I suppose when you finally catch up on news feeds after several weeks off that include the big recall to-do in California as well as a regular election day, one will find more commentary than usual about the democratic process. So at the risk of appearing to have a one track mind, here’s one more blurb on ways democracy could be different.

I first encountered the somewhat radical idea that universal suffrage wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be reading Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, wherein full citizenship (and voting privilege) was only assigned to those who had served in the military. Today I came across an 1875 Mark Twain story, The Curious Republic of Gondour (on a Heinlein site). In it, the narrator describes a place where each citizen is entitled to one vote, but those who are well educated can accrue more.