[EL] George Will recycling old William F. Buckley arguments (plus a dash of Jeane Kirkpatrick for fun)

[Douglas R. Hess]

I appreciate Prof. Scarberry's offer to send Buckley's column around off
list, and I'm happy to do so as well for those interested in this little
debate. The version I have is from the Buffalo paper. I assume syndicated
columns aren't/weren't edited much when they ran in different papers. (Does
anybody know if that's true? Buckley's article ran in 1993, if that matters.
If the columns were edited to fit in different papers, texts could vary.)

 

Regarding the response in the email below to my original email (also below),
a few points while I pack for holiday travel:

 

1.       Please notice that I didn't accuse Will of plagiarism, and I
suggest that Will's arguments differ from and amplify Buckley's (by amplify,
perhaps poor word choice, I meant that Will spent more time on the points
than Buckley). Still, the major theme is very much the same as Buckley's and
it is not uncommon among some circles on the far right (even some on the
far-far left, too). That theme is: Some barriers to voting are good as they
weed out the rabble (people with political opinions of low "caliber" in
Will's words). 

This has scary implications for North Dakota where there is no voter
registration. Things must be going horribly wrong there from all the easy
access to voting and high turnout (and ditto for much of the Midwest which
has high registration and turnout).  

 

2.       Prof. Scarberry  thinks Will is being genteel about it, but it
seems to me he holds non-voters in contempt. He also states something about
heading towards mandatory voting, which I don't think is in the plans of
anybody with any power and is certainly not in the link or quote Will
provides (assuming the link on Holder remains the same, maybe Will gave the
wrong link to the editors?).  Making such a charge to head off more moderate
changes is itself not moderate debating. And quoting Hans von Spakovsky's
poor reading of the NVRA doesn't help with a moderate image or tone either.

For another take on this, see Andrew Cohen's review of Will's column here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/12/george-will-gets-almost-
everything-wrong-about-voting-rights/266504/   Cohen makes an error or two
of his own, in my opinion, but largely gets it right.

 

3.       Part of the problem with discussing Will's column is that it has
several contradictions in it (notably Will argues that institutional design
both does and does not cause low turnout). Nonetheless, he states "the fact
[that] many people do not register to vote is not evidence that the
franchise is restricted, other than by voters' inertia." That contradicts a
lot of published, scientific research. Also, Will doesn't say he's against
poll taxes, etc. Will says they have been removed and he thinks it made no
difference. Two points about this:

 

a.       He uses the wrong measure of the difference such policy changes
make, but it is still clear that the point of removing the barriers is lost
on him.  Those changes did make a difference, especially for non-whites in
the South



b.       Yes, Will refers to  "registration and residency requirements" as
"burdensome," but he seems to think some kinds of burdens are ok (and,
contradictory that they also don't matter).  NOTE:  I'm not saying he
supports this or that restriction.  I'm just pointing out that he doesn't
say anything against poll taxes, etc., which is how Prof. Scarberry
interprets that part of the column. In short, Will doesn't state how much of
a burden is allowable, but he supports some burden and that this is a
"small" requirement for voting. 

 

4.       Prof. Scarberry wrote: "On the Nazi election point, Will certainly
does not say that high voter turnout is bad because it can lead to election
of Nazis or similar people." That's exactly what Will is stating. What else
is Will's reference to concentration camps about? Granted, he may have meant
to make a more general point about percentages of turnout as a measure of
quality in a democracy, but he (not moderately) makes the comparison to
authoritarianism (although he doesn't use the term, the reference is
distinct). Again, his point is clear: non-voters and the non-registered are
lazy and uninformed, thus it is ok to keep them away.in fact, they can be
dangerous. 

 

In short, I find the whole column to be muddy and poorly reasoned. One may
not agree with my interpretations, but they are not "completely
unjustified." 

 

-Doug

 

 

From: Scarberry, Mark [mailto:Mark.Scarberry at pepperdine.edu] 
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 3:56 PM
To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] George Will recycling old William F. Buckley arguments
(plus a dash of Jeane Kirkpatrick for fun)

 

This is really a completely unjustified attack on George Will. Will's
comment is moderate in tone and thoughtful. The two columns - Will's and
Buckley's - are quite different. Some of the points made thoughtfully by
Will are similar to those made vehemently by Buckley, but Will's are more
developed and largely respond to events and public statements (e.g., by Eric
Holder and Thomas Perez) postdating publication of Buckley's column. 

 

It is difficult for me to see how Buckley's arguments could be seen as more
nuanced than Will's. (I would have to see the statement made by Jeanne
Kirkpatrick to judge her level of nuance.) Will, for example, says that many
potential voters make a rational decision not to be informed and not to
vote, because of the time and effort involved in being an informed voter and
because of the unlikelihood that the individual's vote would make a
difference. Will points out that there are few states that are competitive
in presidential elections and that gerrymandering makes participation in
elections for other offices less meaningful. None of this is discussed in
Buckley's column.

