“Why should we beg anyone to vote”

Jeff Jacoby with the Boston Globe: 

Senator Scott Brown is right: For the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to be mailing voter-registration forms to nearly 480,000 welfare recipients — at a cost to taxpayers of more than $275,000 — is indeed “outrageous.” as the Republican incumbent declared last week. The vast get-out-the-welfare-vote campaign “smells wrong,” he says. So it does, but not for the reason he claims.

…Higher voter turnout is no proof of civic health. Voting is only a means, not the end, of democratic self-government. Of course every citizen has the right to vote, including those who are ignorant, apathetic, or indifferent. But why should Americans who take their vote seriously want to increase electoral participation by those who don’t?

Registering to vote isn’t complicated. By and large, Americans who don’t vote don’t want to vote. In 2008 the Census Bureau found that by far the largest share of unregistered voters (46 percent) reported that they were “not interested in the election [or] not interested in politics.”  Their nonparticipation is rational, and we should respect it.

“Why should we beg anyone to vote”

Jeff Jacoby with the Boston Globe: 

Senator Scott Brown is right: For the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to be mailing voter-registration forms to nearly 480,000 welfare recipients — at a cost to taxpayers of more than $275,000 — is indeed “outrageous.” as the Republican incumbent declared last week. The vast get-out-the-welfare-vote campaign “smells wrong,” he says. So it does, but not for the reason he claims.

…Higher voter turnout is no proof of civic health. Voting is only a means, not the end, of democratic self-government. Of course every citizen has the right to vote, including those who are ignorant, apathetic, or indifferent. But why should Americans who take their vote seriously want to increase electoral participation by those who don’t?

Registering to vote isn’t complicated. By and large, Americans who don’t vote don’t want to vote. In 2008 the Census Bureau found that by far the largest share of unregistered voters (46 percent) reported that they were “not interested in the election [or] not interested in politics.”  Their nonparticipation is rational, and we should respect it.