"People get tired," she says. "I think voters get to a point and say, `I don't know who these candidates are,' and stop voting."
Populists sponsor voter drives, and try to lower the barriers to voting. They also, curiously, try to make it more difficult for voters to become informed. This is completely backward. I don't think voting should be easier. It's not hard right now. Yet people seriously argue for accommodating illiterate voters, or changing the day of elections, so that even less attentive or intelligent people can vote.
Literacy tests used to be widely accepted as a good thing. They acquired a bad reputation when they were rigged by racists in the south to exclude blacks, but that was not their intent in most locations. The fact is that almost all substantive information available concerning a political race is in printed form; radio ads and TV ads provide a series of slogans without any deep analysis. If you can't read the candidate's name, you won't know much about that candidate, and it should be clear that this test cannot be manipulated against a race, but only manifest any real (if unfortunate) differences that might exist at the time the vote is taken.
Worse, the proposal to help illiterates usually involves including some party icon next to the candidate's name. Party identification shouldn't even be included on the ballot; parties are far from monolithic, and straight-ticket voters are the least informed.
What we should be doing is to make it easier to become informed than it is to vote.
Perhaps it's not fair that some people can't read. Perhaps we should help them read. We should enable them to avail themselves of information. Once they can read, then they'll be able to vote. It's not fair that people who can't drive aren't allowed to drive, but it makes the world a lot safer.
President Bush, in Spain, was asked why the United States has the death penalty. His response was that it's "the will of the people". That's a pretty hollow answer.
Our Constitution was put forward as a compact among states with checks and balances to protect each group from having its rights and interests overrun by other groups. This was to be effected institutionally by counterbalancing factions, but also by circumscribed government power. No majority, however large, of the U.S. Congress shall make any law respecting the establishment of religion; it's simply off the table.
The Constitution wasn't perfect, but its defense of the rights of minorities against other people ganged up on them was a great leap forward in the decent treatment of men by each other. That we have rights that are not at the whim of others is what makes us human.
My worthy Colleague says, his Will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If Government were a matter of Will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior.Any form of democratic government is intended to act in the interest of the people it governs. But as Burke was also pointing out, representation makes possible a division of labor that is vitiated if acting in the people's interests is supposed to mean inflicting on them their full ignorance on every issue on which they've insufficient time to educate themselves. (cf. Kennedy's prologue in "Profiles in Courage", which promotes basically the contrapositive to this.) In peacetime a representative should try to maintain a dialogue with his electors to remain informed as to their wishes; in war time especially, however, complete candor may not be possible (or in the interest and wishes of his constituents). As citizen voters, we are called upon to elect someone better than we to make better decisions than we would, making use of the classified information to which we aren't priveleged, and to monitor him but allow him to excercise that better judgement, exactly as we would with a doctor or a car mechanic had we not enough time or information to fix our own car or perform our own surgery.