In case you needed proof that voting has nothing to do with enhancing freedom or controlling government, witness the government’s enthusiasm for making voting mandatory. James Bovard writes in The Washington Times:
President Obama recently suggested that mandatory voting could cure some of the ills of American democracy. Mr. Obama observed that compelling everyone to vote is one way to “encourage more participation” — perhaps the same way that the specter of prison sentences encourages more people to pay taxes. While there are many good reasons to oppose mandatory voting, compulsory balloting could help Americans recognize what their political system has become.
Mr. Obama declared that “the people who tend not to vote” are “skewed more heavily toward immigrant groups and minority groups … and there’s a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls.” If minorities vote at a lower percentile rate, that is sufficient justification for destroying everyone’s freedom in the name of equality. The fact that blacks had a higher turnout rate than whites in the 2012 presidential election is not permitted to interrupt the progressive victimization narrative.
Popular perceptions of the purpose of elections have profoundly changed over the past 200 years. The Founding Fathers viewed elections as one of the most important leashes that citizens could attach to politicians. Law professor John Phillip Reid, author of “The Concept of Representation in the Age of the American Revolution,” observed, “Eighteenth-century representation was primarily an institution of restraint on governmental power.” Early American voters expected congressmen to protect them from the ravages of the executive branch. But any such hope of constraining government via ballots seems like a relic of the horse-and-buggy era. Instead, voting is becoming more like a medieval act of fealty — with citizens obliged to promise unlimited obedience to whoever is proclaimed the winner.
Nowadays, we have elections in lieu of freedom. For a long time, national elections have offered little more than two parties taking turns trampling rights and plundering the Treasury. Regardless, no law should be passed to compel voting until after we discover a method to compel politicians to be honest.
