H.L. Mencken’s ‘Election Day’

A column in the Wall Street Journal this morning gives us a thumbnail history of U.S. Election Day, now Election Tri-Month. The writer is of the opinion that early, extended and absentee voting has ruined it. The columnist, a sentimentalist, seems most worried about losing the majesty of the day, a celebration of “unity in division” is the way he thinks of it.

That glosses over a mess of violence on past election days, but never mind. We can follow along as far as the columnist takes us, which is to restore the less convenient but historic 12-hour, in-person franchise. 

Personally, I would like to see voting a lot more inconvenient than that. My vision would have voters showing up at the polls with not only iron-clad photo identification but the paperwork to prove they have paid taxes, are not on welfare, have not been found guilty of a felony, have not been kicked out of the military and of course are U.S. citizens if not third-generation heritage Americans of sound mind and body. (I have abandoned Margaret Thatcher’s dream of limiting the vote to property owners.)

Yes, all unrealistic, but before giving up entirely I ask you to examine why Democrats and the Left are so emphatic about absentee and relaxed voting. Don’t tell me it is because they are so hard-working they cannot spare an hour to cast a vote at one or another of the ubiquitous polling stations in every corner of every township. 

No, the reason is that there are many people in America now whose lives are in such disorder and their civic focus so fogged by ignorance, stilted educations, adolescent ideology and sloppy thinking, if not mind-altering substances, that doing anything within what to them is a narrow 12-hour window is uncertain if not impossible.

Yes, a large number of such people think of themselves as Democrats. It simply takes too much energy to drag them to the polls at a certain time on a certain day.

Too harsh? You might prefer H.L. Mencken’s more bipartisan take. He had a plan to select our legislative representatives the way juries are selected, that is, by random lot  — or as Bill Buckley suggested, picking them out of the phone book or drafting them off the street. Names would go into a pool, be drawn and police sent out to seize the unlucky “winners,” haul them before a court and compel them by bond or jail to serve in office.

“No matter how stupid they were, they could not be more stupid than the average legislator under the present system; certainly, they’d be measurably more honest,” Mencken argued. “Finally, there would be the great advantage that all of them had got their jobs unwillingly, and were eager not to spin out their sessions endlessly but to get home as soon as possible.”

Later, Mencken refined his proposal to specify that any of the draftees who demonstrated an aptitude for politics or expressed enjoyment in the job be shot.

He went too far there, in my opinion. — tcl