Measuring Democracy Against Voter Turnout

Oh Lord, once again we are confronted with the wimpish whining of those sniveling liberals who perennially decry the low voter turn-out at election time. And The Times, by publishing their tearful cries (Letters, June 11), once again chooses to participate in this pious fraud.

Where is it written that the number of bodies lined up at a polling booth is any measurement of democracy in a nation? If this concept had any validity then surely Russia and the other communistic dictatorships, which regularly have a 99.99% voter turnout, should qualify as the world’s outstanding democracies!

The vast numbers of people who do not vote are displaying their devoted dedication to the highest levels of democracy. Let us never forget that the most fundamental concept of democracy is that we delegate all of our rights and powers to those whom we choose to rule over us. This is of course necessary, otherwise we’d all individually have to decide how much taxes to pay or how fast to drive on the freeway. By not voting people are clearly stating their approval of those running the country.

If our citizenry continue to display this disinterest in the electoral process we could, in a very practical way, consider cutting down on all of the meaningless, overly frequent and expensive elections we now have. Presidential elections could be held once every 10 years and elections for congressional representatives once every five years would seem to be often enough. (To maintain their senior status we could make U.S. senators electable every 7 1/2 years). For simplicity’s sake we could just double the term of office of everyone else, at state, county and municipal level.

If this works well (and there is no reason that it shouldn’t) we could once again double the terms of office. In time we may arrive at the ultimate ideal of democratic government-- officeholders elected for life!

No doubt the nervous-Nellie liberals would moan about some mythical loss of liberty, but think of the money we’d save! With all of the billions not spent on printing ballots, or paying to have potentially rival candidates withdraw from the field, we could easily double the size of our nuclear arsenal!

EARL CARTER

Beverly Hills