MSNBC political analyst Andrea Mitchell says on a promo for her network that she thinks it's a scandal that some people are trying to prevent other people from voting. We should try to get as many people as possible to vote, she opines, regardless of which party benefits.
Well, no we shouldn't. In the first place no one is trying to prevent anyone who has the right to vote from voting. What some people are trying to do with voter ID legislation is to prevent the system from being abused by people who are not legally eligible to vote. Ms Mitchell and others of her ideological persuasion think that the voting franchise should be as broad and as easy to exercise as possible, but this is ludicrous.
Should we extend voting rights to 16 year-olds? How about resident non-citizens? How about citizens of other countries who once upon a time visited this country? Why not let anyone anywhere vote in our elections? If we adopt what we might call the Mitchell Principle there's no obvious reason why we shouldn't.
Should we make it hard for eligible citizens to vote? Not especially, but neither should we encourage people to vote who have not taken the time to inform themselves on the matters upon which they'd be voting. Someone who cannot name at least four Supreme Court judges or explain what the Supreme Court is or does should not be encouraged to vote. Someone who pays no federal income tax and thus has no economic stake in the country should not be encouraged to vote. Someone who cannot name their U.S. Senators should not be encouraged to vote. Indeed, they should be encouraged not to.
People like Ms Mitchell want these folks to cast a ballot, of course, because she knows that the less well-informed people are the more likely they are to vote for candidates who have charisma and who promise them access to goodies that must be paid for by the rest of the population. In other words, the more uniformed a voter is the more likely he or she is to vote for the liberal candidate.
This may seem a bit unkind, but in the last election Mr. Obama won largely on the basis of the support he received from two groups of people who are generally the most indifferent toward politics - young voters and poor minorities.
People like Ms Mitchell argue that we all have a civic duty to vote, but this isn't true either. We have a civic duty to inform ourselves so that we can vote responsibly. If we haven't done that then we actually have both a civic and a moral duty not to vote.
Major League Baseball doesn't allow just anyone to vote for their MVP. They restrict the process to sportswriters who make it their business to follow the game. There's a reason for that. The MVP shouldn't be a popularity contest, it shouldn't be based on which player is the best looking or the best speaker at off-season events, it should be based on his merits as a baseball player. The same is true of the office of the President. People who only read the sports pages of the newspaper shouldn't vote for president anymore than people who only read the editorial page should vote for baseball's MVP.