WHO DESERVES TO VOTE?

WHO DESERVES TO VOTE? In his Los Angeles Times column, Jonah Goldberg plays a thought experiment in which all Americans, not only immigrants, would have to pass a civics test in order to gain the right to vote.

Some more serious people suggest that voting should be mandatory, believing that if the "disenfranchised" -- often code for dream Democratic voters -- cast ballots, the country would move profoundly to the left. John Kenneth Galbraith proclaimed in 1986: "If everybody in this country voted, the Democrats would be in for the next 100 years."This last bit is almost certainly false. The evidence is that if every eligible voter voted, national elections would probably remain unchanged.

They key word here is "eligible." Tax-paying, working, undocumented immigrants and non-violent ex-felons account for millions of potential Democratic voters. It's no coincidence that conservatives fight every attempt to get these groups, which are majority Latino and African American, onto the voter rolls. --Dana Goldstein