it comes in pints?

In defense of voter suppression

Reading John Fund's description of claims of "voter suppression" was an irritating experience (and led to a fairly long rant mercifully hidden in the extended entry).

But the rally civil rights groups held in Atlanta earlier this month to push for extension of the act's key temporary provisions downplayed those gains and instead pushed wild claims that some state laws requiring an ID to vote are the functional equivalent of Jim Crow poll taxes.

Both Judge Greg Mathis, the star of a syndicated courtroom TV show, and California Rep. Barbara Lee claimed that the last two presidential elections had been "stolen." Judge Mathis told the rally Republican leaders "need to be locked up because they're all criminals and thieves." Other speakers claimed Georgia's new photo ID law would suppress poor and elderly minority voters who might lack such a document. When the bill passed the Georgia House in March, black legislators sang slave songs and one even slammed a prisoner's shackles on the desk of the sponsor.

[...]

John Kerry routinely accused Republicans in the 2000 election of "disenfranchising a million African Americans and stealing their votes" but provided no evidence. In that vein, a Kerry election manual advised workers that if they hadn't seen signs of intimidation they should "launch a 'pre-emptive strike'" and cry wolf anyway.

[...]

Barbara Arnwine of The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights claims photo ID laws "could disenfranchise 10% of the electorate." In June, DNC Chairman Howard Dean issued a report on last year's election in Ohio. He claimed it backed up charges of widespread "voter suppression."

It's called "Making Shit Up".

I'm really quite sick of such stupidity. Fortunately, there are a few voices of sanity:

Juan Williams, a National Public Radio correspondent and author of "Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years," is "stunned" by such vituperation. He told Fox News that it is "reacting to devils that have been slain 40 years ago." He says that "in service to having no fraud elections, I think you could say to people, go and get a legitimate ID. I don't think that's too much to ask."

Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador who spoke at the rally, believes that in an era when people have to show ID to rent a video or cash a check "requiring ID can help poor people." He noted that Georgia is deploying a mobile bus to issue voter IDs and allowing groups like the NAACP to arrange for it to go to specific sites.

[...]

David Porter, the deputy editorial page editor of the Orlando Sentinel and an African American, says he was "bewildered" last year by reports of voter intimidation in his city that didn't pan out.

[...]

Last year, Joe Andrew, who served as Bill Clinton's chairman of the Democratic National Committee, blasted conspiracy theories that electronic voting machines, or DREs, would be used to steal votes and said "most liberals are just plain old-fashioned nuts" on the subject.

Among other subjects, but that's another post.

I know you're all just aching to hear my take on voter suppression, so here it is: We need more of it.

Seriously. If you can't be bothered to produce a single piece of ID to prove you're who you say you are, you have no business voting. As Attorney General Anthony Gonzales is quoted in Fund's piece, it's "just as important to preserve the value of that vote from those who would corrupt the election process." We all have a stake in honest elections, and that includes ensuring that ineligible people do not vote, that eligible people don't vote more than once, that people quit voting when they quit breathing. Showing an ID is a pretty tiny price to pay for that.

My question, of course, is why the so-called Party of the Little People, and especially self-proclaimed "civil right" leaders, think minority voters would be suppressed any more than Big Bad White Folks. Apparently, they think that certain ethnic groups are too stupid/lazy/ignorant/or-something to figure it out. I don't happen to think such stupidity sorts itself along ethnic lines, but I actually have met people who would likely be flummoxed by such a requirement. People like that should not vote (nor qualify for a driver's license). Fortunately, they form a self-sorting group that probably couldn't find their polling places anyway so it's probably not an issue.

At the risk of boring people, I would even go further than that, were I given absolute power over such things. I don't happen to believe that increasing voter turnout is necessarily positive, and certainly should not be a goal in and of itself. Increasing the turnout of engaged and informed voters is the goal. There are things that the government should actively encourage but mindless voting is not one of them. Encourage people to become engaged and informed; the voting will follow. Please note that I am not suggesting that idiots be deliberately suppressed (though that may constitute a public good), but neither should they be actively assisted in their dumbing-down of the electorate.

