February 27th, 2012 § § permalink
This Democracy-In-The-News post is coming to you guys a little late – I have unfortunately been out of commission for a few weeks and have fallen behind. The good news is, it’s a good week to write three posts on Democracy in the News, as plenty seems to be happening in the world.
I figured I’d kick off my catch-up-blogging by discussing the recent voter suppression controversy that has been dominating the news. This issue is, obviously, incredibly pertinent to our class material. Voter suppression would be a serious infringement on the freedoms that are inherent to a “true democracy”, as outlined by basically every measure of democracy discussed in this class. This particular blog post will discuss this article in the Vancouver Sun. For those of you who don’t know – though I am sure you all do – voters in certain districts reported receiving phone calls sending them to incorrect (or non-existant) polling stations. In the article, MP Pat Martin is quoted discussing the fundamental freedom of free and fair elections – and, importantly within that quote, free and fair elections “without interference”. The article makes reference to the illegality of interference in the Elections Act, although (irritatingly) did not provide a link or reference a specific section of the act in which it says this.
Thank goodness for google, I found it here, under provision 281(g), stating:
No person shall, inside or outside of Canada, willfully prevent or endeavour to prevent an elector from voting at an election.
It may seem obvious enough to us in a democratic system, but pending the results of an investigation into this situation, this country may be in need of a reminder.
February 6th, 2012 § § permalink
This elective blog post is, in fact, a shameless promotion of a project I’m running at another blog. Last week a friend of mine mentioned how crazy it would be if, after the supposedly impending apocalypse, a post-apocalyptic generation found a copy of The Hunger Games and thought it was a document about the way things were. This started the development of this project, which I refer to as “Dear Post-Apocalyptic Generation”.
The project consists of letters to this hypothetical future generation about things that we think they should find important or interesting about the pre-apocalyptic population. I feel like this project is especially relevant to this class. This week’s mini-assignment, for example, was to describe democracy to a politically-savvy relative. Imagine trying to explain politics, or democracy, or elections to a generation of people who had never heard of it.
Anyways, I do mention this project purely for the purpose of self-promotion. The link to the blog is generationpostapocalypse.wordpress.com, if any of you would like to check it out and maybe submit your own letter.
February 5th, 2012 § § permalink
“So what is democracy, anyways?”
If I were to be asked this question by a politically astute distant relative, my first reaction would be to say that seeing as how much smarter minds than me have been unable to reach a consensus on the answer to this question, it’s unlikely I’d be able to enlighten her over dinner. But I would give it a try.
First, I would explain to her the different ways to conceptualize democracy. Personally, I prefer minimalist definitions, as they allow you to move up and down the “ladder of generality”, as discussed by Collier and Levitsky. To me, the minimalist definition of democracy would be free and fair elections, and the protection of civil liberties. Ideally, these liberties would extend to all citizens equally.
In my opinion, this is the most troubling part of democracy for me. As discussed in class, surely a line has to be drawn somewhere in the extension of these democratic rights to a country’s citizens. Age is a key example of this. If we let two year olds go to the polls, we can expect that other people would be manipulating their decisions, as we can’t expect them to inform themselves. So where is this line? Why is it that we feel that an 18-year-old can make a more informed decision in the electoral process than a 17-year-old?
The purpose of democracy is both to give citizens the opportunity to choose their leaders, but also to protect them from the leaders they choose. In Canada, for example, The Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects Canadian citizens from the potential actions of elected government.
At the end of the discussion with this distant relative I would, of course, refer her to take POLI333 at UBC.