The debate in the comments on this last post got into some back-and-forth on one of my favorite "what-ifs" — what if we only let veterans vote?
I’d like to explore that more deeply, but right now, I want to raise a tangential question. The appeal for me in the "franchise only for veterans" idea is that people should demonstrate some commitment to the country, the state, the community — however you define the constituency in a given instance — in order to have a say in how it’s run.
Let’s do a sidestep on that, to a question that bothered me for years.
We’re always writing editorials urging people to go vote. But if you have to URGE somebody to vote — if they need to be poked with a stick to get them to stir — do you really want them making such a crucial decision as who our leaders are going to be? Don’t you want people who have taken a serious interest in the issues, and studied and worried and thought about it at length, voting? Why is it that name recognition is such a good indicator of political viability? Because too many voters go no deeper than that! And those are the people who vote now. Do we really want people with even less commitment to public life pulling levers?
If you’re reading this, you’re not among the people I’m concerned about. But I have to wonder, to what extent does it help the country to make it easier and more convenient to vote, and to go around prodding people who don’t care enough to go do it on their own to participate in such decisions?
And yes, I realize this is a very old question; I’ve discussed it with various people a thousand times. But we’ve never discussed it here, I don’t think. So let’s.
Thoughts?
Related Posts
And notice how I sidestepped the fact that this is an age-old partisan debate. That’s intentional. I don’t care whether it’s Republicans or Democrats who vote — and I’d prefer it be neither. I just want voters to be people who have THOUGHT about the choices before them.
At least, I think that’s what I want. I look forward to y’all’s thoughts.
Yes, South Carolina does have a tradition of extending the franchise to only those citizens who were “worthy” of it. It doesn’t surprise me that Warthen longs for a return to those days.
Defining voters as “worthy” or “unworthy” is simply a mechanism to limit the franchise to persons with whom the person proposing the definition self-identifies. It is also a mechanism to impose unequal burdens on voting, and denigrate those subjected to the greater burdens as “unworthy”.
The more convenient it is for everyone to vote, the more difficult it is for people like Warthen to make it easy for themselves to vote and difficult for others to vote.
Rather than change who can vote, we should change how people can vote and how elections are run:
1) Don’t allow people to vote easily for one party with a single pull of the lever
2) Remove any party affiliation identification from the ballot forcing people to either become informed or else guess
3) Produce a printed copy of the ballot selections
4) Eliminate all political signs on public roads. Only allow them on private property.
5) All candidates for state wide offices should be forced to use a centralized bank/accounting office for any expenditures with public access to all transactions showing money coming in and going out.
6) Set up a state-wide DO NOT CALL list to block any political telephone calls. Establish very high fines for any candidate or party that ignores the DO NOT CALL list.
Thanks to Mary for explaining.
Now, would the rest of you do like Doug and please answer the actual QUESTION? Mary, why can’t you be more like your brother Doug?
You have to wonder why Mary hangs out here so much. Since I’m so useless, and my blog is so badly done, that means that Mary is even MORE… well, I’m not going to say it. Can Mary even read? Who said “worthy?” I didn’t even say anything like it. (And yes, that’s what quotation marks MEAN — that it’s a direct quote, not a synonym, or your interpretation of what I said, or any of that nonsense.) What a loony. And what does that make ME? Look at me; I’m so harried today that I’m actually arguing with Mary. That’s pathetic. Talk about ranting at the wind; what I just did is as bad as it gets.
And Doug, THANK you for your relevant answer. The idea of not listing party affiliation sounds good. I’ve often said that the straight-party lever option — something that someone only does when he wants to advertise, “hey, I didn’t think about this at all” — should be banned without a moment’s hesitation. But not even listing the party? That sounds like another good idea. But maybe there are thoughtful reasons not to do it, which others will offer, and I’m interested to see.
THAT, by the way, is why I bother to spend a few moments blogging during a week when I can’t find time to breathe, in the hope-against-hope that somebody out there actually wants to engage an issue and offer serious thoughts instead of ranting at the wind.
I will waste no more of this precious resource today…
This is from Wikipedia:
********************************************
Another important use of quotation marks is to indicate or call attention to ironic or apologetic words. Ironic quotes can also be called scare, sneer, shock, or distance quotes. Ironic quotes are sometimes gestured in oral speech using air quotes:
My brother claimed he was too “busy” to help me.
Ironic quotes should be used with care. Without the intonational cues of speech, they could obscure the writer’s intended meaning. They could also be confused easily with quotations.
In a similar sense, quotes are also used to indicate that the writer realizes that the word is not being used in its (currently) accepted sense.
In the fifteenth century, we “knew” that the Sun’s revolution divided day from night.
Woody Allen joked, “I’m astounded by people who want to ‘know’ the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.””
