Why expanding the vote is a good thing, Part One.

I will admit that I am an avid fan of The West Wing. I will go so far as to say that it's my favourite television drama. I will even admit that I am known to nick fantastic lines from it and use them in daily conversation, and if no one who happens to be around catches me, I'm content to let them think that I'm that witty. One of the great lines that I like is in season four, where, discussing the upcoming election and the viability of new voters coming out for a third party candidate, Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman asks why we should bother striving to reach out to people who are "...so howl-at-the-moon crazy" that they "...don't even show up to raise their hands" every two years. I shared this opinion for quite a while. To me, the notion of not voting was so idiotic that it seemed to function as a sort of competence and literacy test in American society: anyone who didn't vote was probably stupid enough that he didn't deserve to vote anyway, and we all benefit from the fact that this person has chosen not to exercise his civil right to guide the course of our government.

I have completely abandoned that stance.

Let me repeat that, with some typographic emphasis in the form of bold print.

I have completely abandoned that stance.

British historian Paul Johnson, in his History of The American People notes the unique genius of our seventh president, Andrew "Old Hickory" Jackson. Now, Andy's a controversial guy, as are most American Presidents, with today's public. No one is terribly pleased with his actions towards Native Americans, telling off the Supreme Court or his quixotic stance on exactly what version of the Constitution executive branch members were required to enforce, but his vision of expanding suffrage was one of the greatest accomplishments of the nineteenth century, setting the tone for the rest of the American experiment.

Old Hickory saw a Senate and House running wild, a party machine that was virtually negotiating the placement of candidates in office rather than standing them for election and the subsequent abuse of local, state and federal governmental monies that resulted from this, the apotheosis of which was The National Bank. Jackson realised that this was only able to occur because candidates were not directly accountable to a large amount of people, and that as a result, they were able to hold any number of radical opinions and take increasingly unconstitutional action.

This is the critical principle: the more people to whom an elected official feels accountable, the less likely he is to upset his coalition of voters, and the more conservative in governing he's liable to be. A large electorate of diverse voting blocs prevents radical governing from the legislature and forces moderation, leading to the organic change so dearly beloved by this Burkean conservative blogger. There is no more effective way to keep the governments from abusing their powers and expanding their portfolios than to make it difficult for them to get elected and to make every decision that they make politically dangerous to some degree. Moreover, increasing the number of voting blocs decreases the importance of each bloc, such that a legislator is free to vote his conscience without having to worry about whether or not making what he deems to be the right decision will anger the few people who bother to vote. If every vote angers someone, then he's free to do what he wants. Finally, including more people in the political process re-engages the ultimate source of governmental authority: the people. The more people who are scrutinising every action of our elected officials, the less likely they are to be able to engage in the winner-take-all corruption that characterised party machine politics.

Now, then, what are we to make of the efforts to recruit youth voters undertaken by the various purveyors of pop culture? I must say that I am not terribly fond of the melodrama associated with the bloviations of Sean John Combs, but I will say that his efforts to include the black youth are uniquely valuable. I think that one of the most terrifying things about the generation of people to which I belong is the incredible political apathy all around me. It's even worse in the black community - we are living the unfolding of the nightmare scenario described by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, where entire generations of black Americans grow up feeling no involvement or connexion to the American government and society. Re-enagaging the youth vote is not only good for the Republic in the abstract, but in the particular case.

To be continued upon the morrow!

Dheeraj