Consider increased vetting of voters

The editorial “Reforms boost democracy,” Dec. 19, lauds Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s legislative agenda to “underscore the importance of voting” and “make it easier for people to vote.”

Not so fast. In his famous book “Brave New World,” Aldous Huxley observes about voting, “In principle, it is a great privilege. In practice, as recent history has repeatedly shown, the right to vote, by itself, is no guarantee of liberty.”

Then there’s this, from another source: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury,” which suggests financial demands cause terminal decline. Democracies can fail, have failed and are failing now. Perhaps voting should be made harder instead of easier.

Isn’t democracy a sham? Many important and widely unwanted impositions exist. State mandates, especially unfunded ones, favor the politically connected but cost the electorate. We can vote on school budgets but so what? Most of the policy and spending is not controlled by the voters. When democratically elected governments fail, appointed fiscal control boards are installed. Isn’t that democracy control, not deregulated democracy?

People can still vote. Laws can make voting easier. But in those failed governments, an appointed board decides how government functions.

How can Cuomo be said to deregulate democracies while actually regulating them? If voting is so important perhaps it needs to be licensed. That is demanded of barbers, who can do much less damage. Werner Hetzner

Cohoes Communications Director, Libertarian Party

of New York, Capital District Chapter