Equality of Vote?

Democracy has been defined as the right of a citizens to choose who governs them. It appears to be a Greek concept and the word is derived from 2 Greek words demos, meaning people, and kratos, meaning power. Its origins are in the city state of Athens from about 300 BCE. Presumably learned people would gather, hear ideas, debate, listen to different points of view and then decide. So power belongs to the people who would have the right to choose their leaders. But even then it appears not everyone was equal. This right to choose was not given to women, slaves, foreigners and children. Even by this time it was noted that democracy would work in a small state with smaller number of people exercising their choice but may cause chaos or a breakdown in a larger state or with a larger group of people making decisions.

As opposed to democracy, there was autocracy, which is the absolute right to rule and govern, independent of the choice of the people.

Monarchies fall into this category. In England, the monarchs initially had the absolute power to rule, start wars, confiscate property and deprive people of their life and liberty. There was a revolution against this and eventually absolute monarchy was abolished. Instead a Parliament, elected by the people was given the right to pass laws and govern. But even then in the UK, the right to vote to elect members to Parliament was only given to property owning males. This restricted to voting group in England to about 10% of the people living in the country.

So as a result of colonisation, democracy was gifted to the colonies upon independence. We have therefore inherited this.

By the various suffrage movements in the late 1990s, the right to vote eventually was universally extended to everyone who was a citizen irrespective of gender, age, race, education, employment, wealth or properly owning, whether they pay taxes, served in the army or length of time they had been citizens.

But is everyone really equal? We know they are not. Everyone is different. Their contributions to the country and community are different. Some serve and contribute much in terms of time and money. Others receive. Some raise families and bring up their children to be good citizens and others don’t. Some make it a point to keep abrest of what’s happening in the world and in their country and the impact of various events around the world and others have no clue and make no effort to know anything. Some people read and think deeply about issues and some just focus on social media. Some serve in the army with relish and some try to avoid it. Some are law abiding and others are not.

If this is the case, then should everyone be treated equally when it comes to voting?

In his book, George Yeo notes that LKY had thought about this and suggested that married Singaporeans be given 2 votes instead of one. Presumably being married would make them think more responsibly about how they exercise their vote. Not perfect but an idea.

George Yeo then wrote to Cabinet to suggest that everyone above 18 be given one vote. But when the person is married or has a family, he or she would have 2 votes. This would revert back to 1 when they turn 50. Again an idea and in my view also not perfect. And it seems no one in cabinet was in favor of this.

A good friend told me that on election day, he saw some people arriving at the polling station in such a state that it was so clear to him they had no idea why they were there or what they were doing. Another good friend sent me a picture of a Singaporean doing something so bizarre and wondered whether everyone having one vote was the best way to elect members to Parliament. Should a person who can’t exercise basic common sense or intelligence even be given a vote.

This is controversial. The idea of democracy in its perfect form was meant for a smaller group of people with commonality in their thinking, race, education and status. If there is a vast difference between the people in a country in terms of education levels, economic strengths, contribution levels to society and perhaps even race, would this work? What if in such circumstances, the elected are held to ransom by the masses and the only way to then get their votes is to appease them with populist moves which may not be in the best interest of a country?

So where do we go from here. Status quo? Start a discussion on this?

appeasemebt