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ZanderWeissFirstEssay 4 - 05 Jun 2016 - Main.ZanderWeiss
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All of the Laws are Wrong | | | Americans, by and large, do not consider this a problem worth addressing. Those who do not vote are moral sloths foreclosed from engaging in the time honored American tradition of political complaint. | |
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< | Somewhere along the beige, carpeted road between adolescence and death we are assimilated—in the rare moment of personal reflection, one might roll up the farce of our representation with the larger bundle of hard truths that we come to accept (for example, “it’s OK that Saturday Night Live isn’t usually funny,” and “nuclear weapons”). Indeed, the mature reaction seems to be more of a resigned shrug of the shoulders or a disapproving shake of the head than an infuriated blinking of the eyes or a terrified swallowing of air. | >
> | “We” blame the government for many things, but a failure to vote in this country seems to be either squarely the fault of the non-voter or an unremarkable non-issue. Non-voting complainers are silenced by their voting counterparts—this, up until relatively recently, is where the conversation usually grinds to a halt or shifts to a subject more innocuous than “politics.” Few are interested in carrying the issue to term: should the government demonstrate a greater interest in the completeness of its assembly team? Should we? | | | When I was fifteen years old, I heard on the news that the 2008 general election was a shining example of the civic process—that it had been a very long time since so much of the population had gone out to vote. Having not yet stepped onto the beige carpet, you can imagine my surprise and confusion when I learned that the historically heroic proportion of voters amounted to 57.1% of the eligible adult population. | | | No one talks about our other civic duties as Civic Duties (jury duty does not count—the presence of the word “duty” creates too simple of a linguistic bridge to Civic Duty. Jury duty is a cliché). Paying taxes is undoubtedly a civic duty. If you do not pay your taxes, you are fined or jailed; the government has put a system of punishment in place to deter you from forbearing your civic duty. The government goes to great lengths to make sure that everyone has filed his taxes; the individual decision to pay taxes has a tangible effect on all Americans. | |
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< | If you do not vote, you are not fined or jailed; the only plausible case for deterrence of forbearing this Civic Duty is the slightly more likely prospect of a government that does not accord to your tastes. But despite the fact that the individual decision to vote has a tangible effect on all Americans, the government does not seem to care whether or not everyone votes so long as enough people vote to assure predictable polls. In this sense, voting cannot be a duty. | >
> | But voting is not a duty, civic or otherwise. Voting is a right. The government should secure and protect our rights; it should do more in the case of voting. Voting is the wellspring from which all other rights are created and maintained. The government need not hand out megaphones to protect freedom of speech, but it at least ought to ensure that City Hall has adequate acoustics. It ought to do more than tolerate and receive the opinions of its citizens—it ought to welcome enthusiastically each and every voice. | | | Voting should be made easier to the point at which it is practically compelled—it should at least be given the governmental attention of a compelled responsibility. Election Day is not a federal holiday. Conversely, I can do my taxes at my leisure over a period of weeks. Voting more or less requires that I physically cast my ballot at a public place. Conversely, I can do my taxes on my cell phone. In order to be eligible to vote, I have to register well in advance. Conversely, the government will sometimes pay me to do my taxes even if I am three years late.
Some states are better than others. According to the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, fourteen states offer online voter registration. Thirty-two states allow voters to show up weeks before Election Day to cast their ballots. Twenty-seven states do not require a reason to obtain an absentee ballot. |
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