Dustin, Is That You?

In the last couple of weeks one of my sons and his girlfriend have both spotted, on separate occasions no less, David Hasselhoff on the streets of Helsinki. In one case, he was eating an ice cream.

Now, this sort of thing isn’t quite as mind-blowing as you might think, not in Helsinki. It’s not even so surprising that Hasselhoff can be found roaming the streets of Helsinki, since he’s been spending time here taping the “David Hasselhoff Show”, a talk show that he hosts on MTV3. If you thought that a Finnish TV talk show featuring David Hasselhoff is a bit incongruous, you’d be right. It’s a quirky show, to say the least. However, there is a precedent, since Hasselhoff hosted a similar show last year in Sweden.

It’s not as if Hasselhoff doesn’t have a sizeable fan base in Finland. I think he probably does, though that wouldn’t necessarily include me. I’ve probably never seen a single complete episode of either “Night Rider” or “Baywatch”. I have no idea if Hasselhoff has ever starred in a feature-length film, or not one I recall seeing.

Still, I do know very well who Hasselhoff is. After all, he is a celebrity (or in Finnish, julkkis), which sadly sometimes means you’re someone famous for simply being famous, even if the reason (justified or not) for being famous in the first place has been lost in the mists of time. That’s the only explanation (or excuse) I can offer for knowing who Kim Kardashian is. She’s famous for something or other. I suppose.

One thing about celebrity-hood is how incredibly insular it can be on a country level. I realized this some years ago while leafing through some foreign magazines at our local library, back when it still had them. I recall being stuck especially by some Spanish gossip magazines. Page after glossy page were plastered with photos of people with insanely broad smiles, all apparently arriving at some glamorous gala or lounging on a beach or smartly dressed for cocktails at some villa – obviously the crème de la crème of Spanish celebrity. I didn’t recognize a single one of them. Okay, except maybe Rafael Nadal, I guess I would recognize him.

I’m sure it’s the same everywhere. Every country has it’s “flock” of local celebrities (or “pride” or “herd” or "gaggle", there should be a word for this – a “prowl”, maybe), most of whom are unknown outside its borders. I’m sure many of the Swedish celebrities are unknown in Finland, and vice versa.

It's different with the US, the pop-cultural hegemon of the world. In America, celebrities are a cottage industry, a national export. They’re not so easy to spot in the wild, though it can happen, even for me.

When I was a kid, on vacation in Cherokee, North Carolina, we happened to be eating dinner a couple of booths away from the boy who played Daniel Boone’s son, Israel, in a TV series popular at the time. He must have been on some kind of publicity junket to the rugged mountains where his screen character’s father once blazed trails, probably making an appearance at Ghost Town in nearby Maggie Valley. Naturally, we interrupted his meal with his family to ask for an autograph.

In the early 80s, I was visiting Los Angeles, where many a celebrity, if not actual stars, are born. A dapperly dressed man, whom I later came to think might have been Dustin Hoffman, kindly waved to me to point out that the hem of my future wife’s long hippy skirt was stuck in the door of my car.

Considering the fact, however, that he was filling up his car at the same self-service gas station as we were, I suspect he might actually not have been Dustin Hoffman. More like a Dustin Hoffman stand-in. Or, more likely an aspiring Dustin Hoffman stand-in.

Many years later, boarding a plane in Baltimore with my kids, I spotted sitting in first class one Richard Belzer, the cynical Detective Munch of “Homicide: Life on the Street” and later “Law and Order”.

Much more recently, about ten years ago in Vegas outside Cesar’s Palace, I happen to see the unmistakable and unsinkable Don King walking to his limo. I have to admit it was kind of cool.

I saw Mike Stipe of R.E.M. a couple of times in the 80s, once at a Saturday afternoon matinee showing of Lasse Hallström’s “My Life as a Dog” at a theater in Athens, Georgia. But this shouldn’t be so remarkable, considering that I once lived literally right up the street from R.E.M.’s office.

