The Real Reason for the War on Voting

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

16 February 14

he invaluable Rick Hasen has noticed something about the conservative reaction to the report of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. Among its other recommendations, the commission suggested expanding the opportunities for early voting, and Hasen notes that the reaction to this suggestion on the right is based in something more profound than a simple fight for partisan advantage.

But conservative critics of early voting runs don't just mistrust early voters; they mistrust voters in general. As I explained here, there is a fundamental divide between liberals and conservatives about what voting is for: Conservatives see voting as about choosing the "best" candidate or "best" policies (meaning limits on who can vote, when, and how might make the most sense), and liberals see it as about the allocation of power among political equals. Cutting back on early voting fits with the conservative idea of choosing the "best" candidate by restraining voters from making supposed rash decisions, rather than relying on them to make choices consistent with their interests.

Right on cue, Jonah Goldberg thunders in with his contribution to the debate, and there is nothing I would like more in the world than to have Jonah stuck in an elevator with, say, John Lewis so he could explain to Lewis his theories on limiting the franchise. Either that, or I hope he runs out of gas sometime on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Consider how Jonah Goldberg put it in a 2005 Los Angeles Times column: "Voting should be harder, not easier-for everybody. ... If you are having an intelligent conversation with somebody, is it enriched if a mob of uninformed louts, never mind ex-cons and rapists, barges in? People who want to make voting easier are in effect saying that those who previously didn't care or know enough about the country to vote are exactly the kind of voters this country needs now."

File that one away for the next time he writes something stupid about liberal elites. "Uninformed louts." Like these people, I guess.