Responsible voting

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Every election year there are great alarms in the media that not enough Americans vote. Supposedly this shows that there is something wrong at the core of our society.

In reality, societies where different groups are at each other's throats often have high voter turnout, as each fears the worst if some other group gains political power.

Polarization is a high price for high voter turnout. But there are already efforts to scare old people that their Social Security is threatened in order to get out their vote. In fact, nobody in his right mind will touch their Social Security.

It is young people who are likelier to find their promised pensions are not there when they get old -- unless they get some private pension in the meantime, with or without Social Security privatization.

Since 90 percent of the black vote goes to Democrats, it is especially important for Democrats to scare blacks, to get a large turnout. Charges of "racism" have been used for this purpose in the past but it is hard to make that stick against an administration with the first black secretary of state and the first black national security adviser in the White House.

The ploy this time is to claim Republicans are trying to "suppress" the black vote "again." Sen. John Kerry has stooped to this, even though many of Florida's voting problems in 2000 were in precincts controlled by Democratic election officials.

Other uses of polarization to increase voter turnout include Sen. John Edwards' claim there are "two Americas" and the old familiar line about "tax cuts for the rich."

Whatever the effectiveness of polarization in boosting turnout for Democrats, the larger question is: What is its effect on the country as a whole -- and not just during election years? A country whose people see each other as enemies is in big trouble, often bigger trouble than its worst enemies can make.

People who have no partisan axes to grind may see a big voter turnout as a healthy form of self-expression. They want to see registration and voting made easier -- and are often reluctant to see this makes voter fraud easier as well.

Voter fraud is not a small thing, especially when elections are very close, as in 2000 and as this one may be as well, judging by the polls. A more fundamental problem, however, is that voting is not just individual self-expression. It is choosing the people in whose hands this nation's destiny will be placed.