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Andy W: “In the future, everyone will be voting for fifteen seconds… from the comfort of their home!”
Wouldn’t that be cool, like Star Trek, if digital-age folks could vote from home? But then again, someone from a patriarchal planet might coerce his wife’s vote.
I enjoy voting in person—yesterday I went to the provincial polling place twice. But still, I realize some think the right to vote should be restricted—No one should vote twice, they say, and… some folks should be restricted from voting at all.
After all, if you let the mob-in-the-street vote, then they might end up, as the Romans feared, voting themselves “bread and circuses;” or as state governor Arnold Swartzeneggar found out first hand, when he appealed over the heads of politicians to the people… To Arnold’s dismay, they voted to maintain, even increase, the deficit to be paid by their children and grandchildren.
In theory, we could look for “proof” of responsibility such as noble blue blood, owning property, age, gender or literacy. Gender? As it happens, only two years before my dad was born, those crazy suffragettes got women the vote. The problem is, the fairer sex comprises over 50 per cent of the population—What if they all vote for peace?
How to ensure quote responsibility unquote? It probably can’t be done. A novelist once fantasied that voters would exercise responsible voting if they first had to do two years of service, civil or military, to earn their franchise. Historically, in ancient Rome, if an alien served twenty years in the legions they would be granted citizenship, and their own plot of land. (Some unfortunate patriots would “buy the farm” a little early) The same writer (Robert Heinlein) mused that, to ensure voter intelligence, voters could go into a voting booth and solve a quadratic equation—Buzz! Wrong answer! John Q. Public, embarrassed, slinks out of the booth while junior enters to try his luck.
The problem, of course, with requiring standards is that persons of a certain race, religion or creed may use those standards to deny certain other people the vote. It’s safer, as Heinlein noted, to just give the vote to “any warm body.” Nevertheless, up in Canada we keep insisting on what some would call overly-high standards. At least the standards are diminishing.
In my life time I have witnessed the years of residency required for citizenship reduced from five to three, to being waived if one brought in a certain amount of money. I have seen the age of majority reduced from 21 to 18 in Alberta, although folks in Ontario still have to be 19 before they can try alcohol. Also I have lived to see convicts who haven’t yet finished their sentence having their franchise restored.
I don’t ask everyone to be informed enough to vote, nor expect my immediate neighbours to care enough about exercising their co-dominion over our condo to go vote at our AGM. I don’t expect they will all care to read notices slipped under their condo door to warn about, say, the danger of putting cigarette butts into planters. Decorative moss is a time bomb. My friends Nancy and Wendy once took me outside, we looked up, a balcony had a planter sized circular hole burned right through to the sky: Someone had exercised their freedom not to read.
So one asks, why not let any warm body vote from home?
Easy: Because there is one final standard that I dearly hope will never be lost: Restricting the vote to those who “give a care” enough to get off the couch… because I love the feeling of fraternity and equality at the voting hall.
Yesterday in the church parking lot, I politely exchanged hellos with a lady who frequents the same coffee shop as I. Standing at a six foot table I turned around to go, saw a neighbour. We politely nodded. A sunny day. Being as polite as the next Canadian, when I got home and the phone rang and Nancy said—“Wendy’s car broke down”— then of course I drove my friends to vote.
I don’t expect everyone to care about the very same things in this vast land: We aren’t clones. For example, Nancy, unlike me, serves her county by cutting the plastic rings of six packs, so God’s creatures great and small don’t get stuck. I “get it” that expecting people to travel to vote might well exclude the lazy guy who burned his planter. If he missed voting day I would feel no sorrow.
I remember, late one night, shortly before voting closed, climbing porch stairs to a small community centre. The place was packed with last-minute people, but not full of stress: good energy, smiles all around. As if people were pleased with their fellow voters, “we crowded few, we band of brothers, we who would give a care.”
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Sean Crawford
Calgary
Still double digits at night
But people already talk about fall pumpkin spice coffee
August
2023
