The Holy Franchise

When the United States of America was very young it's founding fathers decided that it'll be a Republic. They needed to decide who will have the vote in the new republic.

Since the time was the late 18th century their decision was in line (more or less) with the sensibilities of the time. They decided that only men will have the vote - not really surprising since Britain (that was the mother country for many of them) didn't give ANY rights to women including no property rights to married women. They couldn't stray too far from acceptable standards without losing popular support and so women were deprived of the right to vote.

Another group obviously excluded from the vote were slaves. The founding fathers were mostly opposed to slavery but they needed the southern colonies to participate in the rebellion and so compromised on this issue.

When the question arose of who WILL have the vote they came up with a simple answer: only men with skin in the game. In other words: men that owned property. The reasoning was that people who have nothing and don't contribute financially to the well being of the Republic have no right to tell others what to do with money the property owners paid in as taxes. There is some logic to this.

The system was changed a number of times.  Slavery was abolished and freed slaves got the vote, women got the vote and by the first half of the 20th century everybody had the voting franchise. In fact it became so important to make sure that people or groups are not disenfranchised that a number of laws were passed by Congress to protect it.

The situation now is that every U.S. citizen has the right to vote in elections. What is to prevent the People to vote themselves goodies from the public treasury and so bankrupt the Republic? Obviously their inherent interest that their money is well spent. But what if a large proportion of the population has no such interest. What if a large part of the population pays nothing into the treasury and lives off the treasury.

There is another factor to be taken into account: when Alexis de Tocqueville visited the U.S. in the 1830s he was particularly impressed by the education of the American voter. This was one of the factors that insured the well being of the Republic - as long as voters were interested and understood what they were doing the Republic would persist.

This doesn't mean that there was no corruption in the 1830. The famous Tammany Hall Democratic political machine in New York City bough and sold votes in the same period as Tocqueville visited the U.S. The Chicago political machine is no less famous. These politically corrupt forces didn't threaten the Republic as long as enough voters had an inherent interest in maintaining it.

A combination of political corruption (always present), voter ignorance and lack of voter interest in the well being of the system do threaten the very existence of our Republic.

In the current election we have large numbers of voters that don't care what is done with their money since they don't contribute any into the system. They do care about what they get from the state. There is also a significant number of voters that don't know English, at least not enough to understand what's going on in the elections, and vote mostly based on fragmented knowledge or based on what they are told by union bosses or whoever cares to tell them.

The combination of lack of stake and ignorance may be deadly for the state. Congress is reluctant to reduce entitlements because they will be voted out of office by angry voters and those entitlements keep growing and will eventually consume us. Why should a person on welfare vote for a Representative that promises to cut off their welfare check?

The situation seems, and probably is, hopeless. The U.S. will keep spiraling into more and more debt with a weaker economy and longer recoveries between crashes. In other words we are going the way of other Socialist countries.

There is a way out, but it requires the slaughter of a sacred cow: the universal voting franchise.

Ask yourself why doesn't the U.S. allow citizens of other countries to vote in its elections? Why doesn't the city you live in allow people from neighboring cities to vote in your elections? The answer is obvious: these people have no stake in our country and if allowed to vote will elect Representatives to fit their interests, like transferring American money to their countries so they can pay their debt, imposing taxes on us to pay for luxuries the Greeks, or French will enjoy.

If this is so clear, why do we allow people who live in this country but have no stake in it elect Congressmen that will reward them with monetary and other rewards for their vote?