The Family Vote

As Americans, we tend to think that more autonomy = more personal benefit and freedom.  We hold this to be true in a very absolutist way, as if there were no further conversation to be had on this front.  We don’t like being told what to do, and claim absolute authority over our own, individual lives, with every chance we get.  Anything that inhibits our ability to make decisions for ourselves we see as categorically evil.  While the application of the attitude favoring complete autonomy varies from opinion to opinion (some want abortion banned, some want guns banned), one field seems to unify those of every walk of life: voting.  Voting remains one standpoint where we collectively feel that every individual MUST be allowed lend their voice as civic right and duty as a result of a democratic Republic - which we hold unilaterally as the highest form of government.  As voting time approaches, I begin to ask myself: exactly how important is it that individual voting rights are provided for?  At the risk of being accused of misogyny, I posit a model reflective of our own system which focuses on an individual’s vocation as opposed to the individual.  It is a model which downplays complete individual autonomy in favor of one which emphasizes communal life, and one which discards a focus on rights and takes up again the only proper context for rights: duty.  As a moral, viable, and relatively sensible alternative to our current voting system, I would like to see more discussions exploring a return to a one household, one voting system.

In this model, it really doesn’t matter if the vote is cast by one gender or the other.  In fact, the best model may very well be gender non-specific: any member of the family who is of age could be presented as the family representative to cast the vote.  This would emphasize two things.  First, the family, not an individual with characterizing traits, is the unit of society with a say in government.  Secondly, it reframes how we think of an individual person away from individual of complete autonomy and towards seeing the individual as a being with a telos, who is intelligible by his/her responsibilities.  “With great power comes great responsibility”, says Uncle Ben; this is particularly true of Freedom: Freedom is always accompanied by a corresponding responsibility.

There are no open-minded, intellectually honest conversations between the different political groups these days, and we should not be surprised at this.  When I am an autonomous individual whose freedom is absolute by nature but begrudgingly surrendered in mutual agreement so that we all have a better shot at living, every person is left to try to get away with what they can.  There is bound to be uncommunicable differences between opposing political parties.  Those who try to embody the mean between the extremes are inevitably left trying to choose the least worst instead of the best. 

The family is the smallest unit of society: the individual citizen is not.  This much has been observed in virtually every civilized form of government until basically mid 1900’s America.  If we cannot trust families to see their own greater good, if we hold each individual family member as isolated with autonomy without reference to any other family members, we cannot begin to hope for elected officials to work or see societal common good.  If family members cannot reconcile themselves and present with one voice, how do we dare expect governments to reconcile and work together?