LARRY B. writes: 

The right to vote is treated as an inseparable part of the American person today, as if it is the one and only guarantee of the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that so many Americans hold dear. Never mind that well below fifty percent of the population votes in any presidential or congressional election. Equality is the most important thing. Today, young Americans are trusted with the vote, that hallowed right, before they’re trusted with alcohol or rental cars.

We recognize that persons have an inherent dignity, and that the unique manifestation of the divine in each person, the soul, entitles them to certain inviolable rights. These ideals were essential to the founding of the American nation and the derivative voting power apportioned to persons within the framework of the American republican system. However, the undeniable dignity of persons did not entitle all to equal representation in the government.

At first, the vote was only given to white male landowners, those deemed most responsible and capable of self-determination. By 1810, religious prerequisites were dropped from the voting requirements, and by 1850 almost all white males over the age of 21 could vote. By 1870 the franchise was extended to American male citizens of all races. Literacy tests were first installed in 1857, first in Massachusetts, and poll taxes and literacy tests were later implemented in the South, restricting the vote primarily along racial lines, before the Supreme Court outlawed all literacy tests in 1917.

At this point, it was possible for people to vote on a ballot that they could not read, but even if a person cannot understand their inviolable rights, that doesn’t mean they don’t have them—in the sense that unborn human fetuses still have the right to life. Women received the vote in 1920, American Indians in 1924, and in 1971 the voting age was lowered to 18, more or less leaving contemporary Americans with the situation we have today. 

Here is what is wrong about our current system. A 45-year-old married man, who makes $150,000 a year, has five children under the age of 18, and has never committed a crime gets one vote. A 25-year-old man, twice convicted of felonies, who has no wife or children, and makes less than $14,000 a year also has one vote.

These two persons have an equal dignity in the existential sense, but do they have the same social value, the same deservedness to participate in government? The 45-year-old pays more taxes and is directly responsible for the care and management of five or six other lives. His judgment is better tempered and his experience is greater than the 25-year-old, but his capacity for governmental determination is no greater under our current system.

This should not be the case. I believe that other social values, such as income, children, civil obedience, and age (beyond 18), should also factor into the voting process. The 25-year-old need not be deprived of his vote, but the voting power of the responsible 45-year-old should be expanded. Give him five votes. Reward his contribution to society and his responsible behavior.

These two men both have inalienable value, and their souls are both infinitely valuable, but their social value is finite, and it is not equal. Let’s let representative government really be representative. Let’s manifest our cultural and social values in the vote, to empower good individuals and extol their achievements on a more fitting level.

                                                   — Comments —

Laura writes:

This proposal for plural votes is an interesting suggestion for making the franchise more just without disenfranchising anyone. Needless to say, such a proposal is impossible in a democracy such as ours since large numbers of people are not going to vote to reduce their political power. The greater worthiness of the responsible citizen is also not universally recognized. The exercise of envisioning a different system, however, is not worthless. For one, we should think out and articulate improvements as a way of grasping our current problems and limitations. Secondly, we should pursue this exercise as an attempt to understand our ancestors. Thirdly, we do not know what the future will bring. Despite its wild impracticality now, this is a practical proposal.

I don’t think, however, “social value,” as you call it, should be the only criterion. Judgment comes with age, experience and responsibility. The vote should be dispensed according to a person’s hypothetical judgment. If one thinks of social value as the determining factor, there is no justification, for instance, of giving men more votes than women. There may be justification, however, if one considers that men have better political judgment by nature.

Larry B. writes:

The term “social value” was intended to designate, more or less, those criteria that would go in to determining increased voting powers, such as the number of children a person has, their age, their income, their tax level, their felony record, their military service, and so on. All of these factors would determine the person’s social value, which is not actually a commendation in and of itself. 

A person’s sex could also be become one of the factors in determining a person’s social value and thus, the extent of their voting privileges.

I hesitated to include that because the differences in political aptitude or judgment between men and women are more difficult to quantify or qualify. Things like age, income, and number of children are easily quantified and measured, but something like political judgment, though recognizable by many people, does not lend itself to a numerical manifestation. 

This problem is also worsened with the modern man. It may well be true that men did have better political judgment than women, by nature. But that nature has come under attack recently, and is being forcibly augmented to the point where I don’t know if that assessment is very accurate any more, for better or worse. I certainly don’t think women should be disbarred from the vote. Case in point, I think you would be a much more qualified and discerning voter than most recent college graduates. Perhaps that political judgment comes with time, and these dunce graduates could re-acquire their proper voting powers when they’ve grown in age and experience at a disproportional increase to women. Of course, I think that would be even harder to establish than an individual, value-based sort of voting for all citizens in the first place.

