Recently the legislators of Pennsylvania, US, made amendments to their election law. They passed Act No. 934, which regulates the way the voters have to identify themselves when going to vote. Now in order to vote at local, congressional, or presidential elections, an identification card with a photograph should be showed. Before that, it was just enough to give your name.
In a country, where nobody knows about electoral merry-go-rounds, ballot stuffing, and dead electoral souls, elections are quite interesting. They are seldom bothered with the safety of the voting process. Not too many people turn up anyway. The elections are always held on Tuesdays, the weekday. And now that people have to identify themselves, a lot of them might just give it up.
This is what the new Pennsylvania law was criticized the most for. Democrats were desperate, the amendments were made against their electorate: poor folk who do not have 30 dollars to get a driving license, the most popular kind of identification in the US. Or absent-minded people, who always forget their IDs at home, they also love democrats or maybe independent candidates, they just cannot remember well. Or categorical ones: “Here I am, and here is my face, what other papers do you need? Documents can be forged. Ask every minor who wants to get inside a bar.”
A research on electoral fraud had been carried out before the new law was passed. No significant violations were found. People do come with some kind of identification anyway. But nevertheless, the law was passed. The republicans voted for it, while the democrats voted against.
Pennsylvania is now only the 16th state that wants to know that only those who have IDs come to the polling stations. By the way, according to the new law, they will let people vote without IDs anyway, a voter will just need to submit necessary papers within a six-day period to identify themselves.
They tried to take care of the electoral mood. And soon the new law was forgotten. This event was unimportant after all.
In America, a lot less depends on the elections than, let us say, in Ukraine. They have independent court, independent legislative, and executive powers. It is hard to evade rules there. They have checks and balances everywhere. Thomas Jefferson and Co. there did know human nature well.
In Ukraine, EVERYTHING depends on elections. So people need to bring to the polling station nothing less than a passport and belief that their names were not removed from the lists.
There are no independent branches of government. Getting into parliament means getting into the government itself, but not into one of its competitive parts. Parliamentarism in Ukraine has turned into fiction. Unexpected legislative situations happen only when the communists decide to give trouble, like it was in the case with the recent voting for the new ombudsman. The government is consolidated, one slight gesture indicates which button should be pressed today. The Verkhovna Rada became a club where interesting debates are still present, but the smart decisions are long gone.
What this means for young Ukrainian democracy is clear. But what does it mean for the philosophic perception of an average Ukrainian citizen? What thoughts are going to occupy their head in half a year, when they go to vote? What are they going to bring along, a passport or disbelief?
It is well-known that parliamentarism is one of the tools of representative democracy, a response to society’s demand of the democratic legitimization of the key constitutional principles, the legislative foundation of the statehood.
Are Ukrainians going to think about this? No. They will probably think that one of the local political figures has probably had propensity for corruption and being a showman, and that is why s/he ended up in the Verkhovna Rada. And now s/he wants to be re-elected.
And they are also going to think that MPs are quite pragmatic folk in general. MPs know that time is money. And after they get re-elected, they do not want to waste the taxpayers’ money on the time that was spent to take care of them.
Ukrainians got to the heart of it. And this heart will not stop them from coming to the polling station, and provide turnout which will make Americans jealous. And all this despite our process of documents inspection being thorough and inspirational. Americans are only blabbing about liberty and freedom of choice. We fight for it every couple of years, packing our transparent volition into transparent ballot boxes, and believing that once this whole process will become transparent too. Our ancestors were the first in Europe to elect a leader, and we have a historical right to do this as well, even though nowadays we do not really believe in the integrity of this whole process.
We do not have any other process. We do not wish, and we do not know how to blame our troubles on the tsar that was destined to rule over us. We want to blame them on our neighbor who voted for the wrong candidate. Or did not go to the polling station to vote for the right one. Or does not watch the news at all.
We need a new parliament only to despise it later for the well-known reasons. But it is important for us that it reflects our choice more or less adequately. Therefore, when one candidate defects to the other side, we have to know that our eyes had to see what they bought.
So, we do not mind presenting the Ukrainian’s most important ID at the demand of the electoral commission official, for them to check our registration, the spelling of our name, marital status, and psychological mood scrupulously. And if they also ask if we feel alright or talk about the weather, we are also not going to mind.
Our expression of political will is much more important for us than for someone who is obsessed with blabbering about democracy on the other side of the Atlantic. And it is much more precious for us. Every single time we know that it is THE chance. And even though this chance never proved to be a lucky one in 20 years, it does not mean it is not going to happen in the future. It is quite the contrary, our lucky chance rises with time. You can ask any ardent gambler about it.
