Opinion
A4
Thursday, April 14, 2022
OUR VIEW
Should voting
be mandatory?
ost Americans who were eligible to
vote voted in the 2020 presidential elec-
tion. Some 67%.
That’s pretty good. But in election after elec-
tion many people don’t vote. Voters tend to skew
white, wealthier, older and to people with more
education. A democracy, a republic, is supposed
to be ruled by its people, but it’s often not the
case. Some voices are left out. They don’t choose
who rules them or what ballot measures pass.
It is not hard to vote in Oregon. Vote by mail is
convenient. Republican and Democratic election
offi cials have declared it a good system. And reg-
istration can now happen when people get their
driver’s licenses.
What if it was not only not hard to vote, but
mandatory to vote? If it was the law that people
must be registered to vote and participate?
It’s not a new idea. It’s the law in Australia
and in some other countries. But it is an argu-
ment revived and expanded upon in a new book,
“100% Democracy: The Case for Universal
Voting.” It’s by E.J. Dionne Jr., a Washington Post
columnist, and Miles Rapoport, a senior fellow
at the Harvard Kennedy School and former Con-
necticut secretary of state. It’s fair to call both of
them liberals. So is this just a strategy to get more
liberal people voting? It would seem to do that.
Is their argument going to have broad appeal? It
doesn’t now. How would it work? That requires
more explanation.
They say it would be better if the country
didn’t continue to fi ght over who had the right
to vote. It should be a fundamental right and not
abridged. It should be a fundamental civic duty.
They say it is a problem for government when
the people who vote are not fully representa-
tive of the population. It raises questions about
the legitimacy of elections. Of course, they don’t
argue that universal voting will fi x everything in
the political culture. They think it’s one lever to
pull to help improve the political culture.
They say under universal voting, candidates
would have less reason to appeal to their base.
Candidates would have to appeal to everyone.
They believe the idea would be found constitu-
tional. They believe it could be implemented at
the federal, state and local level.
They propose a small, civil fi ne of not more
than $20 for people who don’t vote. The authors
of the book say few Americans right now would
support the policy. Maybe 25%, according to
a poll.
The book is very much a response to what
they call Republican eff orts to roll back access to
voting. And if you remember in 2015, when Pres-
ident Obama proposed universal voting, critics
jumped all over it. One of the best lines was a
recycled one from William F. Buckley Jr.: Lib-
erals don’t care what you do so long as it’s com-
pulsory. Critics say it will strike most Americans
as unAmerican or authoritarian to make voting
mandatory. The authors’ response is to compare
it to the civic duty in jury duty and to say they
should allow people to conscientiously object or
to return blank ballots.
Another critique is that forcing people to vote
may mean the country would have more unin-
formed voters voting. Their response: That is
a critique of any democracy, not just universal
voting. And the authors hope if participating in
voting was required, more people would spend
more time educating themselves about the candi-
dates and the issues.
We are not sure we have done the arguments
in the book justice. You should read it yourself, if
you are interested. But whether you lean in sup-
port or against, people are going to keep pushing
for the policy. Best to understand the arguments.
M
Fire is a necessary but diffi cult friend
NORM
CIMON
OTHER VIEWS
hanks to David Mildrexler
for his March 17 column on
the tremendous importance
of large trees for water storage,
for healthy soils, for capturing and
storing carbon and much more.
We toured the Mount Emily
Recreation Area prior to the most
recent logging. While the majority
of the trees marked for cutting
were of smaller diameter, we saw
a few large trees that had that blue
paint. In taking on responsibility for
MERA, the county has also taken
on the diffi cult task of balancing the
economics of management and of
growing those large trees.
I wrote in The Observer about that
problem at the time the decision to
buy the land was made, praising the
forester who had allowed for those
larger pine, but concerned about what
cutting any of them would mean for
the future forest. It’s a conundrum
T
that has no easy answer.
Removing smaller pine releases
adjacent trees and allows them to
grow more quickly. That’s a good
start toward the next stand of big
pine. But regular light fi res were
the way that happened in the past.
Mature ponderosa have a bark that
is inches thick and able to withstand
all but the most catastrophic blazes.
That detail is, however, where the
devil lives.
We have suppressed fi re for more
than a hundred years. During that
time settlers naturally moved into
those forests as they were cut. Grass,
brush and tree seedlings moved in at
the same time. The density of veg-
etation is probably as high as it was
prior to fi refi ghting, but instead of
large fi re-resistant pines, now our
forests are dense with burnable fuel.
The road back to more open forest
stands, and to the acceptance of light
fi re, is both a logistical and a cul-
tural problem. The people who live
in those forests will have to be very
mindful to clear away the overgrown
vegetation, and county managers will
have to be on top of any cutting that
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Norm Cimon, of La Grande, is a member of
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goes on, given the potential for big
fi res and the removal of large trees.
And all of us need to understand
where we live: There isn’t an eco-
system in the Western U.S. that
isn’t dependent on fi re in one way
or another. That includes the Coast
Range, where big stand-replacement
fi res don’t happen but every few hun-
dred years, but they do happen.
Land use planning has taken
Oregon on a diff erent trajectory than
states such as Idaho where sprawl
has obliterated the boundary between
wildlands and the urban hodge-
podge that’s resulted. Boise is the
poster child for that chaos. Here in
our home state, we need to take the
next step and absorb the lessons of
the past. Fire is a necessary but diffi -
cult friend. We need to respect it for
the good it can do, but understand
how destructive it can be if we aren’t
vigilant. There is no other way if we
want to live in the real West, the one
with magnifi cent forests of big pine.
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