Laura writes:

The psychological and cognitive differences between men and women are not as difficult to quantify as you suggest. As the psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen has written in his book The Essential Differences, men innately have  “systematizing” minds and women have more “empathizing” minds. It is reasonable to infer from these differences that men are more capable of impersonal political judgment and do not naturally view government as something that should paternalistically care for the citizen.

The other justificaton for men to have a greater number of votes is their potential obligation to defend the country with their lives. This would fit with your definition of higher social value.

The vote is not the only way to have political influence. One can speak and lobby and agitate. A woman can influence her husband or male relatives. The other advantage to more male votes is the recognition this would confer on male authority,which is essential to the basic functioning of society.

Aaron writes:

I personally would favor limiting the voting pool much, much further. I’d like to see a return to allowing only landowning males of 21 or older to vote. There would also need to be a minimum land parcel size, otherwise someone would sell land in 1’x1′ plots just to allow voting. Also, the voter, as well as any man eligible for political office, should be a freeholder — owning land without any debt.

I also support repealing the direct election of Senators. Make senators beholden to the state legislature, not the people directly. I also would like to end the citizens electing the president — I see no
reason for this. Why not have the senate or the house or both elect a president?

I honestly don’t see a reason for citizens to have the power to elect officials outside of their municipality. Let the municipal officials elect the county officials, the counties elect the governors, and have governors appoint senators, and the state legislature appoint house representatives. Couple this with disallowing the federal government to collect taxes from citizens, but instead directly from the state governments, and you’d see your senators battling on behalf of the state to reduce the size of the federal government very quickly.

Of course, I’d rather take the whole thing a step further and have a monarch replace the president, and titled hereditary peers to replace the senate, but that’s even less likely to happen.

Jesse Powell writes:

On the issue of the right to vote, most of the discussion so far has focused on how to achieve “good governance,” giving more competent members of the society or those who contribute more to society more voting powers. I think voting should be viewed more as a means of conflict resolution and less as a path to “good governance,” whatever that may entail. Creating a complicated formula to figure out who gets how many votes is an invitation to conflict merely in the haggling that would be involved in creating the formula used to apportion votes. Then, the uneven distribution of voting power decided upon would fuel resentment among those given small apportionments of voting rights. The genius, and the purpose, of the “one man one vote” rule is to eliminate the conflicts that would be generated otherwise. The assertion of “equality” at least among the enfranchised class provides the benefit that no one, within the enfranchised class, is “discriminated against” or “oppressed” or can be ignored with impunity. 

What is wrong with society today is not democracy or the political system; it is the culture, it is feminism. The breakdown of the family is America’s biggest problem, not the organization of our political system or the “one man one vote” rule. If anything, in my opinion, I would say that politics and governance is the part of America that is working best at the moment. 

Now it is true, women having the right to vote may be a contributing factor to feminism and family breakdown so women having the right to vote may not be consistent with a social structure working at its ideal best. That being said, women voting is not America’s biggest or most immediate problem, there are many legal reforms that should be tackled first before the issue of women’s voting rights comes up as a serious issue.

Laura writes:

As far as your first point, Larry’s proposal would not work as something voted upon precisely because of the conflict you mention. It is only something that could spring organically from political revolution or the founding of a new republic.

There is not the slightest chance of the women’s vote emerging as a serious political question in the foreseeable future. In the meantime, the women’s vote, as well as the diminishing voting power of whites, imposes serious limitations on political reform. 

I agree with you that cultural forces and attitudes are important. For instance, there is nothing to say women couldn’t become more conscious of their role in creating bloated government.

Anonymous writes:

For instance, there is nothing to say women couldn’t become more conscious of their role in creating bloated government.

 They already know, and the benefits to them outweigh the consequences. To too many people the purpose of government is to take care of them. If that means bloated government, they’re willing everyone should pay that price. People show by their votes for spendthrift politicians that they don’t care about the horrendous deficit. A change would take either a spiritual renewal or a derailing of the gravy train.

Laura writes:

It would take major spiritual renewal or an economic crisis of very large proportions to turn women in significant numbers away from the view of government as a form of social work. Even then, I don’t think women could sustain a consistently conservative position in the voting booth without destroying their own empathetic and receptive qualities. Society depends on these feminine qualities and it would be harmful to diminish them.

Laura adds:

Getting back to Aaron’s proposal that voters be freeholders, our government would conceivably be more liberal on many cultural issues if a major portion of the conservative middle class that holds mortgages was disenfranchised today. 

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