Vivek Ramaswamy: smooth-talking threat to voting rights

Vivek Ramaswamy is a Columbus-based presidential candidate who wants to do a hatchet job on America’s republican form of government by disenfranchising millions of young adults. He would take away the right to vote from American citizens under the age of 25, blowing away the 26th Amendment which give 18 year olds that right since 1971, and even stripping 21 year olds of a right they’ve had since the beginning of Ohio in 1803.

Your partisanship is showing

He uses a variation of the phrase, “We’re a republic, not a democracy“, often used by those who seek minority rule, to make our government less representative. It may have a certain sloganistic appeal to members of the Republican party, but America’s republic is a representative democracy. Disenfranchising a whole class of adult citizens is not only undemocratic, it’s less representative which makes it un-republican.

Is he suggesting it would be wrong to block a class of voters in a direct democracy but somehow it’s OK in a representative democracy? A major goal of our constitutional republic is to protect basic rights from being trampled, and that includes the right to vote.

The reason for Vivek to exclude these voters is obvious: young people are more likely to vote for Democrats than other age groups, so cutting their numbers would help Republicans like him win. Pew Research found that 18-29 year old’s are 47% Democratic and only 31% Republican, as of 2014.

New burdens to regain what Vivek has taken

He softens the blow so it doesn’t seem so bad by saying young adults can still vote if they pass a civics test, the same one naturalized citizens take, but that would be much more burdensome than standard registration requirements. They would no doubt have to take the test in person to avoid cheating, which is subject to far away test centers, limited business hours, long lines, administrative staffing issues, preparation or testing fees, bureaucratic errors, etc. All of which are exploitable by opportunistic politicians, who could cut the funding of civic test centers to suppress young voters.

And then there’s the test itself, where the incentive for Republicans would be to make it as difficult as possible to limit both young voters and immigration, under the guise of quality standards. They wouldn’t mind if it’s so hard that most older Americans couldn’t even pass it, because they would never have to under Vivek’s plan. This country has done this before with literacy tests, like one that required 30 trick questions to be answered 100% correctly within 10 minutes.

Other ways to slice up the electorate

Compare Vivek’s “ambitious” plan to these alternatives:

• 65 year old’s are denied their right to vote until they take the civic test or prove they’re still working, with the rationale that retirees may be less invested in the future of our country since they’ve already achieved their security, may not be here much longer, or may be in mental decline.
• People over 30 have to pass a civic test every 5 years or loser their right to vote, since most people are out of school at that age and many have forgotten much of their education in American history and government.

If you have an issue with either one, then perhaps we can agree that we should not cherrypick which adult citizens are OK to exclude from voting, and instead just let us all have equal opportunity to vote. At the very least, if you’re going to radically impose new burdens on voters, then make every voter have to jump through the same hoops as everyone else.

Un-republicans think alike

Senator JD Vance has also suggested mucking around with one-person-one-vote: by giving parents more multiple votes each. Like Vivek, he also treats voting as a bargaining chip for incentivizing desired behavior, rather than an equal right that every law-abiding adult citizen has.

Vance’s financial backer Peter Thiel has disparaged democracy generally and women’s right to vote specifically, saying, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible” and “the extension of the franchise to women” has “rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.” Thiel also funds the firm that Vivek co-founded.

Third party attention

Forward Party’s Andrew Yang says he disagrees with Vivek on many things, but “vastly prefers” him to Donald Trump for the Republican nomination, inviting him to come join the Forward Party. Forward’s #3 priority is “vibrant democracy”, including “more say in our future”. Isn’t Vivek’s young adult voter suppression antithetical to Forward’s mission?

References

Why Ohio entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is running for president – Spectrum News

Vivek Ramaswamy: The Case for an Older Voting Age With Conditions – Wall Street Journal

Raising the voting age to 25 is a terrible idea that will hurt Gen Z – New York Post

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