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Hernando Today

Founding Fathers And Dumb Voters With No Street Address

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By JOHN REINIERS

Special to Hernando Today

Published: February 21, 2008

James Madison, our fifth president, memorialized his thoughts on the fundamental right of suffrage in the Federalist Papers, but in the end the Framers had to settle for state regulation of voter requirements. It was simply too difficult to establish criteria countrywide for voter eligibility. Yet the states and the federal government have been sparring over this subject ever since.
Universal suffrage would have been unthinkable to most of the early founders; as well as state governments. These were guys who were inclined towards requiring voters to have basic intelligence or an education -- or property.
Here we are a couple of hundred years later, and many insist American voters are still really dumb. This became a hot issue after the 2004 election when Democrats insisted that voters in those states with the highest IQ scores voted for John Kerry; and those in the bottom tier voted for George Bush. (Gee, what a nonpartisan gesture of good will.)
If it were only that simple. For one thing we Americans move all the time. And studies show that uneducated voters are irrational and are less inclined to vote. The most important socioeconomic factor in voter turnout is education; but one can't assume the most educated voters have the highest IQ scores. (Let us not forget that Abraham Lincoln had less than a year of formal education.) In fact, college students failed the Civic Literacy exam commissioned by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. High school seniors scored higher than the average college freshmen! Furthermore, seniors at pricey Ivy League universities thought that Germany and Japan were our allies in World War II. And fewer seniors than freshman knew that Yorktown was the battle that won the war for us – our American Revolution.
But it goes beyond college kids. About 10 percent of adults think that Noah's wife was Joan of Arc.; and only one third of Americans can name even one of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. (Freedom of speech, the press, religion, rights of assembly; petition the government.)
The U.S. Department of Education reports that nearly six out of 10 high school seniors are basically historically illiterate. They fail to know even which century the Civil War was fought or even why it was fought. An official at Mount Vernon reports that many visitors "think Washington fought in the Civil War."
Which brings us to the story told by a reporter who was at the National Mall, with its Lincoln Memorial, which as everyone knows is overwhelming. A bus full of high-schoolers pulled up and disgorged its gaggle of youthful passengers. One of the older students exclaimed joyfully, "Look everybody; this is where they made the Forrest Gump movie."
It's no wonder that many early founders and the states favored banning the uneducated and illiterate from voting. Just think about how uninformed our "literate" new millennium students are. And to further negatively impact the level of our national I.Q. scores, the average educational achievement of our illegal Mexican population is the fifth grade. But wait. The average for our legal Mexican immigrant is the eighth grade. No wonder the Latino high school dropout rate is the highest in the U.S.
Getting back to voting requirements, the Constitution excludes nobody from voting on the basis of sex, wealth, race or other criterion. But ownership of some property was a typical requirement, and many favored a requirement that voters at least pay taxes. Nevertheless, suffrage requirements were left to the states.
John Adams, our second president, observed, "Such is the frailty of the human heart, that very few men who have no property have any judgment of their own … Men who are wholly destitute of property, are too dependent upon other men to have a will of their own.." (Not unlike the monolithic Democratic vote by government employees, labor unions, teachers, blacks, etc. regardless of property ownership.) But times were different then. Those who owned property were usually educated or literate.
Writers of state constitutions doubted that every citizen, especially those without property, money or formal education were capable of electing sound representatives. Moreover, and this may sound heartless in the 21st century, the presumption of our founders was that normal human beings were capable of taking care of themselves. They therefore believed, says Professor Thomas G. West, that "for the founders, the fact we lack food, learning and free medial care" does not give us the right to demand this of others. "We are obliged by nature to leave other people alone in their reasonable pursuit of education and property."
These were tough guys who believed government is limited and should respect the realm of private life by staying out of it. They believed there was no "right" to happiness, only the pursuit of it. But the question of suffrage was a difficult one – even then. The issue for a democratic republic is always the logic of government by consent of the governed with the broadest possible pool of voters. Yet only a minority of citizens was literate and owned property in those days. The early founders believed that those who owned nothing did not respect property rights because they hoped to profit by taking property from those who have it. (Really? Even back then?)
Nevertheless because of concerns over class warfare, property qualifications for voting were all but eliminated by 1820.
But we've come full circle now. Class warfare is alive, well and will be front and center in the 2008 general election campaign. (The evil corporations versus those who played by the rules and were denied success.) It is only a question of time before the early founders will be proven correct; that those citizens who have not been successful in life for whatever reason, will not hesitate to take what others have earned. (Another reason to revisit our immigration policy, which promotes an immigrant subculture in need of social programs: More voters for the Democrats.)
Ironically, John Adams was concerned about the "moral foundation of government," posing the question, "Whence arises the right of the majority to govern, and the obligation of the minority to obey?"
Well, we are about to find out when the majority party wins the 2008 election and ratchets up benevolent government income transfer programs from the minority to the governing majority.

John Reiniers, a regular columnist for Hernando Today, lives in Spring Hill.

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