POLYGAMY AND RIGHT TO MARRY/RIGHT TO VOTE ANALOGY: Gabriel Rosenberg

[Not sure how far this gets you given that a) a huge part of the SSM debate is over whether sex difference is relevant to marriage in a way that it is not relevant to being a senator, and b) a lot of the "ssm-->polygamy" claims rest on particular rationales for ssm that are different from the anti-sex-discrimination rationale that Gabriel finds most persuasive. Still, his post is worth your time. --Eve]

...For example, suppose the law required that there be one senator of each sex from each state. This law burdens men and women equally. Neither group is advantaged or disadvantaged by it. Nobody is excluded from running for Senator nor is anybody excluded from voting. There may even be a legitimate goal advanced by this proposal. It would result in a Senate that, in terms of gender, more accurately reflected the population. Every state would have a Senator of each gender and the two would "complement" one another, and so forth. I believe such a policy, though, would violate our fundamental right to vote for the candidate of our choice.

Does it follow that the legislature must permit anybody who so chooses to vote for as many candidates as they would like? Such a system, as in approval voting, could work. In fact I think it would be a better system than we currently have. But I do not think there is a right to such a voting system. The right to vote cannot include the right for us to each decide which voting system we would like to use. Every person has the right to vote (barring a compelling reason to disenfranchise), but not the right to vote for as many candidates as one would like. In a similar manner while the state would need a good cause to deny someone the opportunity to run for office, it is certainly reasonable to restrict the person to one office at a time.

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posted by Eve at 10:05 PM VOTE

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