Freedom, Markets, and Well-being Fall 2020

Election Day

Overview

We talked about election day.

I had mentioned, rashly, that there is no legal right to vote. Emily called me on that because the Constitution does mention voting rights in several places. That’s when I realized that I had committed the cardinal sin of repeating what I had read without thinking about it. Ahem.

Anyway, this article from 2013 explains the idea.

In a nutshell, the references in the Constitution concern reasons why the vote cannot be taken away, but other than that, the states have a pretty free hand in deciding who gets to vote and how they do it. That has not worked out terribly well. And in a democracy, there really ought to be an affirmative statement that people have the right to vote.

Special praise goes to Ryan and Agnes for their political work this fall. (And maybe others: no one else was mentioned, but that doesn’t mean no one else did important volunteer work.)