Who should vote?

Should everyone be permitted to vote? Should foreigners be allowed to vote in US elections? How about just visiting foreigners? Should children be allowed to vote? Felons? Should only people who own property be allowed to vote? What if only parents of school children can vote on school budgets?

The colonists and the colonial governments that they formed considered it important to only allow the franchise to people who shared their values. Thus, those with heterodox religious beliefs were not allowed to vote on the grounds that doing so would undermine both the values and the liberty of the colony. (click here for more)

To word it differently, voting can be detrimental to the community. So voting was deliberately limited to ensure community values. Sufferage was not 'universal'. This was NOT an oversight or design flaw. It was a design feature.

So why has this original concept of limiting voting privileges been rejected and replaced with ever more expanded voting rights? Why is more universal better than more limited? Do wider voting privileges undermine both the values and liberty of the community? Can too many voting cooks spoil the community broth?

Is 'universal suffrage' a design flaw of democracy?

As the great philosopher Lord Woodhouselee once wrote, "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy."

"Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheepvoting on what to have for dinner." --James Bovard, Civil
Libertarian (1994)

George Bernard Shaw said, “The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”

Mr. Jefferson was inclined to agree with Socrates that the very concept of democracy was flawed. As he commented often,
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”

"If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner."
H.L. Mencken

"When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny."
  -- Thomas Jefferson

"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the  truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."                    -- Thomas Jefferson

It is almost universally believed that universal suffrage is desirable. Is the goal wrong? Have boundries of who may vote been gerrymandered to gain political advantage over others or to further The General Welfare? Has democracy been true to the original ideals as promulgated in the Constitution? Has 'universal suffrage' created a universal community? Has expanding voting rights resulted in more liberty ? Or has expanding democracy led to tyranny of We, the People?

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