Generally speaking, I’m skeptical of  folks who sell easy fixes to complex problems. For example, there are some who argue that if we just repealed the 17th Amendment (direct election of Senators) then we’d restore the checks and balances necessary to get a smaller government outcome. I’m skeptical of that claim, and tend to be of any solution that just seems too easy.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t look for magic bullets myself. One conclusion I’ve come to is that we honestly make it way too easy for people to vote. That sounds kind of crazy on the surface, because we revere the act of voting in our country. I wouldn’t argue for a return to the days when only wealthy landowners voted, or we denied the franchise to people based on gender or race. But I would argue that people who want better and smaller government should generally resist efforts to get more people voting.
This weekend I was calling mostly soft Republicans and Independents, meaning they tend not to vote in primaries, and often skip elections. These are usually people campaigns ignore, but this year the hard Republicans are fired up, and the federal campaigns are going to do a better job of making sure they turn out. While I was encouraged at the level of support we had among these soft voters, I was surprised that a week out from election day how many people did not know the candidates, hadn’t made up their mind, and had no issues that the could name that they were concerned about.
My feeling is our Republic would be better off if we made these people go through a little extra effort to be able to vote, in the hopes that the casual, uninformed voter won’t bother. Even if they do end up getting to the polls and punching the ballot for our guys, I’m not comforted by the fact that I’m pretty sure their voting choices are going to be made by something not much more rigorous than a coin toss. I if the corrupting influence of money in elections is something you worry about, consider that the vast sums of money campaigns spend for expensive media buys are aimed at these voters.
But that’s not to say I have much in the way of specific proposals. One thing I thought of is that if you miss more than two general elections, you get automatically purged from the voter rolls, and have to renew your registration. That would certainly make the jobs of volunteers easier, because casual voters generally get more angry about being called or visited by campaigns vying for their votes, whereas regular voters are usually more polite, and more interested in talking about issues.
So how would this help liberty? Well, I’m not sure it’s any more of a magic bullet than repealing the 17th Amendment, to be honest, but a big component of electoral politics involves political activists manipulating the casual voters to come out for their guys. Given that liberty generally doesn’t bring activism to the table in any tangible way (at least not before the Tea Party movement), having a voter pool that’s more engaged and less prone to manipulation would hopefully hamper those pushing for big government than it would pushing for smaller government. Think about soft voters as the “soundbite voters,” and decide whether you agree with me that liberty would be better served if we made these people jump through a few more hoops to be able to cast their ballots?
UPDATE: I should make it clear, everyone would have to jump through the same hoops. The idea is that motivated and informed voters will.
