I think I understand you position better now. Let me clarify my position on making it more difficult to have an abortion. I do not oppose efforts to make abortion more difficult to obtain, I simply don’t think it’s worth the effort to pursue the goal.

To put that into perspective – I don’t propose spending any real effort on finding ways to make the voting registration process more stringent either. I think it would be beneficial but since it is so easy to oppose that effort I believe the best course of action is to bypass the effort to craft a legal remedy and focus our attention on crafting a social remedy by advocating the importance of informed civic participation and by doing what little I can to help the people around me to be more informed on the issues that many of them will be voting on anyway.

And making it more difficult to vote is basically making a law which denys people the right to vote. Which is exactly how it would be spun were it proposed by a Republican, btw.

I see your point about wanting to ensure an informed electorate. But Reach makes a good point that even with how easy it is to vote today, most don’t.

However, at times there are massive “get out the vote” campaigns which focus primarily on single issues. Also, the ease of voting allows for substantial fraud. A couple of years ago there was an instance in Idaho where a campaign basically coerced some very elderly residents of a retirement center to vote for the campaign’s candidate. A stricter registration process would avoid that.

Also, I don’t see the connection between my stance on who should vote and my contention that making laws against abortion is less effective than making people who simply won’t choose abortion even if it’s legal.

By your logic, we should not have nearly any laws (maybe even none), and should instead just make good people who govern themselves.

It’s inconsistent to deny people the right to vote and at the same time argue that laws concerning abortion are fruitless.

Certainly, the old rule of requiring voters to be property holders was intended to at least somewhat accomplish this goal. But Americans long ago rejected that rule as being too exclusionary.

How do you make voting exclusive but not too exclusive? That’s a tough question. Obviously we as a nation haven’t yet conceived of any just way to do this.

For example, abortion. Republicans can play the pro-life card all day long, but in the end the odds of overturning Roe v Wade are slim no matter how the electorate votes. For those that really don’t want abortion, they could beat fully legalized abortion best by finding ways to build a society of individuals with stronger individual moral compasses. The abortion war is won not by making laws against abortion, but by making people who don’t choose that path.

On the other hand, fiscal policy is the responsibility of our government.

What we need is a greater awareness of the importance of political awareness and involvement so that people are motivated to become informed and vote. The last thing I want is people voting that are uninformed or apathetic about it.