********************************************
So let me get this straight. You have been a journalist for decades, but in all that time you never learned how to use punctuation, or to consult a reference to find out when you don’t know something?
I SAID you sucked as a writer.
q.e.d.
And, of course, the reason we list party affiliation, and the reason some people vote according to party affiliation, is that it’s important. A vote for Stephanie Herseth, who has a lot of positions I don’t like that much, is, nevertheless, a vote for Nancy Pelosi as speaker. The choice between Nancy Pelosi and Dennis Hastert for speaker is one of the most important votes that a member of Congress can cast.
You want to pretend that you don’t attach importance to party affiliation because you want to pretend that he’s something other than the Republican whore that you are, and because pretending that party affiliation isn’t important gives you an opening to denigrate voters who feel that it is important. The exact standards for how interested or involved a citizen is doen’t matter to you. You simply want remove the right to vote from the rights due to all citizens, and introduce some vague, subjective standard, in the hope that you and those like you can specify who meets the standard and who doesn’t.
Brad, should we not poke people to stop smoking? Should we not urge people to wear seat belts? Should preachers stop spreading the Word? Should we remove warnings about ironing clothes while wearing them? Ok, the last one is debateable.
My point is there is good to come from getting people to vote. They become more engaged or atleast engaged minimally in their community. It may lead to greater involvement later.
The pathetic suggestion on the previous post prompting your notion of a “commitment to country” had more to do with a particular blogger’s commitment to his own skewed ideals rather than patriotism.
Mary,
I’m “disappointed” you haven’t chosen to grace my thread about education. Over 100 civil comments and counting.
Brad,
Reminding/prodding people to vote is a good thing on balance. Some well-versed voters simply forget to vote if they are not reminded.
Educating the electorate so they cast well-informed votes is another matter. The internet may be a help here. I can imagine political pop-up ads or web-site ads with several layers-maybe a short- interest grabbing video, followed by a thumbnail of the candidate’s platform followed by a link to the candidates website. Of course, this would also be a fertile field for misleading negative ads. Plus, many of those most in need of good information don’t have internet access.
The League of Women Voters publishes voter guides on candidates and issues which are useful and available on-line but I suspect they are not widely read.
Free TV time for candidates would probably do more than anything else to improve political debate. It’s impossible to discuss a complex issue in 30 seconds, so viewers are given manipulative rhetoric, simplistic symbols (boots vs. flip-flops) or slick images, instead of meaningful dialogue. John McCain and Russ Feingold introduced a bill in the Senate for free airtime in 2002 but it went no where (opposed by the powerful broadcasters lobby). Paul Taylor (the Washington Post reporter who asked Gary Hart if he had committed adultery in the 1988 Presidential campaign) wrote an interesting book on the subject (“See How They Run”) and founded the Alliance for Better Campaigns, to advocate for free airtime. In my research on this I also found an announcement that Scripps did provide free TV time on their stations in 2006 .
Here’s a description from their press release:
“Scripps stations will provide a minimum of five minutes of free airtime to candidates daily between 5 p.m. and 11:35 p.m. in the 30 days preceding the general elections. The stations will also provide free airtime as needed during the 30 days preceding primary elections. The free airtime will be offered to candidates in a variety of formats including debates, extended interviews, issue statements or responses to citizens’ inquiries.”
I couldn’t find any information on how effective it was believed to be.
BTW, why do we just vote on one day? Why not vote over several days (i.e. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) or over a whole week? This might increase the possibility of fraud slightly but would likely increase turnout.
Brad, did it ever occur to you that more people don’t vote because they don’t really get a significant choice?
When running for Governor of SC requires the ability to raise millions of dollars from rich people, large corporations, and well-heeled special interest associations, what makes you think that the two candidates will really offer radically differing positions on economic issues?
If you want to see real interest in the political process then formulate an election process centered around ideas/policies and the public welfare instead of the selling of the candidate to special interests.
If you were honest then you’d admit that anything close to pure democracy scares the hell out of the “economic royalists” that Franklin Roosevelt referred to. (Of course, it scared Alexander Hamilton, also.)
Voting isn’t inconvenient, intimidating or daunting enough to deter people who think that the choice offered will make a difference to their well-being. When the choice is between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum then people decline to cross the street.
Pure democracy scared the hell out of those who wrote the Constitution, because they saw how fast good men like Pericles were corrupted, and how soon those with the least wealth, ambition, and intelligence voted to rob the most industrious and smarter minority.
Pure democracy only works on a small scale, not for larger cities, much less states or nations. It is a temporary state of transistion to mob rule and dictatorship.
Until we abolish income taxes and property taxes, it is silly to let those who are not net payers of either tax to vote handouts for themselves.
Paul’s suggestion about a different day(s) for voting is probably a good one. Germany votes on Sunday–as do some other European countries, I believe. A workday is probably not ideal.
