouldn't have
helped you if you did: all
voting was done by mail. Can't imagine it
getting much easier than
that.
But with a presidential race
as tight as [insert simile here]; tales of
irregularities, ballot mishandling
and outright fraud are popping up like
ants at a picnic.
You can read all about them elsewhere on this site and a thousand others.
My rhetorical question is: who should vote and who should not?
Everyone 18 and older?
Should that include convicted felons? Of those
felons, should exceptions
be made for certain crimes, such as rape and
murder? Speaking of
18, does it make sense to be able to vote three years before you can legally
have a drink? And since it's a serious crime to drive under the influence,
should there be sobriety checkpoints at each polling place?
If you live here, work here
and pay taxes here, should you be allowed to
vote even if you're not
a citizen? Conversely, if you ARE a citizen, but
live off government (taxpayer)
money, should you be allowed to vote yourself more of the same?
Years ago, the late Robert
A. Heinlein wrote a novel called Starship
Troopers (later a movie,
I didn't see it and people tell me I didn't miss
much.) In the book,
Heinlein took an interesting approach to suffrage: it
was ONLY available to those
who had completed a term of military service.
It's important to point out
that there was no draft, everyone was allowed
yet no one was forced to
serve, and there were no other restrictions on
voting aside from reaching
the age of majority. Military service was the
one and only condition of
full citizenship and franchise.
It's been more than 20 years
since I read that book, and I still can't
decide if Heinlein had a
wonderful idea or a terrible idea. But I can't
imagine any of his characters
screaming about the evils of pregnant chads.
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