This leads me to a question: should voting be public or private in your respective community? Should this passage apply in contemporary times?
Here is a passage by Currin V. Shields on the political thought of John Stuart Mill as Mill discusses the necessity of a public vote:
Should voting be in public, or by secret ballot? The secret ballot, Mill says, is undesirable; it encourages the pursuit of selfish interests. The vote is a public trust, and the voter's duty is to give his best opinion of the public good. This duty should be performed in the public eye and subject to criticism, because a person's need to justify his act conduces to more responsible conduct. The claim that public voting allows the voter to be subjected to sinister influences is unfounded. The secret ballot is no longer necessary; the power of the few over the many is so declining in western Europe that there is now no need to fear class dictation. At the same time, persons who may not be fit to be electors (such as members of the working class) may still be fit to exert influence on electors; this they can do best if_voting is public.
3 comments:
Since he found out what they were, Harrogate has always hated caucuses, as he expressed to ye last night. Harrogate thinks all caucuses need to be done away with, in the area of elections.
Call Harrogate Pollyanna here, but when he votes, he wants an exalted calm surrounding him. He does not want to be bothered or hectored, any more than he wants to be foot-tapped in a bathroom stall.
Ahhh, the caucus. This limited window, vetting the less passionate (zealous?), the less brave, the less loud. Roadblocking entire demographic swaths within working class America. The caucus smacks of fascism, rewarding zeal (fanaticism?), and youth, and public combativeness.
Rewards bravery, rewards loudness.
Those who do not cede to the compulsion to defend their views in a very publis forum, will not show up, or they will turn back around when they arrive at a "polling place" that has morphed into a loud-ass side show.
Caucuses are not only lightly fascist, but they are elitist--except the elite qualities that they prize are not qualities that true egalitarians, or humanists, prize.
But beyond all this caucuses pretend we all inhabit eighteenth century townships.
Some people matter more than others in this country, so sayeth the caucus.
Voting should be private. To force all oppressed people to vote publicly is problematic in two ways:
1. If everyone's at a caucus, who's home with the kids?
2. If everyone's at the caucus, who's keeping hospitals, buses, and other services open and running?
In both cases the poor and women are significantly marginalized.
Also, if you live in a controlling household, who's to say the head of said household doesn't "pressure" you to vote with him, so he doesn't lose face publicly?
Problems, problems everywhere.
I completely agree with both Harrogate and Snarky Grad Student. I understand the idea behind the caucuses, but they are limited to people with the means to attend them. My own vote in a primary next week will only count as 2/3rds of a vote b/c I am unable to attend the caucus at the scheduled time b/c I have a little one at home who still needs me to get to sleep. So I effectively only count as 2/3rds a person in the primary. Granted, I could get a sitter so I could attend the caucus, but I am quite certain there are several thousands of other individuals in similar circumstances--people who have kids, who have to work, who have class, etc. The caucus system limits the number of people who can vote.
I also believe in the privacy of voting because I do not want to be publicly denigrated for my choice. If you notice, I have not once publicly announced which candidate will get my vote, and while it will be harder to keep my vote secret once we get into the presidential election given my liberal leanings, I will keep that decision private from most of my family members and many professional colleagues. Voting is a very private thing, and I think that the caucuses take away that privacy.
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