ORWELL@TRIUMFRG.BITNET (02/04/90)
In the discussion following my posting, "Who is the U.S.?" I referred to studies of voting patterns, but couldn't at that time remember my source. It was a (fairly brief) essay by Gary Wills, "New Votuhs" in the New York Review of Books, (August 18, 1988 - Vol 35, No. 13) which itself is a review of 4 books. 3 of these (I have not read the books, only Wills's review) are: "The Best Congress Money Can Buy", Phillip M. Stern, Pantheon. "Why Americans Don't Vote", Francis Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Pantheon. "Whose Votes Count? Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights" Abigail M. Thernstrom, Harvard University Press. [Note that the arguments of this book, according to Wills, is more or less an antithesis of Piven and Cloward, and apparently supports the position of the Reagan Administration that everything is O.K.] I assume the publishing dates are all 1988. Gary Wills, from his review: "" But the fact remains that this is not a government by the people (the actual citizenry) if it is chosen by only part of the people (little more than half in recent elections). Nineteenth-century voting figures were higher than ours --- above 80 percent --- but that was the vote of an elite, determined by restriction of the suffrage to male, largely white, non-transient, often tax-paying, literate members of established societies or machines. Today, among an equivalent elite, those making over $50,000 a year, the voting rate is still 76 percent. Among college graduates it is 79 percent. The more privileged in our society still vote in significant majorities. But of those making less than $5,000, only 38 percent vote. And of those with only a grade school education, only 43 percent. Comparative studies show that, in other governments, non-voting is not a necessary concomitant of lower income. Why is it in America? Piven and Cloward argue that Americans have a history of discouraging parts of the populace from voting. Voting is treated as a privilege in our society, to be wielded by the privileged. Drives to turn out the vote are privately sponsored (and shaped by their sponsor's assumptions). Government has traditionally made it hard to register and to vote. This continues to be true though we have removed some of the most obvious barriers (though only recently -- in 1970, fourteen states outside the South still had literacy tests for voters). ... The electoral process Thernstrom describes bears little similarity to that Piven and Cloward have described in action. For her, "overt racism" has "become largely a phenomenon of the past," and attempts to redress an imbalance in voting rates between the clasees may reply on a "theory of entilement to minority officeholding," one that is not only discriminatory and [sic., presumably Wills means "but"] politically disabling. .... "" [End Gary Wills quote] Ron Balden