A right you can be denied unless you stand in queues and fill in forms is not a right at all. Last weekend, South Africans were exhorted to register to vote, a ritual that is seen by just about everyone as entirely normal. As usual, no one suggested that voter registration is deeply undemocratic. No one demanded it be scrapped. It is difficult to understand why. The right to vote is the most basic political right human beings enjoy. Without it, we cannot force the government to serve us — we are doomed to serve it. People who cannot vote are not citizens, they are subjects of those who govern them. And yet, in this country this right is not automatic. We can exercise it only if we do what officials tell us to do to claim it. Would we really believe we were free to speak if freedom of speech could be exercised only if we registered to have our say? Yet we believe that we are all free to vote even though some are denied this right if they fail to register. Voter registration’s chief f...
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