Brian W. Firth

Voting “Rights”

THE CONGRESS, with its characteristic combination of insolence and insubordination, is threatening to revive the Voting Rights Act. The first and obvious objection is that voting is not a right, but a privilege: you expect to be able to enter into a contract wherever you may be, but you can only vote in the State where you reside. The second and important one is that the Voting Rights Act expresses the typical demagogs’ desire to have hoi polloi – those who know little about the candidates – voting. Congress indulges itself in a power never delegated, namely to enact special legislation favoring or burdening some fraction of the nation (the Voting Rights Act affects some States differently from others): why, then, should it hinder the States from enacting special legislation in pursuit of the ideal franchise? One glaringly obvious improvement would be for the States to emulate the U. S. and exclude office-holders – if not, indeed, all tax-spenders – from voting in elections.

What the Congress should have done:

There is no excuse for this Congress to perpetuate the blunders of the twentieth century; it could, instead, do what it is paid to do under the Fourteenth Amendment:

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for president and vice-president of the United States, representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male members of such State being of twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

This section does not even say, “the Congress shall have power to reduce . . .”, it says “shall be reduced . . . .” Congress has defied it with perfect regularity ever since it was ratified, in 1868 (fairly obviously, the members of Congress find no fault with elections they have won.) Nowadays, numerous States deny the right to elect judges, often in favor of mere executives who may even not represent the same people as the judge, e.g. we see State governors participating in the choice of county judges.

What the States might well do:

One of the damaging results of this amendment is, that the States tend to include as many persons as possible in the franchise: one may find that there is no maximum voting age, although older citizens are notoriously short-term in their outlook. And it is obviously absurd to expect persons in their 70s or 80s to discriminate between candidates aged 45 or 55.

In fact, neither age nor sex is a suitable ground for granting any privilege — these are things one cannot choose, over which one has no control. (A child could well be endowed with a vote at birth; parents of young children are likely to be keenly concerned with the future prospects of their society.) The proper grounds for denying or granting privileges are those things one can do or refrain from doing, and particularly those things one does or refrains from doing in relation to one’s neighbors — i.e. circumstances, rather than instances. In these days, when complaints against the public school system, and the “media,” are perennial, it would be very discreet for a State to make literacy a qualification for voting, to ensure that the voter both understood the English language and also was not dependent for information upon 100-word-a-minute television programs.