David McElroy

Note: I don’t edit old articles such as this one, because they were what I believed to be accurate when I wrote them, but I have finally discovered almost four years later that the source of this graphic was actually a Buzzfeed article about what the results would have been if only white people had voted. The article will remain as it is, but please do not use this to make a political point about voting, because that might or might not be accurate. (I suspect if non-taxpayers were excluded from voting, the results would have been what I said here, but the data isn’t there to say so.) If you’d like to know why I don’t think it matters to argue these points, you’re welcome to read this article from July 2016 explaining how my priorities have changed in the past few years.

As long as you’re 18 years old and can fog a mirror, any U.S. citizen can vote. But what if we made one simple rule change? What if you had to have paid income taxes to be eligible to vote?

According to a graphic which has been attributed to CNN, the network looked at exit poll data from the election and told us what would have happened in the recent presidential election. After subtracting voters who pay no income taxes, Barack Obama would have won only 11 states. Instead of 332 electoral votes, he would have had only 97 electoral votes. (Click the map for a bigger copy.) Mitt Romney would have beaten him by a margin of 4.5 to 1 in electoral votes. It would have been a blowout win for the Republicans.

I was surprised to see CNN even point this out, because the suggestion that this is even a legitimate way to look at the data isn’t something that is typically brought up in polite company. The idea that people who don’t pay taxes are “second-class citizens” in some way is enough to get you declared racist and any other pejorative that some folks can think of.

But let’s think about it. Why is it that people who don’t pay taxes — which is about half the population — get to decide who pays taxes and how much money the actual taxpayers have to pay? What right do they have to have anything to say on such matters? If they’re not contributing to the money — and have nothing to lose from demanding higher taxes — why should they be allowed to have a say about what money is raised and how it’s spent?

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Since the election, I’ve heard a lot of talk from otherwise-reasonable people about how much the Democrats and Republicans hate each other and how they stand for entirely different things. I keep wanting to check and see whether these folks are really paying attention. Isn’t it obvious that Democrats and Republicans are really just two different wings of the Bipartisan Party?

Almost everybody talks wistfully these days about how great it would be if the two parties could just work together in a “bipartisan way.” Those naive folks don’t seem to understand the truth that George Carlin spoke when he said, “Bipartisan usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.”

When the two parties come to some big budget deal which lets them borrow billions and billions more dollars without cutting any spending, it’s hailed as bipartisan. The alleged combatants stand together smiling about the great deal they’ve come to, but it never seems to be a great deal for anyone except those who like bigger government and more spending.

I can’t remember the last time that actual spending was cut overall in the federal budget. Do you? When politicians talk about cuts, they generally just means cuts to the rate of growth of spending. In the real world, we don’t call those cuts. Instead, we look at it as an already-way-too-big government getting even bigger while politicians lie to us. Again.

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I was out getting my mail one day not long ago when I noticed several of my neighbors in the street talking. I stepped across the street to be neighborly and see what the neighborhood gossip might be.

“Hey, let me tell you about the new idea we’ve been talking about,” said Karl. He’s sort of the intellectual in our neighborhood. I’m not sure what he does, but he spends a lot of time at the library working on a book. “We’ve decided that we need a neighborhood swimming pool for our street. I figure we can have it ready to go by the time it’s warm enough in the spring.”

“Sounds great, Karl,” I said, “but wouldn’t that be pretty expensive?”

“None of us can afford it alone,” Karl said, “but if we put our resources together, it shouldn’t be so bad.”

The other folks all seemed to think it was a good idea, so I told him I might be interested if the price was right. They told me they’d let me know what they figured out, and I went back home.

A few days later, there was a knock at my door. It was Karl and a couple of his friends.

“I have great news,” Karl said. “We took a vote and decided to move ahead with the community swimming pool project. We’ll be letting you know how much you owe as soon as we have the figures all put together. Isn’t that great?”

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