Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 28, 1993 TAG: 9308230297
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Paxton Davis
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The notion: that the cure for the ailments of democracy is more democracy; and that enlarging the democratic electorate, by making electoral registration as easy as brushing one's teeth, thus broadens and strengthens democracy.
My cavil: that you no more broaden democracy by encouraging imbeciles and layabouts to vote than you eliminate dental cavities and reddened gums by brushing with Pepsodent.
I am pushed to this gloomy thought by the passage, and President Clinton's signing, of the so-called motor-voter bill, which extends the places and occasions where voters may be registered to virtually every public office: driver and motor-vehicle registration stations, welfare offices and the like - everywhere, in fact, but the loos at airports, though I daresay that will come next.
Democrats pushed the measure in the name of "democracy," and Republicans opposed it on the more sensible ground that it would register more Democrats than Republicans.
My hunch is that it will affect voting results little, but will encourage the lazy and indifferent to believe, as they already want to believe, that "democracy" means the opinions and votes of all voters are of equal worth.
That they are not of equal worth ought to be obvious to anyone who can walk and chew gum at the same time. A voter who does not know even the most superficial differences between local, state and federal authority, let alone the names of the public officials whose actions must affect him, casts a worthless vote. A voter willing to take the modest trouble it takes now to get himself registered, and then makes the equally modest effort to inform himself about electoral candidates and issues, casts a vote worth counting.
I am not urging here a return to the days when voter registration was made almost impossibly difficult in the South. The difficulty was deliberate, designed to keep the electorate small and malleable to the wishes of whatever kingfish and his dynasty were in power.
In Virginia, this took the form of documentary proof that one had paid three years of "poll tax," plus the famous "blank sheet" upon which the prospective registration was required to apply for registration. Registrars were forbidden to instruct the prospect in what to write, though it had to be perfect.
This cruel nonsense was designed to keep blacks from voting, but it also discouraged what the Byrd machine and its courthouse minions regarded as the "wrong sort," i.e., Yankees, newcomers, "liberals." It worked, too, making Virginia's one of the smallest effective electorates in the country; V.O. Key, author of the definitive "Southern Politics," demonstrated that it took only 11 percent of the theoretically eligible electorate to elect an officeholder.
We do not need those days again, and thank God and Lyndon Johnson that they are gone, but we could use a little common sense in determining who gets registered and who does not.
Surely it is not too much to suggest that anyone who takes his civic responsibilities at all seriously has the duty to take at least as much trouble getting himself registered as he does buying a six-pack. Surely it is not too much to suggest that he ought to be able to read and write and get to the registrar's office during its (nowadays generous) hours.
Surely, too, it is not too much to suggest that the lazy lout who cannot make even that modest effort has no more business affecting the kind of society you and I live in than a minnow or a bedbug. An indifferent or ignorant voter is not only a bad voter; he is easy prey to demagogues and knaves. \
Paxton Davis is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB