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TOTAL LICENSING

By George Medina, Intercontinental Licensing
For those of you who don’t have enough leisure set voting times suited to their geography retain their present position.
or money to go to the horse races every week- and economy and demographics to encour Safe seats lead to seniority, leadership, influence
end, we have arranged a fascinating race over age maximum participation? (ignoring - also in turn leading to unshakable incumbency
the past months. You can watch it inexpensively Hawaii hanging out there in the Pacific.) (and occasionally to power mongering – and
on your TV sets almost every night replete with Maybe the U.S. should finally follow the procedure heaven forbid, permanent alliances with certain
commentators, talking heads and political scien- of many other countries and declare at least presi- pressure groups and financial support, privilege
tists and philosophers. What a show! dential Election Day a national holiday, to allow for and (rarely, of course) bribery.
Just last week we had the 21
st
debate between easier participation. Then….should we shake up the electoral urn
the 2 Democratic contenders – Twiddle Dee and regularly leaving the road to election so wide
Twiddle Dum (ahem: excuse me Mrs. Clinton, Mr. 2. ELECTIONS MUST BE FAIR open that we get “change”, “a new vision”, “and
Obama) – and sadly enough even the most ex- But to whom…The Voters? The candidates? This a new team”? But what if the know-how and
citing spectacle repeated too often pales. Have is not necessarily the same thing. Whose interests experience of the old team is replaced by the
you ever tried to go to “My Fair Lady” twenty- seem more important? impassioned experimentalism of Young Turks
one times in a row? I understand why many of The voters! Well, every 10 years after the census whose mantra of change leads them to too
the well intentioned viewers snored a bit. we reassign election districts to keep the districts much not well-thought out change that provides
Update at press time for the column: Twiddle approximately even corresponding to numbers of a zigzag instead of a straight forward road for
Dum (Barak Obama) seems to have made the population within them. Ten years, probably have the nation.
race and looks to become the official candidate changed this – with people moving to jobs or retire- Obviously both are needed but the election dis-
so that now he and George Bush III (excuse me, ment, to mention just two changes. And then there trict is a key to the mix, hence its importance.
Mr. McCain) will enter the race of all races in is immigration! A big contributor of changing ethnic And then there are “term limits”. Enshrined in
American parlance, usually referred to as “The and economic mixtures. law they become inescapable. They are subject
Kentucky Derby”. Redistricting is done by the states individually, but to the above consideration and their unques-
French politician Alexandre Ledru-Rollin is to there is, of course, no perfect justice and the party tioned value has to be measured precisely in
have said famously: There go the people. I must with more elected officials in a given state obviously view of duration of time and office. That is why
follow them, for I am their leader! will have a stronger hand in that state’s redistrict- Supreme Court justices in almost any democ-
However after this irreverent beginning let us ing. When it is carried out into shapes that look racy are not elected and serve for life to provide
get serious. tortuous on a map, it is called, often derisively, “Ger- assumedly wisdom and constancy.
Democracy comes at a price – we are supposed rymandering”.
to choose our leaders and we are supposed to But there is more to it than the strange shape on the 4. IS VOTING A “RIGHT” OR A “DUTY”
be interested, informed, and choose wisely. For map. It also determines the opinion of yesterday’s The Constitution, written by white male prop-
we are really choosing our individual futures majority to rule over future majorities for 10 years. erty owners, stayed away from this contentious
involving the economy, war and peace, global Also: How much should ethnic or economic diver- philosophical question, and only in the turbu-
warming and hundreds of decisions large and gences be respected in fashioning the forthcoming lent changes of 1962 did the Supreme Court
small that an American President gets to influ- electorate? get around to its decision in “Baker v. Carr” to
ence and often steers during his/hers at a mini- Is it fairer to distribute a minority blindly over many declare “one person, one vote”. And over time
mum of 4 years of pretty irrevocable tenure. districts in order to remain a minority in numbers before and after then, women, descendants of
Let’s first look at basic American Political theory everywhere, or is it fairer to give an Afro-American, slaves, and in a few local districts, resident aliens,
and tradition. a farmer, an extreme poverty minority, a few dis- were permitted, not required, to vote. Many
tricts where they at least can be a self-motivated foreign countries, for instance, Australia or
1. WHAT DO WE NEED FOR FREE AND majority? Belgium make voting compulsory. The United
FAIR ELECTIONS Polarization: yes, but what is more practical? The States treats voting as a voluntary privilege. You
• The voters, at least most of them who vote Federal government mandates “one person – one must want to register and must want to vote
across party lines, must accept the result as vote” but which vote will count more. (more on that later).
not questionable. At any rate – poll taxes and property or edu-
• So what, if exit polls are reporting results 3. THE CANDIDATES cational mandatory requirements inhibiting or
too soon before voting has ended across Obviously yesterday’s elected candidate would skewing participation were removed.
the three major time zones where states like to retain “a safe seat”, “a safe majority” to However, just now the Supreme Court decided
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