[EL] Voter turnout

[Ilya Shapiro]

But we don't have a pure democracy (and few would want to), so making sure that each person (or citizen or resident, or whatever) has a say in every issue isn't the core value. Indeed, voting itself isn't the core value. Consensual, individual-liberty-maximizing government is -- the core value of the American republic, that is, which value I happen to share even though I can't yet vote (naturalization interview coming up in two weeks!).

Ilya Shapiro
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On Apr 10, 2014, at 11:33 AM, "John W. Farrell" <jfarrell at mccandlishlawyers.com<mailto:jfarrell at mccandlishlawyers.com>> wrote:

There are also deeper issues, like do we want to promote voting by more or "better" (higher-information) voters? Do we want that as a normative good even if it empirically leads to worse govt?

There's nothing "deep" about this "issue."

Or new either.

It has been the justification for disenfranchisement of those who are deemed "unworthy" to be among the "oligarkhes" since Athens, at least.

It was the justification for freehold qualification for the franchise in the Federalist period and the justification for Jim Crow era literacy tests.  The WASP's Progressives killed entire forests pursuing eugenic justifications to deprive naturalized citizens from Eastern and Southern Europe of their ballot.

Ultimately, the "deeper issue" is a blind canyon because someone (always those in power) has too decide who are the "better (high information) voter" that will be allowed to determine our common fate.

Higher turn-out rates are a good in itself because it affirmatively demonstrates the "consent of the governed" which, at best, can only be inferred when voters don't participate.

Given our country's extended history of impediments to the franchise, such an inference is inherently suspect when low turn can, just as readily, be attributed to those impediments.
---
John W. Farrell
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On Apr 10, 2014, at 11:40 AM, Ilya Shapiro wrote:


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