The Outstater
Politics, Voting Are Overrated
“Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention.” — James Madison, Federalist No. 10
IN THE MORNING MAIL is the two-thousandth postcard asking for my vote. The thought occurs that in a lifetime of going to the polls I have voted against my own interests a good deal of the time. I didn’t know enough — couldn’t know enough — to choose wisely. Might I have been better off letting the more grounded do the voting?
Not really; it didn’t matter one way or the other under the current system. Granted, collective vote totals send politicians a message — if they are inclined to hear it. In Indiana, though, outside the battleground states, the odds of my vote making the difference in a national election are calculated at an impossible billion to one. The odds in a local elections aren’t all that more favorable.
But it’s my duty, you say. No, I would do better studying the law or economics so as to thwart incursions into individual liberty and thereby maximize choices every day, not just on election day. Who, by the way, voted to bankrupt the next generation, or gut Social Security, or give the Federal Reserve control of our money?
Look, democracy is a false god — a distraction. Governing purely by vote count, especially in a mixed society, is to be ruled by a “parliament of whores,” in the words of the late P.J. O’Rourke. My assistant Grok cites strong arguments that universal suffrage “only broadens the demand for collective action and blame-shifting, the delegation of power to insulated bureaucracies and executive orders.” That sentiment is expressed in a block of dialogue from the classic political comedy, “Wag the Dog”:
Robert De Niro: I don’t vote.
Dustin Hoffman: Why don’t you vote?
De Niro: Last time I voted was that one time Major League Baseball started the fans voting. I voted for Boog Powell on first base. He didn’t get in it, and it just disappointed me. Stayed with me. It’s futile.
Hoffman: You’ve never voted for president?
De Niro: No. Do you vote?
Hoffman: No. I always vote for the Academy Awards . . . but I never win.
Anne Heche: Liz, do you vote?
Liz: No, I don’t like the rooms. Too claustrophobic.
There of course is a more serious case to be made. Why not limit the electorate to those who have something to lose — property owners and taxpayers? At the least, we need a system more grounded in constitutional originalism where voting is an earned trust rather than an entitlement for setting foot on U.S. soil.
That was the idea, anyway. The Founders understood that legislatures otherwise would be driven by what economists have recently come to call the “diffuse costs, concentrated benefits” problem. It is the recognition that we do not have much incentive to oppose a tax that would cost us only a few dollars. Those whom that tax subsidizes, however, have a huge incentive to lobby for both more money and more power (think Indiana Economic Development Corporation).
Please know that none of this assumes one group of citizens is inherently superior. It says only that ownership and tax-contribution status creates incentives for more accountable governance — for everybody. It complements the checks and balances built into our Constitution. It is part of the formula for societal trust and general prosperity.
There are ways to get this done other than returning to the Founders’ franchise of propertied white males. For starters, we can try weighted voting by taxes paid, taxpayer assemblies, tighter naturalization and civics requirements, heritage tests, and so forth. But somehow it needs to get done. Democracy, unfettered, will destroy us if we let it. — tcl
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