Posted on 06/03/2009 7:05:01 PM PDT by Shellybenoit
One of the most sacred rights and responsibilities of American citizenship is voting. We are supposedly guaranteed that every person's vote is worth as much as every other person's vote. That guarantee has never been perfect, Blacks weren't allowed to vote until the 15th amendment in 1870, and women until 1920's 19th Amendment, but the tradition of the United States has been to aspire toward honest elections.
This past election America took a major step backwards, ACORN, perpetuated voter fraud in at least 14 states to the point where some districts had MORE than 100% of registered voters casting ballots. Ultimately this probably had little effect on the national results. But the fact that it was wide-spread enough to cause concern was enough to erode confidence in the system
This week the Department of Justice made two politically motivated decisions that further eroded the value of each of our votes, one in Georgia the other in Philadelphia (see videos below):
(Excerpt) Read more at yidwithlid.blogspot.com ...
Ann Colter has often opposed womens suffrage, using womens emotions and need for a protector as a reason they shouldn’t vote.
now thats not me saying that, but it is interesting.
I've often thought about this. On the one hand, I can hardly deny that the results of elections would be better if women weren't allowed to vote. Clinton, for example, wouldn't have been elected without women's suffrage. Now that I think of it, we'd have ended up with Bush I or Dole, so maybe I've just disproved my own contention. Not sure if this applies to The One or not. I'm sure women's emotional makeup comes into play. Families work in a more communist style, where everyone contributes and everyone benefits not necessarily in proportion to their contribution, and that works at a family level where everyone knows everyone and can be trusted to be honest. Women are family oriented and may view the governance of a nation using the same principles. Whatever the reason, they tend more than men to vote for people who shouldn't hold office. But I still can't square that with the principle of fairness. So it's a quandary for me.
Democracy was the downfall of the Greek city-states.
Let’s try it: you and two cannibals are on a desert island. Everybody gets a vote on what’s for dinner.
John Lott has an interesting chapter in his book "Freedomnomics". It shows a clear correlation, probable causation, between women being given the vote and the expansion of government. Some states gave women the vote earlier and government grew more rapidly in those states than in the states where women did not yet have the vote.
I read it. I love that book. I’ve been thinking about this issue for a long time though.
Are you familiar with the Gracchi brothers of the Roman Republic? They used the offer of opening the Roman treasury and handing it out to Citizens as a means of obtaining power in Roman elections. Julius Caesar handed out lots of the spoils from his conquering of Gaul in order to buy public support so that when he assumed the role of dictator he would have enough public support to be able to hold onto power.
Well, we all know just how well THAT worked out:
Fall of Roman civilization. Check.
A thousand years of darkness. Check.
Famine, disease and misery. Check.
VOTE FRAUD: 2,812 Dead Voters
http://www.redstate.com/jrichardson/2009/06/04/minnesota-vote-fraud-2812-dead-voters/
Let’s start by repealing the 17th amendment, then perhaps re-institute a “reading test” requirement for voter registration.
Not to derail things, but... Robert Heinlein wrote a great book (Starship Troopers) that touched upon how and what it meant to earn the franchise to vote in a hypothetical Republic at war.
No one could vote till they earned the franchise. Earning the franchise meant serving the Republic. You didn’t get the franchise until your term of service was over and honorably served. The Republic determined what service you had to perform to the earn the franchise. No one had to serve if they didn’t want to and life for everyone was pretty good (in the book) without the franchise. However, better to serve in peacetime than in wartime.
Many have misinterpreted the book to mean that you had to serve in the military to earn the franchise. Not true. In the book, applicants for service took aptitude tests and the government evaluated the results and offered you an assignment: take it or leave it. It was Juan Rico’s fortune (good or bad) that he was assigned to serve in the Mobile Infantry.
Just being honest brokers in trying to balance the budget and rolling back unnecessary agencies and programs would have been enough.
I kinda figure we're entering the large intestine of the beast by now. Probably easier to rebuild the Republic than to dismantle the Empire.
...And controlling the border. IMO.
Thanks for sending this to me FreeKeys. Impressive memory.
Here’s the deal. One Man One Vote is another way of mandating something that could be called “FLAT REPRESENTATION”. Recall the founding (tea party) principle - “No Taxation without Representation”. (The juxtoposition of Representation and Taxation was interestingly left out of section 2 of the 14th amendment, as originally made in Article I).
Implicit in this idea is that the KIND of taxation you have must be paired with the SAME kind of representation. If you have FLAT REPRESENTATION, you MUST HAVE FLAT TAXATION. The mindless mantra “one man one vote” therefore, if it is to be kept, must be appended, with something like “One Man, One Vote, One Tax”, and we adopt a truly Flat, non-progressive tax. Alternatively, if we’re going to have progressive taxation, we must have progressive representation, making a voter’s power proportional to the government’s power over the voter’s property.
Madison noted that the rights of property are not secure in a society with absolute universal (flat) suffrage. His hope was that the Senate, deriving from the states and not from the people could help protect the rights of property in the event we got to flat representation (in the House & Executive). However the senate is now popularly elected. The results are evident.
Thanks for reminding me of that book. It’s been decades since I read it.
Excellent food for thought. This could be developed further...
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