The trouble with American democracy is that more and more it's become a matter of getting bodies to the polling booth that will vote for a slate without much understanding or thought.
This is what is behind the policies of making registration easy - voting by mail - and the other ploys to ensure the warm bodies will be there.
My impression of the Florida fiasco is that the Demos got the bodies there, but they forgot to train them how to use the butterflies.
So, they weren't 'chad conscious'.
This builds up numbers but is hardly what is thought of as Jeffersonian Democracy - although see below.
My parents always voted Labor, but my mother would get a conservative car to take her to the polling place - where she would vote Labor.
Back in the beginning of the US, it was common for candidates - including the most famous - to buy lots of beer and food to entice the voters into their camps.
The costs of these mild bribes are found in contemporary papers.
The most interesting qualification for the franchise is found in Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" (not the film that was a travesty).
If you managed to survive the incredibly arduous bootcamp (most didn't and deserted - but no-one cared) you became a trooper. You would be signed on for an indeterminate time, keeping the peace, enhancing security, and punishing Saddams throughout the galaxy.
If you survived and were eventually mustered out, you became a civilian, a citizen, and you got the vote.
To get a vote in your society, you had to be willing to lay your life on the line for that society. There's a thought, Keith.
Harry ----------------------------------------------------------- Lawrence wrote:
Perhaps that answers the question, then, of why these voters don't vote: they are ignored in future elections because they haven't voted in the past?
-----Original Message-----
From: Ed Weick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Fri, May 30, 2003 2:08 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Exit ramp for Europe
Perhaps the savvy campaign manger might eventually realize that the untapped (and probably uncontested) source of votes is in the slummier high rise area?
L
I think she probably knows that. Her husband used to Mayor. The problem is time. With so little of it, you concentrate on the known voters.
Ed Weick
**************************************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: (818) 352-4141 -- Fax: (818) 353-2242 http://home.attbi.com/~haledward ****************************************************
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