I would also hazard a guess that the rather abysmal voting record in the U.S., in comparison to other Western countries, if my memory serves me right (no time for research, sorry) may be, at least in part, due to the following:
1) Individualism in the American psyche. Corporate solidarity or responsibility is less important for us than our overwhelming commitment to our concept of liberty–especially liberty for the individual. We are a nation founded by pioneers, and pioneers generally want to be left alone to do their thing.
2) A lack of a sense of history–for whatever reasons. Is it a problem of education (in which case this needs to be connected with another thread)– we just don’t have much connection with the past, and therefore too little understanding of our role as citizens today? I don’t have the impression that our educational system puts much emphasis upon history, particularly world history–or upon political science and government. (A generation ago, we had to pass a course in the U.S. Consitution, in order to get a high school diploma–not sure if that is still the case, but I don’t think so.) Or is it the short span of American history–we are basically a “forward-looking” people (again, the pioneer spirit)? Is it our affluence and addiction to our toys–civic duties seem mundane and uninteresting?
Frustration with politicans, as suggested above, might truly be a reason, but if we were sufficiently connected with the past, it might motivate us more to take part and want to preserve what seems to be a rather unique experiment on the stage of world history.
Hmmm. Guess I had better learn to spell “Constitution.”
I realize that your original question was, “who should vote,” but I don’t see that it is really profitable to pursue that–I doubt very seriously that any amendment to the Constitution that limits voting rights would ever pass.
Actually, people “vote” all the time every single day. We vote with our wallets (or by selecting which bank to borrow from) when we make purchases be it houses, cars, food, or 52 inch wide TVs, or which movie to see, for example. We even vote with our feet concerning where we want to live. Hopefully the “voters” are making informed choices that benefit them or their families the most. Businesses market to us and solicit our votes. Political candidates and their respective parties have almost that same situation. Political solicitation should be kept totally unrestricted and free from regulation. That is called freedom of speech and is the main reason I still cannot believe we have this Campaign Finance Reform law. A real stain on McCain and Feingold and that should have been Bush’s first veto. As to the issue of who should vote, I think the current system tends to regulate itself in the way I would determine who should vote. The apathetic, illiterate, uninformed for the most part don’t bother to vote and I prefer that they not be encouraged to do so. What is the point of them voting anyway? We know we have people who will give someone a bottle of booze or a carton of cigarettes to go vote for a certain candidate. Anyone caught buying that kind of vote should lose their voting rights permanently, just like a felon. I also like the idea of veterans and related positions like the police having a vote that counts more than other citizens. I also know this will never fly and if the Muslims ever learn to behave themselves we could possibly have several generations without many veterans at all. That would pose the opposite problem, not enough stakeholders voting. One interesting idea I have is that people who own multiple properties should be allowed to vote (on local) not national, issues, in every locale where they own property. Landlords are taxed through the roof on commercial property but cannot vote in that locality unless they live right there.
Bottom line is let’s NOT encourage the stupid and apathetic to vote.
Dave wants to give veterans addtional voting rights. Why? They are no better or worse than the rest of us. One man/woman one vote is the only way to go. Which brings me to the electoral college. This should immediately be abolished so we can elect presidents on the basis of the popular vote. Why should a vote in one state be weighted heavier than a vote in a different state?
Those who want only a national government, with local operating offices, would abolish the Senate and many states, and divide the country into several large administrative regions.
The Founders specifically rejected any such central control, based on the history of England and Rome. They wisely wanted the states to be the primary government of the people, and even small states to have an equal voice by having the state legislators elect the Senate.
Senators wanted more autonomy, and other enemies of the republic used them to amend the Constitution so the people of each state vote for their Senator. They don’t really elect a Senator, because now most Senators are rich enough to buy public opinion, like Feinstein, Kerry, and Kennedy, or they are financed mostly by money from other states, mostly from government contractors and regulated industries.
Dave,
Free speech does not extend to calling my home. I would also question whether it applies to allowing candidates to litter the landscape with signs on public roadways.
Anyway.. off on a slight tangent… With the recent news about the out-and-out corruption at the DOT, I can’t figure out why anyone would choose a political party other than the Libertarian Party. The reason the corruption exists is because of the greed that comes from having easy access to other people’s money. The smaller we can make government, the less opportunity that would exist for the corruption to occur. Shrink the government and let the crooks fight over a much smaller pot…
And another thing that gets my Libertarian self cranky during the Christmas season.. Blue Laws. What level of bureacratic arrogance does it take to decide when a business can be open? Is there any justification for them that can be expressed without using the words “church” or “religion”?
