Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: notesfiles Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ucbvax!ucbcad!ucbesvax!turner From: turner@ucbesvax.UUCP Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: re: RE: voting (semi-FLAME) Message-ID: <7500076@ucbesvax.UUCP> Date: Mon, 20-Feb-84 23:08:00 EST Article-I.D.: ucbesvax.7500076 Posted: Mon Feb 20 23:08:00 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 26-Feb-84 00:28:20 EST References: <848@ssc-vax.UUCP> Lines: 33 Nf-ID: #R:ssc-vax:-84800:ucbesvax:7500076:000:1930 Nf-From: ucbesvax!turner Feb 24 20:08:00 1984 Give more voting power to those with more money? Let's turn that one around: have a guaranteed national income, collectible only when one presents proof of having voted (or proof of inability to do so). This would certainly bring voter participation up from its rather disgraceful level. The obvious counterargument: poor people will then start voting themselves ever larger pieces of the pie. But so what? The middle classes of industrialized nations have been doing this for decades. (I think Karl Marx says somewhere that capitalist democracy will meet its Waterloo when voters discover that they can vote themselves more money.) Legislative checks and balances could probably keep this process under control. Best of all, this program could result in a net decrease in welfare spending, simply by redistributing wealth with less bureaucratic overhead. Any student who has been through the paperwork blizzard of applying for financial aid can tell you that. Food stamps are a similar hassle. Friends of mine who have worked for state and federal welfare agencies willingly admit that the application process is often one of *mutual* humiliation. How much better to simply go up to a counter and say, "here's my voter's stub and ID." Some will object that citizenship should be its own reward, and that this would only encourage frivolity at the polls. Yes, it would probably bring the "noise margin" up (currently at about 4%, I'd say), but I think that people would in general take voting a little more seriously. And if citizenship is its own reward, why *aren't* people voting? Is it that they feel like they don't count? That they aren't asked to make real decisions, or that no decisions that politicians condescend to allow them to make are worth bothering with? That happens to be the way I feel. Ask someone who's poor--they'll probably tell you the same. --- Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)