X-no-Archive:yes
The direction that this discussion has taken reminds me of a discussion that
took place on The Tonight Show between Johnny Carson and his guest, Miss
Manners (who in my opinion tends to concern herself with the polite
consideration of others that underlies much of "good manners" without
excessive worry over prissy details). Johnny was asking her about various
every day considerations, "What do you do when...", and came to one that in
"Gone with the Wind" is referred to as "the vapors". She replied that there
are some things which you can only polite ignore, as though they never
happened.

But there are two points of history worth noting, and one blindlingly
obvious observation (but I have to stay with my strengths). Our definitions
of who should be allowed to vote has changed to be more egalitarian through
our history, and at times we have included and excluded groups and strata of
citizens from voting. Currently, we exclude felons, minors, and almost no
one else (I wonder about those incompetent to manage their own affairs?).

One of our uglier missteps have been various attempts to exclude
identifiable ethnic groups, by Jim Crow laws, grandfather laws, and literacy
tests (which might not have been such a bad idea were they not abused to
exclude former slaves who were deliberately kept from learning to read).
This has almost certainly shaped our "intent of the voter" laws regarding
ballots (among a few other laws), where unscrupulous folk at the polls would
deliberately misinstruct and misdirect "suspect" voters (by ethnic group or
sometimes by party affiliation or intent), such that those ballots would be
"mismarked", and would thus not be counted.

Fortunately for those who would still like to see others excluded from
voting, a significant number of the population are not registered to vote,
self-selected for exclusion, and of those that are registered, a large
number never make it to the polls. A story that I would have liked to seen
covered or investigated would be * why * this election got a higher turnout
than recent elections (here, the claim has been made that it was to vote on
referenda, and not for candidates, but that doesn't do much to explain the
other forty-nine states). I have wondered since college what would happen if
someone could covertly run a campaign that would appear by virtue of
placement and appearance to tell various groups (without naming any group)
that "Last time, thirty-seven percent of you didn't vote. This time, let's
go for eighty percent". "We don't want your vote". "Stay home. You wouldn't
understand the issues, anyway". I can only imagine that this would provoke a
somewhat better turnout.

Greg Stigers
http://www.cgiusa.com