It’s Not a Right

Democracy and idiocy don’t mix

by Patrick J. Shanahan
10/01/04

As we careen down the homestretch toward the election, efforts to “get out the vote” are multiplying like crazy. In a contest in which votes are the currency of victory, it makes sense that all sides will do everything in their power to accumulate as many as possible. From “Rock the Vote” efforts on MTV to election law changes to make it as easy as humanly possible to register and to cast one’s vote, to efforts to give felons and the mentally handicapped voting privileges, to Election Day rousting of bums from under bridges, to all sorts of downright illegal hijinks, we as a nation attempt to prove the vitality of our democracy by counting the percentage of compos mentis adults who “vote.” And in doing so we expose the underlying corruption of American democracy – an exercise rendered less and less meaningful as it descends from an expression of popular sovereignty to a cynical exercise in vote accumulation.

At this point in history, it is the Democrats who are the most fond of finding new votes in all sorts of odd places, as well as blatantly violating election laws to stuff ballot boxes. But that has nothing to do with liberalism per se. It is just a reflection of the current state of the parties. At a different time and for different reasons it has been Republicans who suppressed or inflated votes.

The root cause of this diminution of representative democracy is the notion that voting is a right for all citizens. What poppycock. That sounds pretty harsh, I know. After all, it is hard to conceive of a more fundamental right than voting. That’s what it is all about, is it not? Well, yes and no. Voting is not so much a right as it is an obligation of citizenship, properly understood.

The entire premise of republican democracy is that the “people,” the citizens, would be active in and well informed about their own government. It was astonishing the degree to which this held true in early America. Farmers with little formal schooling read newspapers, read political philosophy, read the Bible, and debated the issues of the day. That didn’t mean that it was a low key and civil affair. Debates got rancorous and the “negative campaigning” that went on dwarfed today’s campaign culture. But the participants took their obligation to vote seriously, and put time and effort into understanding what it was they were voting about.

This idea of informed citizenship has been almost completely destroyed in today’s inclusive culture. All one has to do is to roll out of bed in the morning to be considered a good citizen. Actually, that’s not true. All you have to do is wake up breathing. You can spend the rest of your waking time listening to heavy metal and watching soap operas while you wait for your body piercings to heal, and you will still be told by top rock stars that you are a model citizen who needs to exercise his precious “right to vote.” You can spend your day eating government cheese, paying no taxes, and be completely ignorant of the very structure of our government and our nation’s history, and yet your vote will count just as much as your anyone else’s. At the rate things are going you will soon be able to be a convicted child molester sitting in the state pen and vote via absentee ballot in Spanish. We look at this insanity and as a nation pat ourselves on the back for our wonderfully inclusive democracy! Bunk!

To steal a phrase from Paul Erlich, giving an ignorant voter a ballot is like giving an idiot child a loaded machine gun. We hand out these machine guns like candy at a parade and then wonder why our democratic process is full of holes. It’s like the old tale of how one creates a perfect painting. First, achieve perfection. Second, paint a picture. It’s that simple. And so with the right to vote. First, become a good, involved citizen. Second, go vote. It’s that simple. An idiot citizen can no more cast a meaningful vote than a heroin addict can paint a perfect picture, or an idiot child can manage a machine gun.

And so, in my humble opinion, instead of doing everything we can to encourage idiot citizens to vote, one of the most critical imperatives for our democracy ought to be how to keep them away from the polls. This will no doubt stir ugly visions of “literacy tests” and other racist vote suppression tools in some readers’ minds. But that is silly. It doesn’t matter whether an idiot citizen is black or white, male or female, straight or gay. It just matters that they are ignorant.

The first place to focus is on voter registration. We need to immediately repeal “Motor Voter.” We need to insist that all persons applying for voting privileges present proof positive of citizenship, either in the form of a birth certificate or naturalization papers. And then we should insist that prospective voters take – and pass – a citizenship test the likes of which we ask naturalized citizens to pass. If you cannot pass a simple test that shows you know the very basic structure and process of your own government, you have no business voting. If you do not know the basic rudiments of your nation’s founding and history, stay home. If you do not know as much about the duties of citizenship as we require an immigrant to know, you do not deserve to participate in this democracy.

Reclaiming our democracy does not mean mob rule or encouraging idiot citizens to vote. It means demanding that voters be fully engaged citizens. It’s that simple.