LICKCHEESE. Theres no doubt that the Vestries has legal powers to play old Harry with slum properties, and spoil the houseknacking game if they please. That didnt matter in the good old times, because the Vestries used to be us ourselves. Nobody ever knew a word about the election ; and we used to get ten of us into a room and elect one another, and do what we liked. George Bernard Shaw, Widowers' Houses (1892)
***
Two
days ago, it being a nice sunshiny day and me needing some exercise,
I walked the few blocks over to the Middle School. Had it been an
inclement day, I would have driven to the school. One way or another,
I was going to the school, because it was Election Day, and the
school was the polling place for my ward. Not that there were any
grand offices being contested--nothing national or gubernatorial—just
a pair of legislative seats and local posts. I pressed the button to
re-elect the mayor, and was happy to learn later that he had won by
about a five-to-one landslide.
The
lady who had entered the voting booth before me, however, had some
trouble figuring out what to do to register her vote. “Press the
red button,” exclaimed the poll booth attendant, and eventually she
did, whether to be part of the mayor's majority or not will never be
known.
I
felt no irritation at having to wait a few extra moments while the
woman got all straightened out. That I would walk into the booth
already determined how to vote, press the buttons zip, zip, zip and
stride out only about a minute later did not mean my electoral
contribution to democracy was superior to her fumbling one. Did she
also enter the booth determined how she would vote? Or did she go
“Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo”? Or did she put a hand over her eyes and
stab blindly for buttons to press? To me it mattered not, for in a
democratic state a person should not only be free to vote for the
candidate of her choice, but also to free to choose how
she arrives at that choice.
*
One
hundred years ago, she wouldn't have had the problem of deciding how
to vote, for women were excluded from the ballot box. Women, slaves,
the propertyless were—and still are in too many places in the world
—unable to engage in the process of determining how they are to be
governed. And even when they are granted the vote, there are powerful
forces attempting to snatch their voting rights away (just look
around the country)--whether because of a fierce desire to protect
their own economic interests or through
a neo-Platonic contempt for those they consider inferior in wisdom,
education, intellect, or knowledge. In the latter case, we have the
“guided democracy” ploys—as in Southeast Asia (Indonesia,
Singapore)--in which there are elections which determine nothing
because the ruling powers keep the elections substance-free (and
dissenters in jail), or the technocratic Walter Lippmann
argument—that the general public is unequipped to deal with the
modern world and needs “knowledgeable administrators whose access
to reliable information immunize[s] them against the emotional
'symbols' and 'stereotypes' that dominate[_] public debate.”*
Assuming
such emotion-immunized administrators exist and can be identified, is
there any guarantee that they would not eventually begin to act in
their own self-interest? This question is a modern updating of
Juvenal's “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” (“Who will watch the
watchmen themselves?”). But besides that, who would have more right to
have a say on such a substantive issue as whose son should go off to
war—a robotic administrator or an emotional mother?
***
*That
is Christopher Lasch (The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of
Democracy) explaining Lippmann.
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