> from where I sit the practical US version of democracy that works the best, more times than not, is one with universal suffrage
I think you are misinterpreting the historical evidence. The historical evidence is that suffrage should not be restricted for reasons that have no relationship to whether or not a person is a sufficiently responsible citizen. That is why we abolished slavery and gave women the vote.
But that's not the question Heinlein is addressing. He's addressing the question of whether suffrage should be restricted to people who can give positive evidence that they are sufficiently responsible citizens. The system he describes in Starship Troopers is such a system: until a person gives positive evidence in the form of at least two years of service (which doesn't have to be direct military service of the kind Rico does), that person cannot vote. (And note that the person cannot vote until they have finished serving; while they're in the service, even if they stay in as a career, they don't vote.)
Your position seems to be that any such system will end up being worse than a system where no evidence of responsibility is required to vote. But I don't see why that would be the case. The system we have now is a system where no evidence of responsibility is required to vote, and we have a Congress with approval ratings in the single digits and incumbent re-election rates in the high 90s. Nobody is willing to hold their elected representatives accountable. If that's what universal suffrage looks like, maybe it's time to consider a change.
I'm saying that every time in history where voting has been restricted to "people who can give positive evidence for being 'responsible citizens'" has been used to define 'responsible citizens' purely for (white) nationalism, giving plutocratic power to a minority party.
I certainly appreciate Heinlein's thought experiment in the book. It is a useful strawman to argue about/against. In reading the book it gave me a lot of reasons to agree that it sounds good in theory, but sounds abysmal and is likely to fall to cronyism if not fascism in practice. As I stated well above, I appreciate that the film is a particularly strong indictment of the idea by very strongly showing it leading to fascism and propaganda. I read the book that way, assuming the narrator (Rico) to be unreliable and subject to very visible propaganda in the corrupt system to which he is so deeply embedded. The movie does alright by me making that subtext into very visible (not very subtle) text.
> The system we have now […] we have a Congress with approval ratings in the single digits and incumbent re-election rates in the high 90s
The system the US has now is not universal suffrage. We've seen the highest rates of elections won that do not match the popular vote. The majority of US states are dealing with gerrymandered districting that verges on ludicrous. The approval ratings are an indictment that suffrage is not being universally observed, and that election results are unreflective of actual US demographics. It's time to consider fixing US democracy, and making it more of an actual democracy, not changing it to something that no longer resembles democracy.
> every time in history where voting has been restricted to "people who can give positive evidence for being 'responsible citizens'"
When has this ever happened? We've already agreed that race is irrelevant to responsible citizenship, so a country that said only white people can vote is not following the rule.
I don't think Heinlein's point is that restricting suffrage to responsible citizens has been shown historically to work, so we should go back to it. I think his point is that it has never been tried, and everything else that has been tried hasn't worked.
> The system the US has now is not universal suffrage.
That's true in the sense that you have to be eighteen or older to vote and not have been convicted of a felony, and you have to have registered to vote, yes.
> We've seen the highest rates of elections won that do not match the popular vote.
So "universal suffrage" doesn't just mean "everybody gets to vote", but the votes have to be counted a certain way?
> The majority of US states are dealing with gerrymandered districting that verges on ludicrous.
It is impossible to have districting that is exactly equal, with each and every district having exactly the same number of voters. Would anything short of that meet your requirements for "universal suffrage"? If so, what?
> election results are unreflective of actual US demographics.
How so?
> It's time to consider fixing US democracy
It seems to me that there is no possible system that could actually be implemented that would satisfy your definition of "democracy".
Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, Contemporary Russia, Contemporary China, Saddam's Iraq, Mussolini's Italy, et cetera ab nauseum. There are so many cases of dictators existing in a rubber-stamped democracy where the only party that matters is the dictator's own, the only people that may vote are the "responsible citizens" in the dictator's party, and so forth. Many of those countries have/had service requirements for citizenship/party membership, not unlike the thought experiment Heinlein offered.
> It is impossible to have districting that is exactly equal, with each and every district having exactly the same number of voters. Would anything short of that meet your requirements for "universal suffrage"?