Doug makes a good point. Political power should be increased as the size of the government entity decreases. Taken to it’s logical conclusion the individual should have the most “governing” power, the world government the least. For starters laws governing the following activities should immediately be decided by individuals, not government:
1. Purchasing decisions (no blue laws)
2. Drugs
3. Prostitution
4. Gambling
5. Praying
6. Adult Pornography
7. Suicide
8. Abortion
When I grow up, I want to be a blogger like Paul DeMarco. Thanks, Paul, and all you others who have taken the time to provide thoughtful input on this question.
Two points:
— First, in the last few comments, we seem to have strayed slightly toward who will be enfranchised to vote. I really wasn’t proposing any legal impediments to any adult voting. I was just asking whether it was a morally defensible position to ENCOURAGE people to vote when they obviously aren’t interested enough to keep informed, or they’d vote without being encouraged. Paul and Randy both offered some good thoughts on that, then we started straying slightly.
— Libertarianism — the recipe for dissolution and anarchy. Doug, think about what you just said: DOT is corrupt because it’s too big and has too much money. On the contrary, it doesn’t have ENOUGH money to maintain our roads properly BECAUSE it is corrupt. DOT and business leaders have been begging lawmakers for years to increase the gas tax to properly fund road maintenance. But lawmakers — acting wisely for once (perhaps by accident) — have not wanted to give more money to an agency that is so fouled up and unaccountable. The ONLY way the governor or the Legislature has been able to take the agency to task is by holding back money. Unfortunately, the loser is the people of SC, who have to drive on increasingly unsafe, crumbling roads.
The answer is to blow the whole thing up and rebuild it from scratch, as a politically accountable arm of the public will, rather than an island unto itself.
Oh, and Doug — I can’t figure out what anybody would choose a political party, period. Why not preserve freedom of consciousness, and the ability to think things through on one’s own?
>> Why not preserve freedom of
>> consciousness, and the ability to think
>> things through on one’s own?
You’ve just paraphrased the mission statement of the Libertarian Party!
Thanks!
Regarding your comments about DOT, the systemic corruption that exists will only be solved by doing one of three things:
1) cutting to zero and starting all over again
2) putting the crooks in jail and sending a message to future crooks that there will be severe consequences for stealing public money
3) Bringing in an independent oversight committee with no political ties. Sort of like the Office of Inspector General at the Federal level
I vote for #1. You hold onto to the quaint notion that public bureaucrats are guided by some moral obligation to do what is right for the state versus doing what is in their own interest. Don’t mean to burst your bubble at this time of the year but there is no Santa Claus either.
Brad, I’m not really sure what you’re asking here. Are you talking about this as a government sponsored “encouragement” or as a private sector issue. The morality of this is really a question best decided by individuals. The government should not spend one dime encouraging or discouraging people to vote.
As for the DOT, yes it has some problems. But the roads do get built and maintained. Next time you’re in Charleston take a ride over the Ravanel Bridge. It got built didn’t it? The impact of the Mabry shenanigans is probably minimal.
In principal I could support a change that would have the Executive Director report directly to the governor. But our state government just seems incapable of doing anything right. I learned a great deal from the 1993 restructuring. It all sounded great at the time, and there was a lot of hoopla about the changes. The State Newspaper practically wet their collective pants about how great everything was going to be. But in the end, all it got us was fewer troopers, fewer DMV counter workers, fewer maintenance workers and a whole lot more executives, support staff and a nice trailer park on Broad River Road. Hopefully we’ve learned something from that fiasco.
Doug, cutting to zero would be a terrible idea. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. One of the problems we had in Iraq was disbanding the Iraqi army once we completed the initial invasion phase of the war. As I’ve said before the DOT gets the job done reasonably well. There are many fine professional people that work hard and know their jobs. In the final analysis the system worked. The LAC did it’s job and uncovered serious problems. The prime culprit is gone and others may follow. Could something like this happen if the DOT was under the governor’s control? Of course it could! I don’t buy panacea arguments anymore. The best we can ever hope for is to hire good people and hope for the best.
You cannot put good people into a government agency which is predicated on corrupting government to benefit a handful of private individuals, and expect these bureaucrats to run the whorehouse in a moral manner.
Most road construction in this state consists of building roads to subsidize real estate developers. Make the developers pay the full cost of building roads to their subdivisions, gas stations, motels, and shopping centers – and most of the corruption at DOT will vanish.
bud, I was approaching the whole thing from my perspective as one who urges people to do things, and has no power to MAKE them do anything. Governmental power doesn’t come into it. I was just raising the question whether it was right to use my private-sector bully pulpit to urge people to vote when — by definition, since they presumably have to be urged — they wouldn’t go out and vote on their own. I mean, if they WOULD go out and vote on their own, there’s no point in my saying anything, except in a sort of celebration-of-civic-responsibility, look-what-good-citizens-we-are sort of sense. And if they DON’T care enough to go vote on their own, shouldn’t we just leave them there with their channel-changer and let the people who care vote?
