Following on from the threads re qualification for voting in fiction works (Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and For Us,The Living: here’s another, concerning another author. A novel which I read long ago: * In The Wet* by Nevil Shute – whose work I’ve mostly found embarrassingly beyond-trite; but this book struck me as one of his less awful ones, and contained an idea to do with the voting thing, which I thought interesting.
The novel is a sort of quasi-time-travel story, back-and-forth between Australia circa 1950, and Australia some hundred-years-or-a-bit-more, later. The 21st-century scenario features an Australia basically on the conservative side, but not fanatically / repressively so, and run as a parliamentary democracy.
The voting structure in 21st-century Australia, is as follows. All citizens (with “extreme” exceptions, as discussed in the Starship Troopers thread), basically have the franchise. However; all those who are eligible, have for each election, one “basic” vote. Additional votes, for each election, are granted to eligible voters who fall into various categories – a vote per each such category which applies to the person. In the novel (from memory – I don’t possess a copy) there are five such categories. (1) Having been through higher education and successfully graduated therefrom. (2) Having served in the armed forces (one takes it, without having disgracefully screwed-up such service). (3) Being a member in good standing of, and regular participant in, a religious congregation of one’s particular faith. (4) Being married; I forget whether this is further dependent on having, or intending to have, kids – one’s own, or adopted, according to circumstances. (5) I think – memory possibly at fault here – being genuinely involved in voluntary service intended in some way, to make the world better than it would otherwise be (if so, this would admittedly overlap somewhat, with the “religious congregation” category). Also: the so-called “seventh vote”: awardable by the powers-that-be – arbitrarily if you will – to individuals who have performed in special circumstances, specially meritorious acts.
I see the general idea here, as being to weigh voting capacity, in favour (on the whole) of the more intelligent / responsible / solid of the citizenry, who will be more likely to properly understand issues, and to vote wisely and with knowledge. Many possible objections can be envisaged, in various ways: for one, I see many Dopers being anti-the “religious congregation” qualification, and seeing it as desirable to remove that one, and give the extra vote to opponents of, and active combatters of, religious-type superstitious nonsense. And; the attributes seen as deserving extra votes, will differ according to the views of those making the rules concerning same – the above-listed being seen as desirable, by an essentially conservative polity: so, tending to reinforce and give power to essentially conservative views, and to strengthen the status quo. And, possibilities of people “gaming the system” and doing the nominal bare minimum to qualify for some of the categories listed – just to get the vote, without genuinely supporting the goals concerned. This kind of stuff is of course unavoidable in pretty well any democratic system; and those who engage in it, at least display the positive qualities of industry and ingenuity.
With the other two recent threads mentioned, I just thought this might be of some interest; or if I’m an idiot and it’s of zero interest to anyone – no worries !
