IS THERE AN AGGREGATION PROBLEM IN GOVERNANCE?

A Real Clear Public Affairs essay by Hillsdale political philosopher Ronald J. Pestritto concludes with an observation about limited government, "[R]ights-based theories of government limit the state’s sphere of action, thus limiting the ability of the people to implement their collective will and consequently representing something less than a real democracy."  You know, dear reader, where I'm going to go with this.  The key is in Mr Pestritto's characterization of Wilsonian-style political thought, a few paragraphs earlier.  "While early American conceptions of national government had carefully cir­cumscribed its power due to the perceived threat to individual liberties, progressives argued that history had brought about an improvement in the human condition, such that the will of the people was no longer in danger of becoming factious."  As. If.  Now we have the disciples of the Church of Intersectionality, for whom factiousness is a feature, and improvements in the human condition require the rooting out of wrongthink.

Now might be a particularly bad time for people to equate a national policy with a "collective will."

Americans are not only further divided by the performative policies of cynical officials, they're made poorer by them. Lockdowns imposed by officials who often ignored their own rules crippled businesses, economists point out. And the government "stimulus" spending sold as a replacement for normal economic activity threatens to hobble Americans for years to come.

Perhaps the only saving grace is that, with contradictory and manipulative dictates to the public, officialdom shed its credibility in wholesale lots. Public figures tailored policies and messages with seemingly less regard for the evidence than for herding the population into desired behavior. It's unlikely they'll command sufficient good will to pull such stunts again anytime soon.

Thus, now is a particularly good time to object to one-size-fits-all policies pushed through by bare majorities in Washington, such as standard election rules.

Democrats aren't mad because they know that support for their agenda will build over time — they are mad because they know that it won't, and absent [West Virginia senator Joe] Manchin and other recalcitrant Senate Democrats getting on board right away, they will miss their tiny window to get their way through brute legislative force prior to losing one or both chambers of Congress.

They have convinced themselves that GOP state legislatures are destroying democracy with new voting laws rolling back pandemic-driven innovations and tightening up security, a fevered myth that also won't stand the test of time.

As for HR1, it is a constitutionally dubious monstrosity that would trample on state voting laws in an enormous step toward the federalization of American elections. Machin was right to say in his op-Ed that it is telling that not one Republican, whether Susan Collins or Mitt Romney, is supporting this partisan power grab.

That's not how some academicians, not all of whom are court intellectuals for the Democrats, see it.

State legislatures have advanced initiatives that curtail voting methods now preferred by Democratic-leaning constituencies, such as early voting and mail voting. Republican lawmakers have openly talked about ensuring the “purity” and “quality” of the vote, echoing arguments widely used across the Jim Crow South as reasons for restricting the Black vote.

Those state legislatures are acting as agents for their constituents. Are none of the complaints of their constituents valid, because a few academicians take some Democrat talking points as truth, rather than Democrats telling their truth?  Think about how these Concerned Types (whenever you see "concern" or its variants, dear reader, expect thinly veiled "We want to order you about because we're so much smarter than you are") call for those national standards.  "The most effective remedy for these anti-democratic laws at the state level is federal action to protect equal access of all citizens to the ballot and to guarantee free and fair elections."  Be careful what you ask for: once there are federal standards, it is easy enough for a subsequent Congress, with a different governing majority, to determine that tighter voter identification standards or more careful vetting of driving license applications accompanying simultaneous voter registration or more comprehensive review of voting rolls or signature verification are in the National Interest.  Different governing majority, different aggregation problem.  Here's Rich Lowry.

So long as they aren't actually disenfranchising people (which no one is), states should be able to adopt the mix of voting rules that their democratically elected officeholders deem appropriate and that suit their particular political cultures.

If the goal is to increase confidence in the electoral system, by the way, having Congress by the slimmest of partisan majorities make it harder for states to maintain clean, up-to-date voter rolls (as H.R. 1 does) at the same time it wipes out ID requirements is emphatically not the way to do it.

Precisely because that slim Congressional margin implies and is impled by an aggregation problem that works like this:  if, as some critics of pure democracy suggest, three wolves and two sheep voting on menus is consistent with pure democracy, aren't some safeguards on the individual liberties of sheep and of wolves still useful?  Don't the boffins see this? "Further, these laws could entrench extended minority rule, violating the basic and longstanding democratic principle that parties that get the most votes should win elections."  Maybe they ought think about how best devolve powers, so that people don't get herded about as if they were sheep, no matter what the Congressional majorities look like?

I want to distinguish that aggregation problem, which I suspect people who have thought about voting have worked on, from a separate problem, which is that neither major party seems interested in expanding its appeal.  That's for a different post.