To vote seriously

Democracy suffers: all over the world democracy suffers.

Fewer and fewer citizens participate in their elections;

more and more citizens declare that they care little for them.

So the Democrats blame populist wishful thinking, simplifications, reasons of the heart and other tongue twisters.

They do not usually think that, in much of the world, democracy is the system under which millions go hungry, millions more do not live as they should, and they do not have to respond to a system that does not respond to their needs.

They do not usually think that there are millions who do not feel that their governments represent them, because they do not represent them.

Democracy is justified in that representation: if it does not, its base is disarmed.

Democracy is not threatened by the evil of the very bad neo-Nazi populist late crusaders anarcho-terrorists: its threat comes from itself.

Of his inability to summon the citizens he claims to represent, of his insolvency to fulfill his diminished promises.

It is not difficult: most ignore them.

And so they vote less and less: perhaps two-thirds of those who could.

In the United States, an example of the system, half have not voted for a long time.

We know how it usually is: two or three dominant political parties install a boss/candidate, promote him however they can and, in “the campaign”, make him speak and debate a few times, with crystallized syrupy phrases designed by teams of phrase designers candy.

And they flood the streets and screens with photos and more phrases and the citizens, when the day in question has arrived, must choose between some characters about whom they know little and, above all: about whose specific plans they usually know almost nothing.

Yes, some citizens are informed and think and weigh, even knowing that between what a party offers in its campaign and what it does afterwards there is an abyss.

But the majority votes for a simpler identification —it's my party, it's the party of mine, it's Catholic like me, it's pissed off like me, it's a woman, it's handsome and tall, it seems decent— and that's how governments are formed.

And so they deserve the disdain or disinterest of a large part of those citizens they supposedly represent.

It is clear that voting is a basic right, won over centuries of fights.

But it should also be a duty to earn that right every time.

If voting is deciding how a community is going to live, in order to have the right to do so, each individual in that community should make the effort to inform themselves, think and discuss what would be the best ways.

I imagined, long ago, a way: that, when voting, each citizen should answer, on the same ballot, a dozen questions —multiple

type— about the programs of the opposing parties.

It is easy to make and process, it would be a 1X2 type ballot.

And the votes that did not include a minimum of correct answers would be annulled, on the basis that the right to vote supposes the duty to know what is being voted for.

Thus, citizens who do not want to throw away their vote should find out what the parties are proposing.

And the parties, instead of looking for pretty faces to spout jokes or expletives, would have to explain what they are offering: they would know that if they don't, the votes of their voters won't count.

(In the end, it would even be possible to calculate which programs provoke the most wrong answers and sanction —morally?— the parties that explain themselves worse).

Going to vote would be a little more difficult.

Perhaps, so that the difficulty is not dissuasive, it would be convenient to make it mandatory.

Or even paid, as in old Athens: that citizens below a certain income would receive, for example, 50 euros per valid vote, which would give them time to study the proposals.

That in Spain could cost about 400 million: is it an excess to spend them every three or four years to improve democracy and all its effects?

Some say it would be a qualified vote.

I say that it is a way of qualifying the vote: of giving it its value.

The perversion of the old qualified vote was that it was qualified by wealth and gender;

first only rich men voted, then only men.

Here, if anything, what qualifies him is his enthusiasm and effort: the desire to vote seriously, or at least more seriously.

Democracy was an arduous conquest: now it is a nuisance, a way to avoid worse evils.

Sometimes we seem to believe that it should always be as it is: that, unlike everything else, it should not and cannot be perfected.

But he needs to recover his mystique, and his mystique always consisted of his promise that, thanks to it, everyone could intervene in the government of public affairs.

If everyone is informed, everyone can demand.

A tested democracy should also be put to the test: that citizens can demand from their governments their specific promises within specific deadlines, that there are intervention mechanisms to rush them and, eventually, evict them if they do not do what they had promised.

It seems silly.

It also seemed so, in my grandmother's time, that women vote.

Martín Caparrós

is a writer and journalist, author of

(Debate).

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