That was the question. It was very narrow.
Oh, and the pattern with DOT has been that they put everything into the high-profile things like the Ravenel bridge, and let everything else go to hell. And this state controls FAR more roads for its size than other states, since it controls roads that would normally belong to counties in most states.
On the restructuring. We most certainly did NOT wet our pants at how wonderful it was. What we did was pound away at how much restructuring was needed. The only thing I ever wrote at the time reacting to what they actually DID was a column kicking it around as wholly inadequate.
When I’m not buried in work the way I am today, I’ll go dig that up and post it. If I forget, remind me.
I’m glad Brad hasn’t hit the stage in life where he wets his pants. Gauging from his latest photo, he doesn’t have long to go.
Randy’s debate style is a real credit to the “teaching profession”. I am glad the schools don’t try to teach Character Education.
“I was just raising the question whether it was right to use my private-sector bully pulpit to urge people to vote when — by definition, since they presumably have to be urged — they wouldn’t go out and vote on their own.”
Leave aside the fact that Warthen’s are worthless, and that it is therefore wrong for to inflict them on anyone.
The heart of Warthen’s latest idiotic and unAmerican proposal is this – that different groups of voters should be considered more or less “worthy”. Warthen doesn’t value the fundamental principles of America, which hold that every citizen is equal, and has an equal right to vote. He cares only encouraging and assisting voting by people like him, who will vote the way he does, and discouraging or obstructing voting by people who can be expected not to vote the way he does. Warthen’s classification of voters as interested or informed enough to be “worthy”, or so disinterested or uninformed as to be “unworthy” is simply a ruse. He’s laying the groundwork for treating voters differently, depending on whether or not they can be expected to vote the way he wants them to vote.
Therefore, as election time nears, Warthen and those like him will urge those who can, on the whole, be expected to vote the way they want them to, to vote. They will, at the same time, do everything they can to keep those of opposing viewpoints from being urged to vote, on the grounds that those who will not vote without urging should not be urged.
In addition, Republicans have long had an infrastructure based on identifying their supporters and urging them to vote. Warthen pretends to be nonpartisan, but of course, he is nothing but an intense Republican partisan, whose affinity with the Republican party is motivated by racism. It’s no coincidence that Warthen’s “musings” about how it is wrong to seek to motivate the “unworthy” to vote comes after the Democrats have succeeded in building their own turnout infrastructure.
Democrats are the experts on “un-American”.
Yes Mary understands it well now. Democrats want the stupid and self-centered to vote and Republicans want the informed and patriotic to vote. Ergo the Democrats continually trying to block the military voters in any way possible.
Dave, you demonstrate my point. One of the founding principles of America is that everyone has an equal right to vote. You seek to draw distinctions between “worthy” and “unworthy” voters not because such distinctions have any basis in fact, but because you want to allow and encourage the votes of your own partisans and obstruct the votes of your opponents. Democrats stand behind the founding principles of America, that every eligible voter is equal.
The fact is, of course, that it is Republicans who are stupid and self-centered. Look at yourself. You live in a state and a region full of ignorant, shiftless, uneducated losers. The social structure of the state and the region in which you live is based on racism and handouts. You are a member of a party whose support is confined by and large to the South, and that party seeks and receives support based on its appeals to racial hatred. Republican states have the highest rates of infant mortality, illiteracy, out of wedlock births, alcoholism, child abuse, spouse abuse, teen pregnancy, and obesity.
Democrats, on the other hand, have created free, productive, open societies, and have populations that exhibit sufficient industry and initiative not only to support themselves, but to pay the federal taxes that furnish the handouts on which you and your fellow Republicans depend for survival.
History lesson for Mary.
There was no such “founding principle that everyone had an equal right to vote”. That is a modern liberal fabrication.
The Republic was founded on having male landowners vote, people with a stake in an honest system, under the rule of law. Immediately, subversives like Mary sought to let the indolent vote in order for the indolent to become the majority, paying no attention to public affairs until election time, when the advertisements, editorials, and whiskey would keep statesmen out of office.
Mary and her buddy DA Nifong have much in common. No regard for the truth or justice, and blinders on when it comes to our nation’s founding principles and charter. And it purports to be an intellectual from a successful and prosperous part of the country. What a joke.
Mary is a good example of an uninformed voter.
The Republic was founded on having male landowners vote,
Wow, Lee has made progress.
Now he’s supporting the most progressive thinking possible in the 18th Century (instead of the 16th).
under the rule of law.*
*Restrictions Apply. Not valid when a Republican is President.
I am just giving you folks a basic lesson in remedial history. I doubt it will stick on a public school laundered brain, but we won’t see any rebuttal of the facts from you twits, either.
