A few weeks ago I noticed Peter Hitchens' column opposing the vote for 16 year olds: Can a 16-year-old's opinion be worth as much as that of an experienced copper, a woman who has successfully brought up children, anyone who has run a business, a skilled surgeon or a veteran schoolteacher? Of course not. So why should they all have only one vote? An interesting and controversial suggestion, it hints at a return to weighted votes and giving greater voting power to those of greater experience, knowledge, or age. It suggests a narrowing of the vote rather than an expansion.

In a related vein a few years ago, George Will, opposing the "motor-voter bills" racing through the various legislatures, suggested that voting should not be facilitated and made easier by the state but harder. This way those who take the vote seriously (and you assume have a greater knowledge and interest in current affairs) would vote, and those too lazy to leave their driver's seats would have better things to do.

Last night, both of these came to mind while I was reading the Saki short story "Hermann the Irascible," where a plague devastates Britain and several generations of the Royal Family succumb, leaving a lowly German prince named Hermann on the British throne. A good progressive and democrat, he feels for the suffragettes and instructs the Prime Minister to introduce a new law in the Commons. First, every public office no matter how local or small will be open to the vote, not only at elections for Parliament, county councils, district boards, parish-councils, and municipalities, but for coroners, school inspectors, churchwardens, curators of museums, sanitary authorities, police-court interpreters, swimming-bath instructors, contractors, choir-masters, market superintendents, art-school teachers, cathedral vergers, and other local functionaries whose names I will add as they occur to me, the new King instructs the PM. Second, while men will have the option to vote, women will be forced to vote in all elections. If they refuse (and are not able to document a medical emergency), they will be fined 10 pounds.

The law passes but is tremendously unpopular. Voting dominates women's lives. There seemed no end to the elections. Laundresses and seamstresses had to hurry away from their work to vote, often for a candidate whose name they hadn't heard before, and whom they selected at haphazard; female clerks and waitresses got up extra early to get their voting done before starting off to their places of business. Society women found their arrangements impeded and upset by the continual necessity for attending the polling stations, and week-end parties and summer holidays became gradually a masculine luxury. As for Cairo and the Riviera, they were possible only for genuine invalids or people of enormous wealth, for the accumulation of 10 pound fines during a prolonged absence was a contingency that even ordinarily wealthy folk could hardly afford to risk. Enfranchisement, the goal for so long, soon loses its luster.

Riots, protests, violence, and disobedience ensue as the "No-Votes-for-Women League" gains popularity, chanting "We Don't Want the Vote." When this fails, a "Great Weep" is planned and women across Britain disturb the peace by crying loudly. Relays of women, ten thousand at a time, wept continuously in the public places of the Metropolis. They wept in railway stations, in tubes and omnibuses, in the National Gallery, at the Army and Navy Stores, in St. James's Park, at ballad concerts, at Prince's and in the Burlington Arcade. Finally, the government gives in and, in a victory for women, disenfranchises them.

Perhaps somewhere in this very funny tale lies the best reply to those who constantly seek expansion and enhancement of the franchise. If voting is the ultimate good rather than how you vote (the quantity of decision-making rather than the quality of the decision), open everything to the vote, expand the franchise, and make voting compulsory, subject to fines for missed elections. This is logical. If voting and "having a say" is that important, give it to more people and make them vote -- make them have a say. What is more progressive: motor-voter laws that merely make voting easier, or compulsory voting that makes voting legally compelling? Give more people the vote and force them to do it. What was it that Mencken said, Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

I am only half in jest. As I said last month, Shouldn't the government, at the least the responsible members, be more interested in qualitative improvement of the franchise rather than quantitative expansion? Lowering the voting age suggests otherwise.