 

Buckley's column is much more vehement. For example, Buckley wrote:

 

"The motive behind the law is so obvious as to be truly contemptible. It is
a way of saying: 'Our guess is that more lazy non-voters, who don't show up
on election day, would vote, if they did show up, the Democratic ticket.' So
let's register those voters if necessary by sending them a registration form
on Valentine's Day."

 

And Buckley accused President Clinton of having a "vested interest in public
ignorance" as shown by Motor Voter (and also by repeal of a George H.W. Bush
administration labor law regulation that required posting of signs informing
union members of their rights under the Supreme Court's decision in Beck).

 

On the Nazi election point, Will certainly does not say that high voter
turnout is bad because it can lead to election of Nazis or similar people.
(Actually, I doubt that Kirkpatrick said that; Buckley said, without
mentioning Nazis, that a high turnout doesn't necessarily indicate civic
health.) Will does say that the high voter turnout in the German elections
in the 1930s was not an indicator of civic health (one point that is quite
similar to Buckley's) and that it was due to the very high stakes (a point
that Buckley did not make with respect to the level of turnout). Will writes
that 

 

"Those who think high voter turnout indicates civic health should note that
in three German elections, 1932-33, turnout averaged more than 86 percent,
reflecting the terrible stakes: The elections decided which mobs would rule
the streets and who would inhabit concentration camps."

 

We can be thankful that the stakes in our elections are not so great (at
least not at this point). As Will says, "the stakes of politics are
agreeably low because constitutional rights and other essential elements of
happiness are not menaced by elections."  

 

Will agrees with Holder that long lines at polling places are a problem, but
disagrees with Holder about the idea that voting should occur at times other
than on election day. 

 

Will does not repeat Buckley's complaint about elimination of literacy
requirements for voting; instead, Will pretty obviously approves of removal
of serious "impediments" to voting, like "poll taxes, literacy tests, [and]
burdensome registration and residency requirements."

 

Will does make the point that lower overall turnout rates since the 1960
presidential election have "coincided with the removal of [those] impediment
to voting."

 

Will does say that it is not bad that people have to register in order to
vote, as long as it is not a real impediment to voting (but only a "small .
requirement") :

 

"A small voting requirement such as registration, which calls for the
individual voter's initiative, acts to filter potential voters with the
weakest motivations. They are apt to invest minimal effort in civic
competence."

 

Buckley makes a similar point, though much more vehemently. I don't think
that this general point - that a non-burdensome registration requirement is
a filter for a minimal level of motivation - was original with Buckley or
that Will got it from Buckley. 

 

I have Buckley's column and would be happy to forward it individually it to
anyone who wants to confirm that Dr. Hess has treated Will unfairly. It's
quite short, but due to copyright concerns I haven't reproduced it here.

 

I will confess that I read Will's columns regularly and that his
participation is the only reason I watch the round table hosted by George
Stephanopoulos. (I certainly enjoyed the Sandburg anecdote that Will
recounts at the beginning of his column.) 

 

Mark S. Scarberry

Professor of Law

Pepperdine Univ. School of Law

 

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Douglas
R. Hess
Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2012 6:23 PM
To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: [EL] George Will recycling old William F. Buckley arguments (plus a
dash of Jeane Kirkpatrick for fun)

 

George Will has a really strange (I mean a Glen-Beck-strange kind of
strange) column out today on the NVRA (see link below). As I read it, the
column seemed rather familiar. Took me a while to find it, but the column
largely repeats and amplifies arguments that William F. Buckley, Jr. made
against the NVRA in a column titled "Motor Voter Legislation Vitiates States
Rights" that ran on February 12, 1993 (likely ran several places through
Universal Press Syndicate). 

 

I couldn't find a link to the Buckley column that was free (but I could get
it through the campus LexisNexis subscription where it was stored via The
Buffalo News (City Edition) 02/12/1993). However, the article can be bought,
apparently, through High Beam (the second link below) if you don't have
Lexis/Nexis.

 

Anyway, for good measure Will also tosses in a reference to Nazi electoral
victories as the result of high turnout...which also seemed familiar to me.
Yep, it's been trotted out by folks like Jeane Kirkpatrick whenever they
wanted to argue that elections aren't a guarantee of democracy, or
candidates they backed.  Of course, Kirkpatrick's and Buckley's points are
more nuanced than Will's, but that's not saying much. 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-federal-voting-drive-make
s-a-mountain-out-of-a-molehill/2012/12/19/461e17c4-494c-11e2-ad54-580638ede3
91_story.html

 

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-22492872.html

 

 

Douglas R. Hess, PhD
Washington, DC
202-277-6400
douglasrhess at gmail.com 

 

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