Tag Archives: Inequality

A moral case against voter ID laws

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Like millions of other Americans, I voted last Tuesday. I did not face long lines and there were no barriers to my entry to the polling station. Everyone was quite friendly, and it was a pleasant experience.

They were so friendly, in fact, that they even offered a service to voters, advertised by a sign on the wall: Voters, presumably those who would have difficulty walking into the polling station due to disability, could wait in their idling cars, honk their horns and have someone aid them in voting curbside.

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Why wouldn’t people want to reduce inequality?

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From the Monkey Cage:

We’ve heard a lot about how economic elites – the so-called 1 percent — have greater  policy influence than the mass public and more access to the seats of political power. The recent Supreme Court ruling regarding campaign contributions (McCutcheon v. FEC) would seem to exacerbate this trend (though see this), removing still more limitations on the influence of the rich. The continuing accumulation of capital in the hands of the rich will only make this problem starker.

Given this, why haven’t we as citizens in a democracy done something about it? After all, most of us are not rich and, as political scientist Larry Bartels notes here, we usually think of democracy as a system in which the elected officials who pass the laws must satisfy us, the people.

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