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Vote
Or
Die... Or Maybe Catch Some Extra ZZZs
High
voter turn-out doesn't help democracy if it's
greased by fraud or reflects the ill-informed
passions of the mob.
Why
did it take the creators of South
Park, the animated television show, to remind us
last week that the measure of our politics is not
the raw numbers of people who come to the polls to
vote, but rather the number of people who come to
vote properly informed?
Only such irreverent people as Trey Parker
and Matt Stone, who brought us South
Park
and the
controversial new movie Team
America: World Police, would dare to express
that politically incorrect opinion.
It
has become an article of faith in the
United States
that merely increasing the percentage of citizens
who vote makes for a healthier democracy.
Governments at all levels, as well as celebrities,
private organizations, television networks, and
political parties, have launched campaigns to shame
people into going to the polls to vote.
One of those campaigns in particular, P.
Diddy’s “Vote
or Die” appeal, prompted the South
Park creators to challenge the assumption that
higher turnout in itself is an indication of
political health.
The
Founders of this Republic were fearful of rule by a
mob. The
system they designed minimized the likelihood that
mob rule would occur.
Most of the Founders’ protections against
this danger were abandoned long ago.
Some, such as the denial of the franchise to
women, should have been changed, but virtually
unrestricted access to the vote coupled with a
fevered campaign to drive people to the polls can
create serious problems that Americans seem
unwilling to consider.
Even
limited efforts to assure ballot security and to
eliminate vote fraud have been attacked on grounds
that these efforts are likely to suppress turnout.
We are so absorbed with increasing turnout
for its own sake that we seem incapable of
considering that we may be eroding civic
responsibility.
Our
political system cannot function properly if most of
those participating in an election are uninformed
about the candidates and the issues.
It is essential to a democracy that the
people accept the outcome of elections rather than
turn in disappointment and frustration to violence
or other methods of undermining the government when
elections fail to produce the outcome they want.
That sublimation of personal preference is
difficult to maintain when voters who take pains to
inform themselves conclude that their votes are
cancelled by other voters who allow themselves to be
herded to the polls, to decide how to vote on the
basis of emotion instead of reason or, in extreme
cases, to sell their votes outright.
This
is not an abstract concern.
Even in the early years of the Republic,
candidates sometimes offered voters rum in an effort
to secure their support.
In recent years, as Larry Sabato and Glenn
Simpson reported in their 1996 book, Dirty
Little Secrets: The Persistence of Corruption in
American Politics, vote-buying continues on a
large scale.
It’s
high time we dropped the mindless pursuit of
increased participation in elections for its own
sake. The credibility of our electoral process
depends more on a better informed electorate than on
the mere expansion of the number of voters
participating in the election.
Parker
and Stone have a point.
If you haven’t bothered to inform yourself
about the candidates and the issues, stay home on
Election Day.
--
October 18,
2004
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