Posted on 03/14/2004 1:48:52 AM PST by w-pat
Friday, March 12, 2004 Why stop with 14-year-olds? If ignorant illiterates can vote (and elect Sen. Vasconcellos), toddlers deserve say
By RICHARD KIRK Free-lance writer who lives in Oceanside
State Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-Santa Clara, is at it again. The same dude who, over a decade ago, established that immensely productive state task force on self-esteem, has recently joined with a group of like-minded legislators to propose giving partial votes to teen-agers. He would give 14- and 15-year-olds quarter-votes. Their 16- and 17-year-old siblings would get half-votes.
What's surprising is that the esteem guru of Sacramento would stop short of a constitutional amendment that fractionally enfranchises all of California's citizens. Why not seek a law that makes both grade-schoolers and toddlers feel good about exercising the obligations of citizenship? After all, if "Home Alone's" Macaulay Culkin could rake in millions of taxable dollars before the age of 12, why shouldn't tweeners possess at least a sixth of a voice in the way those dollars were spent?
Concerning younger Californians, the tired old conservative position holds that language acquisition and continence skills are required to exercise the basic rights of citizenship - an argument that shows how small-minded the opponents of full fractional representation really are.
First of all, a significant number of California's high school graduates are already functionally illiterate, so extending rights to other cognitively challenged citizens seems only fair. Furthermore, voters in Depends constitute one of the fastest-growing classes of enfranchised citizens in the Golden State. Allowing Pampers people equal access thus can be seen as a logical extension of the basic democratic principle that government has no business peering into people's underwear.
If one asks how pre- and neo-bipeds are supposed to vote, I reply that it is incumbent upon a government of "all the people" to accommodate the developmental stages of citizens by providing height- and age-appropriate selection mechanisms. A ballot for 2-year-olds, for example, could show a scowling face shouting, "Bad boy, bad girl," for one party and a cheerful mommy figure saying, "Does baby want candy?" for the other. These sound-signals would necessarily reflect the state's ethnic diversity. Similar access-enhancing devices have long been employed by the DMV - an agency that could provide invaluable guidance to registrars as they transition to a truly inclusive voting system.
Other creative symbols could be used for minor party candidates. Greens might be represented by Ansel Adams prints and foresty smells. Sour grapes, on the other hand, would provide an adequate scratch-and-sniff stand-in for Ralph Nader. A one-tenth vote based on such odio-visual cues would doubtless provide as accurate a reflection of scentiment as the choices made by those Palm Beach seniors who couldn't tell the difference between Pat Buchanan and Al Gore.
The last refuge of electoral scoundrels, of course, is the intelligence argument. Elitists claim that children don't know enough to vote responsibly. Yet literacy tests were declared impermissible decades ago. Surely the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wouldn't hesitate to also declare an intelligence requirement for voting unconstitutional.
The truth is that obstructionists have always been against the expansion of voting rights - to nonpropertied males, to blacks and women, to 18-year-olds. They always say that the new group isn't qualified and doesn't know enough to responsibly exercise the franchise.
To these doubting Thomases I say this: What's knowledge got to do with it? If the well-educated voters of Santa Clara can elect, time and again, a representative as frivolous and intellectually benighted as John Vasconcellos, how could incontinent 2-year-olds do worse?
Sen. Vasconcellos' next plan is goldfish suffrage.
You sure are an optimist! :^)
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