Lee, yes, we are aware that in years past, black people were not allowed to vote in South Carolina. What we wonder at is that you are proud of this history, and that you recommend it as a model for the United States as a whole, especially given South Carolina’s status as a failed state, and your own status as a lazy, ignorant, shiftless, freeloading loser.
Mary, try to focus on the thread topic, of who should vote, why, and the qualifications.
Your dim view of history is irrelevant.
Lee, you baselessly flatter yourself. Now, you’re a constitutional scholar, as well as, a climatologist.
Of course, non-landowners, non-whites, and females were denied the vote when the Constitution was written.
The founders wisely provided a mechanism to amend the Constitution. Jefferson and Madison probably wouldn’t have gone along with it otherwise. Take note that the Bill of Rights is actually the ten amendments. Of course, U.S. Senators were appointed by state legislators until 1913.
Your characterization of democracy as an intermediate step to a dictatorship is unsupported crap. But, since you’ve finally decided to honestly admit that you’re anti-democratic, what exactly was our ostensible goal in Iraq?
Dubya’s been selling the “spreading democracy” hokum to the rubes most recently. It’s pretty clear that you and Dubya don’t believe in democracy or the rule of law. Dubya is probably the worst example of what Jefferson called pseudo-aristoi since Caligula appointed his horse as consul.
Sure, you’d like to roll back civil rights to the 18th Century since you’re a white, landowning male. Why not bring back chattel slavery, too? After all, it’s in the Bible.
As with most of your views, it’s a no-brainer in the truest sense.
Add RTH to the list of liberals unable to answer the simple question of whom we should allow to vote.
Liberals are good at telling you what they don’t like, piecemeal, because they are reactionaries. They have not put enough thought into subjects to tell you what they like, want to accomplish, and how they would do it.
Lee, Brad’s original post did not ask who should vote. Rather, he was asking if it was responsible for knowledgeable folks to encourage otherwise indifferent, ignorant people to vote. Here’s the important point:
“… to what extent does it help the country to make it easier and more convenient to vote, and to go around prodding people who don’t care enough to go do it on their own to participate in such decisions?”
So the discussion point is not whether to alter who votes, that point is not in dispute, but rather the more subtle point of whether it’s a good thing to encourage people to vote.
Subtlety is not something conservatives are able to understand. The world to them is black and white. They just can’t grasp the notion that issues have grey in them. Sadly, the Decider is one of those that doesn’t understand this point. Iraq is the result. Clearly we can’t win there but conservatives only see black and white, win or lose. What we should be focused on now is getting the best outcome possible, which won’t be total victory. This is a situation where we have to settle for grey. The longer we stay, the blacker it gets.
The issue of expanding the voter rolls to even more unqualified individuals is in dispute, because of efforts by Democrats to
* give tax amnesty to the 12,100,000 illegal aliens who filed some tax returns with fraudulent Social Security Numbers in 2005.
* give instant citizenship to 21,000,000 illegal aliens who are here in the country now, and however many more can sneak in before the cutoff date.
* restore voting rights to convicted felons, even those in prison.
What’s the name of the cartoon planet where everything is opposite of the way it is on Earth?
Lee must be the smartest (stupidest) resident on that planet.
He spouts the most cartoonishly regressive views. In his “pot-calls-kettle-black” world, he accuses liberals of being “racists” and “reactionaries” while advocating taking the vote away from women, non-whites and non-landowners.
Then he mindlessly parrots the current wingnut meme that liberals don’t have any “big ideas.” Polly wanna cracker, Lee?
Lee conveniently forgets that it was MY post that started this exchange. It was MY suggestion for reforming elections (to make them more truly democratic) which resulted in his admission of being anti-democratic.
Oh, yes. Lee also wants our senators selected instead of popularly elected. Add another regressive tenet to Lee’s anti-democratic lunacy.
I don’t claim to speak for all liberals. My agenda is to “encourage” almost everyone to vote. (Including– gasp— EX-felons who’ve served their sentences.) I wouldn’t use the PR gimmickry that Brad shallowly seems to contemplate. Instead, I’d reform the system so that Lee’s beloved oligarchs would have the same power as their janitors, laborers and executive assistants et al.
Remove the power of big monied interests to rig the candidate selection and you’ll find that masses of people will suddenly become intensely interested in participating in a process which empowers them to choose between REAL alternatives.
Brad Warthen actually started this thread.
Hurl, you speak for no one but yourself.
But you avoid the facts about Democrats trying to register more scum to vote. At least you acknowledge their corruption by your silence. Happy New Year.
Lee, I was referring to our little exchange within the thread.
As to the ultimate question who “should” vote, I say: any citizen who wants to (with a few exceptions such as convicted criminals serving time).
