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This has nothing to do with Civilized Divorce, but in this political season I'm reminded of Nevil Shute's theory of the Seventh Vote.

Nevil Shute (1899 - 1960) was a fiction author. He believed that British socialism after WWII would tend to destroy what he conceived as the British way of life, and he put forth a theory that only what we might call "stakeholders" should have a say in how the country was run. The more one contributes to society, the bigger a voice one should say in how the government should run.

Here's an excerpt from his novel In the Wet:

'I remember when the multiple vote started... It was when I was in Townsville, in 1963. They brought it in for West Australia.'

'Why did West Australia start it?' asked Rosemary. 'Why not New South Wales, or Queensland?'
'I don't know,' ... 'Labour was very much against it.'

'West Australia was always pretty Liberal,' the pilot said. 'People had been talking about multiple voting for a long time before that. I reckon it was easier to get it through in West Australia.'

'How did it come to be taken up by the other States, if Labour was so much against it?' asked Rosemary.

'Aw, look,' said the pilot. 'West Australia was walking away with everything. We got a totally different sort of politician when we got the multiple vote. Before that, when it was one man one vote, the politicians were all tub-thumping nonentities and union bosses. Sensible people didn't stand for Parliament, and if they stood, they didn't get in.' (p.101).

...

'Stevie', I said, 'I am Roger Hargreves. You know me; I am the person from Landsborough. Remember me?'

'I am bad...I have been bad three days.'

'We'll get you into Landsborough tomorrow, and then the ambulance will come and fly you to Cloncurry.'

'I have flown further than that,' he muttered. 'Up'n down, up'n down, all across the world, carrying the Queen, Ottawa, Keeling Cocos, Nanyuki, Ratmalan. I know all them places. I got the seventh vote - did you know that, Cobber?' 'Did you know I got the seventh vote?'

Between dream and reality, a man in a coma recounts a memory of a life lived or to be lived. He is in England in the RAAF. His dinner host Captain Osborne asks: 'There's one thing about Australia I wish you would tell me. How does your multiple vote work? Have you got more than one vote yourself?'

The pilot nodded. 'I am a three-vote man.'

'What do you get your three votes for?' The captain asked.

'Basic, education, and foreign travel.'

'The basic vote - that's what everyone gets, isn't it?'

'That's right.' The pilot said. 'Everybody gets that at the age of twenty-one.'

'And education?'

'That's for higher education, there is a whole list of other things, like being a solicitor or a doctor. Officers get it when they are commissioned. That is how I got mine.'

'And foreign travel?'

'That's for earning your living outside Australia for two years.'

'You can get more votes than three can't you? Is it seven?'

'The seventh is hardly ever given.' 'Only the Queen can give that.' 'The others are straight forward.'
'You can get a vote if you raise two children to the age of fourteen without getting a divorce. That's the family vote.'

'The fifth is the achievement vote.' 'You get an extra vote if your personal exertion income, what you call earned income - in the year before the election is five thousand a year.' 'It is supposed to cater for the man who's got no education and has never been out of Australia and quarreled with his wife but built up a big business. They reckon that he ought to have more say in the affairs of the country than his junior typist.'

'And the sixth?'

'That's if you're an official in the church,...you don't have to be a minister, what it boils down to is that you can get an extra vote if you're doing a real job for the church.'

Adapted from "In the Wet",1st Edition, pp. 97-99.

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I'm not sure how I feel about straying from our one-person one-vote system. But I do like two things about it. First, it's the concept that the highest honor the country can bestow on someone is an extra vote. Second, it seems appropriate that the more you contribute to society, the more say you ought to have (similar to, but less extreme than, the concept of shareholders in a corporation voting: one vote for every share of stock they own).

I'd love to have your thoughts.