Elections

With the Maryland presidential primaries this week, the predictions and analyses of the political experts and pollsters reminded me of a story I read some time ago. It doesn't have anything to do with aliens or romance, but it's certainly "alien" to us in its futuristic speculation. The author imagines a future United States in which demographic science has advanced so far that an exhaustive study can produce the name of the single citizen who is absolutely typical. He so perfectly represents the attitudes of the population as a whole that there's no need for elections with millions of people casting ballots. Whenever public offices need to be filled, the authorities identify the typical citizen of the moment and designate him or her as the Voter. Amid much media hoopla, the experts interview and analyze him, and on the basis of his response a computer program (I think) chooses the winners of the election. An interesting satirical extension, to its ultimate degree, of our present reliance on polls and media trends. How many people vote for a particular candidate simply because that candidate has been built up in the media as a viable choice ("name recognition")? If the election process could be done the way that story imagines it, it would be quite a time- and money-saver. :)

Robert Heinlein, in his collection EXPANDED UNIVERSE, tosses out several provocative ideas on different ways to choose elected officials. His own novel STARSHIP TROOPERS, of course, limits the franchise to veterans of Federal Service (NOT actively serving members; they can't vote until after discharge). (No, the political culture of the Federation in that novel is NOT the neo-fascist military dictatorship implied in that infuriating travesty of a movie adaptation.) Here's an essay analyzing STARSHIP TROOPERS in some detail:

http://www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/ftp/fedrlsvc.pdf

Heinlein also brings up Mark Twain's "The Curious Republic of Gondour," a utopian society in which every citizen has at least one vote, but education or wealth can earn the individual the right to additional votes. The relevant portion of the story can be found here:

http://www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/gondour.html

Another system proposed by Heinlein (how seriously, I can't tell) is a return to the requirement of property ownership as a qualification for the franchise, on the grounds that owning property proves the individual has a serious stake in his community. That idea gives me the chills, implying a reversion to the bad old days of the poll tax and other exclusionary tactics. At the very least, property couldn't be the only qualification. A college degree or employment in a skilled trade should be accepted as an alternative.

Most entertaining is Heinlein's comment about women's suffrage. When the vote was extended to women, many people assumed political discourse would rise to a higher, more morally pure level because of women's refining influence. Clearly, that result hasn't come to pass. Heinlein suggests we haven't gone far enough. How about disenfranchising males for a century or so and see what happens? It's only fair, right? :)