Lee, I don’t share your obsession with illegal aliens. Your racist fears of the “brown hordes” apparently drive you to inject illegal immigration into every discussion.
Of course, the irony is that your belief in so-called free trade agreements have created the economic conditions in Mexico which force Mexicans into the U.S.
Your oligarchs lust after cheap labor and even advertise in Mexico for it. A rational solution would be draconian penalties for hiring illegals.
I’m betting that your solution would be to eliminate all wage, “safety net,” environmental and workplace safety programs regulations. I can hear you crowing: “Bring back the good ole days where laborers either took what they were offered or starved.”
Nor, do I “acknowledge” any “corruption” specific to Democrats. What a cheap, transparent comment demonstrating the weakness and intellectual bankruptcy of your argument.
To ascribe all the policies that you listed to “Democrats” is simple-minded partisan spin.
May you have a Happy New Year and the nation move towards peace and justice.
Hurl, the way you have to fabricate personal factoids in order to mount a ad hominen diversion from your inablity to discuss voting, should tell you to stop posting.
If you look up my letters to the editor in The State, you would see that I OPPOSED all the GATT and NAFTA agreements.
If you read my posts in this blog, you will find my advocating harsh punishments for employers, landlords and banks who do business with illegal aliens.
You liberals don’t have the guts to stand up for anything or to anyone, because you buy into the racist notion that only Mexicans have a right to criticize Mexicans, only blacks can criticize blacks, etc ad nauseum.
Democrats Support the Felon Franchise
A study by sociologists Christopher Uggen of the University of Minnesota and Jeff Manza of Northwestern shows that felons vote overwhelmingly for Democrats — at a rate approaching 70 percent. (In fact, this
estimate may be low. In some Florida counties more than 80 percent of the felons who voted illegally were registered Democrats.) Therefore, had Florida’s felons voted in the 2000 presidential election at a rate comparable to the rest of the Florida electorate, Al Gore would have won the state by more than 60,000 votes. As might be expected, the issue has captured the attention of some in Congress.
Representative John Conyers (D., Mich.) introduced the Civil Participation and
Rehabilitation Act of 1999. The bill had 37 cosponsors and sought to provide federal voting rights to all felons released from prison, regardless of whether
their respective states barred them from voting. The bill was referred to the Subcommittee on the Constitution, and went nowhere.
Conyers reintroduced the bill in January 2003. The list of co-sponsors dropped to 25, but still boasted many members of the Congressional Black Caucus along with Democratic presidential aspirant Dennis Kucinich.
Presidential candidate Wesley Clark recently told a black audience in Birmingham, Alabama that states should restore the right to vote to felons who’ve completed their sentences.
Clark’s not alone. Several Democratic presidential candidates, including
frontrunner Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich, also support felon voting.
Congratulations. I apologize for making the assumption. I don’t know your last name and I can’t think of anything more pointless than keeping track of people writing LTE to The State.
Wow. We agree. I’d better lay down and think harder about my position.
Yeah, I love the way that you pass on the ad hominem attacks. LOL.
This passage in a nutshell is an example of your delusional state and your pathetic fondness for strawman arguments. You and Dave accept the wingnut media’s caricature of liberals and then– surprise!– “win” arguments against your artificially constructed opponents.
If you expect professional advocates or politicians beholden to some special interest group to publicly berate the hand that feeds them, then I suggest that you hold your breath until, say, Ralph Reed or Dubya criticize the evangelicals who’re intent on creating Armageddon in the Middle East.
Oh, and Lee, you’ve lost what little credibility you had for calling anyone racist when you advocated taking the vote away from non-whites.
Let’s pursue this felon voting issue a bit. RTH suggests that felons who have served their sentence should be allowed to vote. I agree. Since they’ve paid their debt to society I believe they are entitled to most of the benefits of any other citizen, including the right to vote. Perhaps they believe the crime they were convicted of should be repealed. Since a large percentage of convicted felons are in prison for victimless crimes, drugs for example, they should be entitled to petition the government, through the voting process, for a change in these laws.
By that same logic I think you can make a case for allowing all felons to vote, even those still in prison. Does a conviction render a person incapable of making a rational, informed decision concerning a candidate? Many of those in prison can and do study the candidates and have a better understanding of the issues of crime and poverty than many outside of prison. They understand that their own plight stemmed, in part, from some social injustice and have a vested interested in addressing those issues.
Lee, why should EX-felons give up their right to vote permanently– even after they’ve served their sentence?
Why should EX-felons in Florida be barred permanently from voting while those in, say, Texas, Minnesota, Oregon, Maine, Arizona, California, Nebraska, Ohio… get to vote?
Why should individual states control who votes in federal elections? Voting is a right of American citizenship. This was a key difference between liberals and conservatives during the Civil Rights Movement.
