Voting as a Duty
Yesterday I watched an interview with E.J. Dionne and Miles Rapoport, the authors of a somewhat radical new book called 100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting. This book argues that the best way to cut through all the voter suppression and voter fraud crap we are living through is to make voting a mandatory obligation of citizenship. That sounds so radical, but it really isn’t. There are many mandatory obligations of citizenship including paying taxes, serving on juries, getting licenses to do certain things and even, at times, to serve in the military under mandatory conscription laws. Citizenship has many benefits and the price of those benefits is, and should be, an obligation to participate in the governance of the country. Can you guess which part of the country likes this idea and which part doesn’t like it? As you can undoubtedly imagine, this appeals to the majority and not so much to the minority. The minority generally likes to have the opportunity to play exclusionary tricks with the voter rolls to overcome their minority status. That seems like the easier and more devious way to get control rather than adjusting its policies to appeal to a greater swath of the population. This is not only a travesty of justice, but also a horrible waste of resources forcing a battle over peripheral issues rather than the basic issue of governing for the best interests of the population.
In many ways, the Universe is testing us about our fundamental beliefs. It has given us a four-year term with a demonstrably undemocratic regime that controlled both houses of Congress for two of those years and managed to do little to improve the health of the nation other than to pass tax legislation that benefitted the wealthiest Americans. If they had truly believed that there was the degree of voter fraud and electoral irregularities that they now vociferously claim (naturally, only after having resoundingly lost the latest national election), they certainly could have and would have done something to enact corrective federal legislation to address it. But power breeds confidence and they became certain in their own rhetoric that the world view had changed in their favor and that gradually everyone would see things their way. But human beings have a way of eventually seeing through the grift and finding and perhaps even feeling the truth of the matter come through. Since before the election, when the handwriting was clearly on the wall that the Trump regime was destined to come to an end, the forces that surrounded him suddenly chose to reignite their concerns about the voting process. The real testing by the Universe is now coming in the form of both the barrage of lies coming from Trump and his acolytes that the election was somehow stolen from them and that he had, in truth, won the election by a landslide. Despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary, the party line became, “I can’t prove it, but I know it.” This and the egregious attempts by multiple Republican-dominated state legislatures to put in place voter suppression statutes are the real test. If we allow that to happen, then, as Vladimir Putin and other self-interested autocrats declare regularly, democracy has, indeed, past its useful life for mankind.
If we cannot pass this simplest of tests to call bullshit when it is getting smeared all over our faces, then we collectively deserve what we get. I, like many like me, have been pondering what the solution to all this might be. Some have said that we have to fight fire with fire and hence things like the Democratic-driven gerrymandering of New York State electoral districts comes about. I, for one, am glad that effort is being legally challenged. It is simply NOT right to fight fire with fire in that way. As the old saying goes, two wrongs do not make a right. That has left me wondering if there is a perhaps longer and more time-consuming path that we can take. Perhaps starting by rousing the electorate to do what the Republicans did starting twenty years ago and take control of the state legislatures. But that gives voice to the notion that is much beloved by the Right and that is states should be able to control the fates of their own citizenry. That is the principle we overcame in the middle of the last century with a painful and costly Civil War. It makes little sense to use the instrument of that era, state’s rights, to solve our current problem. Others might say that at least we could neutralize it, but that misunderstands the power of that vehicle to keep control from EVER shifting out of their hands. That is lesson number one from the Autocrats playbook. Never give up control, no matter what the cost.
But now we have this theory of universal voting, or as the title implies, 100% democracy. If presented with that idea, it is clear that the Right would fight it to the death on the grounds that it violates their civil libertarian views that no one can dictate anything to the individual, certainly not that they must vote. This would at long last call them out for what they are…anti-democracy. It is their right to believe that, but not to shroud their actions in the flag and claim that their definition of democracy is valid. If you don’t believe in universal voting, then you are fundamentally anti-democratic.
This book goes into explaining how this system now functions in 26 nations and most notably it has functioned for 98 years in the nation that may be the closest in national psyche to America, and that is Australia. No one has a fiercer respect for individualism that the Australians and yet they have successfully administered an electoral process for almost a century with over 90% voter participation by its citizenry. How is that NOT a great thing?
I can think of no duty that a citizen of a society, of a nation, or of the world should be obliged to undertake than voting. It such an obvious concept as to be preposterous to NOT support. I can literally think of no arguments contrary to it that holds water. That is because such a proposal could have imbedded in it the right of any citizen to choose to abstain from a given vote if they so choose. With that simple adjustment, the concept of universal voting as a duty of citizenship satisfies even the most libertarian objective. The simple task of requiring a person to choose to abstain is not enough of a breach of their individual rights to offend anyone other than someone who is using their libertarian views as a guise to suppress voting and limit it only to people of like mind. I am open to commentary on this, but find it hard to imagine a valid counterpoint.