Districting is only one means to electing representatives. There are certainly alternatives to explore, even if no clear "better path", partly because enough experiments simply haven't been run in the wild. The impedance mismatch between popular vote and representatives elected is a sign that something needs to be changed. Exploring alternatives is hard work, and maybe something that needs to happen.
> It seems to me that there is no possible system that could actually be implemented that would satisfy your definition of "democracy".
Sure, but that does not mean that we should stop trying to make what we have better. True democracy where everyone votes on every issue doesn't scale. [1] Representative democracy is full of ugly compromises, but for the most part it works better than many of the other alternatives humanity has tried. But we can't rest on our laurels. We should strive to get better at picking our representatives. We should strive to have fewer voices shouted over and/or ignored outright. We should strive to continue to bulwark our democracies against fascists, authoritarians, and would be dictators who like democracies only when they rubber stamp their dictatorships.
[1] It absolutely did not scale in age with the communications technologies of the US founders era. It's technically possible to try to scale it now with modern communications technologies, but that is unlikely to be something people actually want in their lives, and still fails to scale in vectors that matter such as a personal time commitments from the average citizen.
> Districting is only one means to electing representatives.
Agreed. The Constitution doesn't actually say representatives have to be chosen by geographic districts, so this would be a relatively easy experiment to run.
> We should strive to get better at picking our representatives.
Agreed. But with the current incentives facing voters, this is highly unlikely to happen.
> We should strive to have fewer voices shouted over and/or ignored outright.
But the reason this matters at all is that we all expect the government to solve all our problems. So anyone whose voice isn't listened to by the government thinks they're never going to get their problem solved. The way to fix this problem is to stop expecting the government to solve all our problems.
> We should strive to continue to bulwark our democracies against fascists, authoritarians, and would be dictators who like democracies only when they rubber stamp their dictatorships.
The less power the government has, the less vulnerable we are to this failure mode.
ADJECTIVE
1. satisfying one's conception of what is perfect; most suitable.
"the swimming pool is ideal for a quick dip"
2. existing only in the imagination; desirable or perfect but not likely to become a reality.
"in an ideal world, we might have made a different decision"
> Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, Contemporary Russia, Contemporary China, Saddam's Iraq, Mussolini's Italy
None of these countries required people to show positive evidence of being responsible citizens.
Nazi Germany held an election to give the Nazi party absolute power; nobody had to show positive evidence of being a responsible citizen to vote in that election. Then they stopped having elections altogether and made Hitler dictator.
The Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China didn't require people to show positive evidence of being responsible citizens to vote; they just made sure their votes didn't matter in any practical sense.
Contemporary Russia doesn't restrict voting based on having to provide evidence of being a responsible citizen; Putin just uses his control over the media to make sure voters only get information favorable to him, so of course they vote for him.
Saddam's Iraq never had voting at all, as far as I know.
Mussolini first came to power in Italy by decree of the King, not by a vote. His party then manipulated the laws to give themselves a huge advantage in the next election, but they never required people to show evidence of responsible citizenship in order to vote; they had already basically fixed the election by changing the law.
I think you are misinterpreting the historical evidence. The historical evidence is that suffrage should not be restricted for reasons that have no relationship to whether or not a person is a sufficiently responsible citizen. That is why we abolished slavery and gave women the vote.
But that's not the question Heinlein is addressing. He's addressing the question of whether suffrage should be restricted to people who can give positive evidence that they are sufficiently responsible citizens. The system he describes in Starship Troopers is such a system: until a person gives positive evidence in the form of at least two years of service (which doesn't have to be direct military service of the kind Rico does), that person cannot vote. (And note that the person cannot vote until they have finished serving; while they're in the service, even if they stay in as a career, they don't vote.)
Your position seems to be that any such system will end up being worse than a system where no evidence of responsibility is required to vote. But I don't see why that would be the case. The system we have now is a system where no evidence of responsibility is required to vote, and we have a Congress with approval ratings in the single digits and incumbent re-election rates in the high 90s. Nobody is willing to hold their elected representatives accountable. If that's what universal suffrage looks like, maybe it's time to consider a change.