You, conservative Republicans, and the Dixiecrats were on the wrong side then and you’re on the wrong side now.
Please show me in your Dec 26, 2006 5:29:39 PM post above where a Democrat advocates giving the vote to any criminal who hasn’t served his/her sentence.
RTH, explain why allowing incarcerated felons to vote would be bad?
bud, convicted criminals have a number of their rights taken away as part of their punishment. Voting should be one of them because the individual has demonstrated a disregard for the laws and welfare of society. We certainly don’t need to allow them to retain any power over society while they’re serving their sentence.
I would also revoke the drivers license and impound the vehicle of a person convicted of DUI for the duration of the (first offence) sentence. The second conviction should mean jail time.
From a purely practical point of view, felons behind bars could become a significant voting bloc at the rate which we’re incarcerating people.
After serving the sentence, then their rights should be restored. (This is the case in all but three former-Confederate states.)
RTH, you make a good point but I see an opportunity for one party to disenfranchise a major voting block that would normally support the opposing party simply by selectively enforcing certain laws more aggressively. In fact that could be happening now. Poor and black citizens are incarcerated at much higher rates than middle and upper class whites.
This occurs because poor folks do not have access to the legal assets that wealthier people do. Also, they tend to migrate toward less expensive victimless crimes, crack cocaine for instance, compared to wealthier people who would use prescription drugs.
Rush Limbaugh serves as a great example. Had he been poor, he would have used a different type of drug and his voting rights would have been revoked. Frankly, that just is not justice. (Of course the answer to this situation is to repeal drug laws. But that’s another topic.)
Democrats need to ask themselves why criminals vote Democrat, and why they champion the sorriest elements of society and encourage them to stay sorry.
Had Rush Limbaugh not been the wealthiest, most influential person in the political media, the prosecutors would not have bothered to try to frame him.
Any black policeman or judge will tell you that more blacks are in jail because they commit more crimes than whites. The system lets them off and off and off, until they finally do something really bad, and get caught about the 10th time they do it.
My Felon Americans
Why Hillary Clinton and John Kerry want to let criminals vote.
Monday, March 7, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
The Constitution grants states the authority to determine “the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections,” but Hillary Clinton and John Kerry are pushing a Count Every Vote Act that would, among other things, force states to allow voters to register at the polls and declaring Election Day a federal holiday. And then they want to force every state to let felons vote–even though the 14th Amendment specifically permits states to disfranchise citizens convicted of “participation in rebellion, or other crime.”
Forty-eight states deny the vote to at least some felons; only Vermont and Maine let jailbirds vote. Thirty-three states withhold the right to vote from those on parole. Eight deny felons the vote for life, unless they petition to have their rights restored, and the Clinton-Kerry proposal would force them to enfranchise felons (or “ex-felons,” as Mrs. Clinton misleadingly calls them) once they’ve completed parole.
Mrs. Clinton says she is pushing her bill because she is opposed to “disenfranchisement of legitimate American voters.” But it’s hard not to suspect partisan motives. In a 2003 study, sociologists Chistopher Uggen and Jeff Manza found that roughly 4.2 million had been disfranchised nationwide, a third of whom had completed their prison time or parole. Taking into account the lower voter turnout of felons, they concluded that about one-third of them would vote in presidential races, and that would have overwhelmingly supported Democratic candidates. Participation by felons, Messrs. Uggen and Manza estimated, also would have allowed Democrats to win a series of key U.S. Senate elections, thus allowing the party to control the Senate continuously from 1986 until at least this January.
With all of the major issues facing our nation, the biggest being the WOT, we have senators with enough time on their hands to worry about prisoners voting. That is a complete waste of time and energy.
It’s ironic that a nation that prides itself on freedom has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world.
As for the WOT, it really is an over-rated priority. Very few Americans, perhaps 5,000 in the last 20 years, have died as the result of terrorist acts. During that same period about 800,000 have died in traffic accidents, 1/3 at the hands of drunk drivers; 300,000 murdered; and 350,000 Americans committed suicide. We’ve allowed our priorities to become badly skewed over the past 5 years.
The UN and Red Cross rate American prisons as the best in the world, as they have been ever since George Washington’s time.
Most of the prison population is composed of repeat offenders of burglary, grand larcency and violent crimes.
As Europe becomes overrun with less civilized people from Africa and the Mideast, it will have to build more prisons to accommodate the increased crime and demographics more like the USA.
The Democrats want to allow felons still in prison and on probation and parole to vote.
I think felons who have served their entire sentence should be have their voting rights restored, but if the crime was voter fraud, they should be barred from holding office.
I also don’t think that non-violent crimes should be used as an excuse to deprive people of their right to keep and bear arms. At the very least, those rights should be restored to those who have not used a weapon in a crime.