| More, Not Better |
17 February 2003
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John Dean Wants Americans to Vote -- Or Else
John Wesley Dean III, of Watergate fame, surfaced on TV this week demanding that Americans vote. And if they don't, they should face some sort of penalty. Dean says that voting is a civic duty, that failure to do so undermines the Constitution. As a member of the Nixon administration, he may be something of an expert on the subversion of that old parchment.
Dean believes that Americans should be required to vote, as citizens of Australia and Belgium are. What Dean doesn't understand is that forcing people to vote will not improve the quality of the votes cast. Albania used to require its citizens to vote, for Enver Hoxha, who garnered upwards of 99% of the vote with alomst 100% turnout. That didn't make Albania a democracy.
Dean objects to the fact that almost half of the eligible population didn't vote in the last election. The reasons range from a lack of real choice among candidates and irrelevance of the voter versus the campaign contributor to a general dislike of politicians and the desire to watch TV instead. And if one lives in Florida, there's the likelihood that the vote cast isn't the vote counted.
Yet given the educational system of the country, and the disinterest in politics among the Head Count, a higher voter turn out would not lead to better politics. Instead, the ignorance of the new voters would more than cancel out whatever wisdom exists now. Democracy only works if the voters have the facts and if they use their intellect to reason their way to a choice. Experience shows that those conditions don't exist. Mr. Dean's proposal puts the cart before the horse.