Trump Administration Appeals Mail Voting Changes as Midterms Near; Diesel Prices Reach Record High
Ballots, Diesel, and the Quiet Tax on the Public
A last-minute bid to reshape mail voting and a record rise in diesel prices reveal the same old pattern: concentrated gains for the few, diffuse burdens for the many.
The scene is easily described, and therefore its danger is easily overlooked. An administration, the day before one state is to send out its mail ballots and just as others prepare to follow, rushes to the highest court to alter the conditions under which those ballots may travel through the post. The request is to change the rules at the very moment when ordinary citizens, having ordered their political lives according to the existing rules, are about to act. No windows are smashed, no soldiers march; the roads to the polling places remain open. Yet the calm surface disguises a quieter disturbance, not of streets and squares, but of expectations and trust.
When I wrote of the division of labour in the manufacture of pins, I observed that the extent of the market governs how finely employment may be divided and how productive it may become. Much the same is true of political society. Regular elections, governed by rules long known and impartially observed, widen the market for participation; they invite the humblest cottager, as well as the proudest merchant, to specialize a little in public judgment. To throw uncertainty into the manner of voting, and to do so at the last hour, is to narrow that market. It discourages the timid, confuses the busy, and rewards only the most politically opulent, who can afford to master every sudden change.
If we trace this manoeuvre as in the Wealth of Nations I traced a tax or a bounty, we find the visible advantage on one side and the invisible cost on another. The visible advantage is political: those now in power hope to shape the electorate, not by persuasion of its sentiments, but by alteration of its channels. The cost is borne in scattered hours of anxiety, in forms misunderstood, in ballots never requested or never returned; it is paid most heavily by those who, from age, infirmity, distance, or employment, rely on the post to exercise their franchise. The gain is concentrated and discernible; the loss is diffuse, individualized, and therefore easily denied.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments taught me to judge conduct by imagining the impartial spectator, well-informed yet personally unconcerned, contemplating the scene. Such a spectator might approve a change to election rules deliberated long before a contest, debated openly, and adopted without regard to who might thereby be helped or hurt. But a change solicited in haste, on the eve of voting, and in the teeth of resistance from many states who have not chosen to adopt the proposed program, has a different air. It looks less like care for the purity of elections than like care for their outcome; and justice, which is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice, cannot thrive on so partial a foundation.
My suspicion is sharpened when those already possessed of authority seek, by regulation or judicial decree, to alter the conditions under which that authority may be renewed. When merchants complain of rivals and petition for exclusive privileges, I counsel the most suspicious attention, for their interest is to narrow the competition on which the public advantage depends. Office-holders are a species of merchant dealing in power instead of pins; when they ask to rearrange the rules of voting at the very moment votes are to be cast, we ought to regard them with the same wary eye. The maxim that all for ourselves, and nothing for other people, can wear a constitutional wig as easily as a periwig of commerce.
On the same day, I am told, diesel fuel reaches a record price, with a national average of $5.85 per gallon. Here again the pattern repeats. The rise appears first at the pump, but it does not rest there; diesel is the blood of carriage, and carriage is the nervous system of a great country. As its price mounts, so do the costs of transporting food, clothing, and all the modest comforts that compose the real wealth of the labouring poor. Wages seldom leap as swiftly as fuel; the increase steals upon the workman in higher prices at the shop, in a rent raised next year rather than this. It is a tax without a statute, levied by events, yet biting as keenly as any impost.
What then is required of the state, which, as I have argued, must provide defence, justice, and certain public works, but which errs whenever it imagines it can play at will upon the great chess-board of human society? It ought not, in pursuit of some ingenious scheme, to unsettle the very forms of election by which its own authority is judged; neither ought it, in a panic over fuel, to embrace projects that disregard the real motives and constraints of carriers, farmers, and traders. In both cases the temptation is the same: to sacrifice the quiet, dispersed interest of the many to the urgent, noisy interest of the few. A free and opulent society depends on resisting that temptation even when it comes dressed as patriotism or necessity.
From the works cited
- An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations — The division of labour (the pin factory) as the engine of opulence, limited by the extent of the market.
- An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations — Trace every policy to its effect on the price system and ask who bears the unseen cost: benefits are visible and concentrated, costs are diffuse and quiet.
- The Theory of Moral Sentiments — Judge conduct by the impartial spectator: what would a well-informed, disinterested observer feel about this action?