With that in mind, I have a few suggestions I would implement or strongly consider as Election Czar:

Absentee ballots: They should be used only to ensure that those who can't get to their assigned polling place reasonably easily can still vote. Counting absentee ballots is expensive and can be done only after the polls close. They rarely swing elections, but that's mostly because they have historically been a very small percentage of the votes. Making it easier to vote this way not only increases the cost of elections, but increases the chance that elections will remain undecided longer after election day. There are a few people in this country who don't live close to a polling place, but the vast majority of people live close enough to get there easily. There is no reason for them to vote absentee. And quite frankly, if you are too lazy to go to a polling place you have no business voting.

Motor voter: Get rid of it. It's nothing more than a heavy-handed and unnecessary federal mandate. Between government offices, political parties, schools, and public libraries, there is no lack of opportunity to register. It's easy, quick, and you only need to do it once if you don't move out of your registration district. And quite frankly, if you are too lazy to fill out one single form one time you have no business voting.

Literacy requirements: Bring them back. People who cannot read cannot be informed. That's all there is to it. It doesn't even have to be necessarily at a high school level. At the very minimum, people need to be able to read ballot material or they cannot hope to cast a ballot intelligently.

There was a very good reason why the country's founders originally had property requirements for voting: only someone (it was believed) with property had the education and free time to properly study the issues to cast an informed vote. People who had to work all day to support themselves could not take the time (and probably didn't have the education) to become informed enough to vote intelligently. Happily, the original reason for the requirement is no longer needed, but the core motivation is still important: only those who can become informed should vote.

I'll push this idea further: with perhaps a very few exceptions, I see no reason why ballots should be printed in anything other than English. Every naturalized citizen, with very few exceptions, is required to demonstrate some level of proficiency in English; there is no reason whatsoever that they should require a ballot in another language. An argument may be made that the English proficiency level required for citizenship is so low that they would need election materials in their native language to be truly informed, but this certainly doesn't apply to the ballots themselves.

There is a very small subset of natural-born citizens who don't speak English and may require materials on another language. I'm not persuaded (but could be, perhaps) that this is really necessary. In any case, I don't believe it's a terrible hardship to request such materials and, quite seriously, the country should actively encourage people to learn and use English. Say it with me, folks: Melting Pot, not Balkanization.

Residence requirements: Most places have them, I think. They should, at least for local and state elections. People should have a stake in their community.

Corollary to this (and this is a pet peeve of mine from my college days), no one should be allowed to vote in any jurisdiction which has no power over them. More specifically (but not exclusively), students living on state college campuses should NOT be allowed to vote in city elections (I don't know how much power a city has over a private college within its jurisdiction, but this rule could be extended if the city has no legal power over the college).

Back in the halcyon days of the Vietnam war protests at UC Santa Cruz (not the original protests, the later ones after the war), I adamantly refused to vote in city (and county) elections while I lived on campus even though the campus was (technically) within the city limits. The problem was that, being University of California property, the city had absolutely no power over the campus. This meant that students could (and did) have great influence on city politics but didn't have to live with the consequences. Their candidates inflicted their social engineering experiments on the city, damaged the tax base, spent outrageous sums of money on social programs, and ruined many local public schools, with absolutely no consequence to the ones who put them into office (I don't include students living off campus, of course; many may have been leftist idiots but at least the city had some power over them).

Say it with me, people: You have no right to vote if you don't have to live with the consequences.

Poll taxes: Not really, I just threw that in to placate any frothing lefties who expect me to say it. John Marshall once said "The power to tax is the power to destroy", and it was probably never more clearly demonstrated than with the poll taxes of the old South.

So that's it, my little voting rant. Your mileage may vary. If it does (or even if it doesn't) let me know.

Posted by Ken S at August 25, 2005 08:46 AM | TrackBack (0) |