Some of my liberal friends are in shock: "You can't require them to vote, can you?" Of course you can. Other countries, like Australia, make voting compulsory for everybody. And we require people to serve on juries, whether they like it or not, and to give their opinion as to whether one of their fellow citizens should be put to death. But this is not even the same requirement. It is a very proper consideration in a highly discretionary act, i.e., whether to let someone be a citizen. Why should we let in people who are not going to vote? (Recall the days of Tammany, when political machine ward-heelers would meet immigrants at the docks and sign people up to vote right there.) I would not even propose to "enforce" the requirement, or to expel new citizens who failed to live up to this promise: Let them live with the dishonor. But at least we should ask them for a commitment ...Read the whole thing here.As we become more of a plutocracy, we now tend to attract either (1.) hedge fund managers, high rollers, the super models, and other type A's who still want to keep their places in Majorca, or (2.) the meek and the humble willing to pick up after them and be their valets. OK, I overstate it. But we get more of the people who intuitively sense that they fit in to our plutocracy. We get more of the predators and more of the prey. Who we don't get in the same special way are those who come here because it is the one, last best place -- the only place back in Lincoln's time -- where they were free to cast a vote. Why should we get those people? People can vote anywhere. In that respect America is no longer unique.
No longer can we take it for granted that new citizens want to vote at all. Let's make them do so. Make them take a pledge, for now, even if non-binding, and see if we can't raise the turnout by a few million.
Also published today: Ezra explains the promise and shortcomings of Barack Obama's newly-unveiled health care plan, and how they resemble the promise and shortcomings of the candidate himself; Laura Rozen talks to a participant in a recent delegation of American Christian leaders who met with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; and Robert Reich tells us what has been keeping the stock market bullish, and why it can't last.
--The Editors
