By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
The 59% “No” vote in the recent Kansas primary election solidly rejected a change in the Kansas Constitution that would have led to additional legislation waiting-in-the-wings to prohibit most or all abortions. But this vote has revealed a problem in our assumption that our elected representatives represent a majority of the public’s viewpoint. Both the Kansas House and Senate brought this constitutional change to the public by a solid two-thirds majority vote. The Kansas public, to the contrary, mostly held an opposing view.
Politicians on all sides regularly point to their election to office as the justification for their position in power. “My district voted for me to promote such-and-such an issue,” they spout, inferring that their constituency is solidly, or mostly, in favor of their position on various issues. But in Kansas, the votes clearly showed a solid majority of the voting public disagreed with the position of their representatives. They were not aligned at all.
Is it possible that there was a larger proportion of pro-amendment voters who simply did not show up to vote? That is highly unlikely, given the much larger turnout for this primary fueled by this very issue. And a large number of independent voters showed up just to vote on this amendment alone. As a nation that brags about being a representative democracy via elections, the U.S. usually has an embarrassingly low voter turnout by international standards. But with nearly half of Kansans voting, this was a substantial turnout. There is no reason to believe that the non-voters would have changed the results. State constitutional amendments are an unusual situation where we get to compare the representatives’ actions with their constituencies. And this gap in Kansas between the people and their “representatives” is not small.
A more common scenario for a U.S. election would be for a candidate to secure 60% of the vote in a state where only 40% of registered voters voted. That would mean that the candidate actually only got the vote of 24% of potential voters. And the loser got 16%. Considering that many citizens do not register to vote, and some are underage, etc., a successful candidate is supported by substantially fewer citizens.
There are many issues of large importance and other issues where citizen interest is low to absent. And despite polarization along supposedly political-philosophical lines, I rarely see folks who are so single-minded as to always agree with one specific candidate on the wide range of political bills that often combine a mixture of good and questionable details. Voting citizens also have uneven interests. The single truck driver will be more concerned with road infrastructure legislation and unconcerned with education, while the parent of schoolchildren will be more attentive to educational funding and care little about the interstate.
That brings up the question of whether representatives should always vote the way a majority of their constituents believe? This always poses a problem for issues involving new science, where the vast population are unaware of recent research that disproves common societal beliefs. These beliefs included asbestos, vaccination mandates, transsexual biology and many other issues.
Another case would involve overcoming the public’s war fever. Hitler used the Versailles Treaty of 1919, a punitive action, to rally German support for rebuilding for WWII. As that second war came to an end, General George Marshall realized it would be unwise to repeat that mistake. Germany had been devastated. Working with George Keenan, Marshall rightly saw that America needed to spend substantial resources to help rebuild Germany along with other European allies. But the American public had spent years demonizing the German enemy. Congress had already appropriated $522 million for Italy, France and Austria. How can he convince the U.S. Congress to approve the “European Recovery Program” (today called the “Marshall Plan”) totaling $13.3 billion?
By working with a critical mass of intelligent and reasonable legislators, General Marshall was able to get Congressional representatives to do what was right, and not what was popular.
So there are certain instances where representatives wisely do not represent the position of their constituents. But proposing the change to the Kansas Constitution was not one of them.
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John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities during 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.