Coming through Heathrow airport with our daughter a few years ago we noticed everyone around us focusing a lot attention on a young woman going through immigration control with her husband, baby and nanny. When I asked the border guard who she was, he replied, “She said she was someone called ‘Pink’”. We later realized it was actually Gwen Stefani, passing herself off as Pink, for some reason. No doubt being a little cheeky there.

And then there are cases of celebrities I wouldn’t recognize if my life depended on it. A few years ago in New York, we emerged from the Guggenheim Museum to find a film crew occupying the sidewalk across the street, filming a scene from “Gossip Girl”. We hung around for a few takes to get a glimpse of some of the show's leading actors, none of whom I would have been able to name. Suffice it to say, that wasn’t the case for my teenage daughter.

The thing about living in a place like Helsinki, compared to where I grew up in rural Georgia, is that spotting celebrities, or at least locally famous people, can be fairly routine. Helsinki is, after all, the New York, Washington and Los Angeles of Finland, all wrapped up into one city.

The julkkiset I’ve randomly seen in Helsinki, or elsewhere in Finland, include:

Ben Zyskowicz (Kokoomus parliament member, getting out of a taxi at Stockmann Auto in Pitäjänmäki), Renny Harlin (Finnish-born Hollywood director, in downtown Helsinki posing for some publicity photos), a former Playboy playmate (at a music-school recital -- she was a lot shorter than I thought), Kauko Juhantalo (politician, waiting to cross a street – this was some time ago), Hannele Pokka (politician, also waiting at a crosswalk, and also a while back), Alexander Stubb (the outgoing – in every sense of that word – prime minister, at a triathlon in Joroinen), Lauri Ylönen (singer for The Rasmus, at the Tammisto City Market), Elastinen (rapper and Voice of Finland coach, at our local grocery store), Seppo Hovi (veteran piano player and entertainer, at the Paloheinä library), Pekka Haavisto (openly gay Greens politician and 2012 presidential contender, shopping at the Tammisto Bauhaus, more than once), Ville Valo (singer for the band HIM, standing with his back against the wall at O’Malley’s bar), Matti Vanhanen (former prime minister, pulling into a parking garage near parliament), Anssi Kela (singer-songwriter, at Gigantti shopping for a vacuum cleaner), and Tarja Halonen (then president of the republic, at a jazz show in Espoo). 

And then last week, I saw former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Matti Ahtisaari attending a lecture by the arguably even more famous paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey.

However, when it comes to randomly spotting the world-famous, my wife might hold the top prize in our family. 

In the 1970s, enjoying a summer’s day in Stockholm, she chanced to see crowd of people crossing a street blocked off by police. Among them were two men deeply engaged in conversation. One was Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister, who was later killed by an assassin’s bullet. The other was Henry Kissinger, who at 91 is miraculously still alive today. 

Kissinger on the streets of Stockholm, 1976.  Source: Our family photo album.

Losers and Winners

It’s been 19 days since the Finnish parliamentary election, and there is still no government in place. At least, not quite. This isn’t unusual. 

And, I should point out that by "government", I mean "cabinet". The actual functioning bureaucracy of government is still there, intact. 

Compare this situation to the US, where you have a built-in two-month lag time between the election of a new US Congress and its actual installment in the Capitol. For presidential elections, the constitutionally decreed “lame-duck” period between election and inauguration is even longer.

Though we’ve still been waiting for the final makeup of the new Finnish government, the results of the vote itself were clear within hours of the polls closing at eight three Sundays ago.

As was widely expected, the business-friendly Kokoomus party, the biggest in parliament going into the election, lost its dominate position, apparently the victim of general voter dissatisfaction over the anemic economic recovery (if it can be called that). In its place rose the Keskusta (Center) Party, the party of the legendary Urho Kekkonen who presided over Finnish politics for a quarter of a century during the Cold War.

Keskusta, led by self-made millionaire Juha Sipilä, won 21.1% of the vote nationwide, giving it 49 seats in the new parliament, a huge increase of 14 from four years ago. Keskusta took most of those seats from two parties: Kokoomus and the Social Democrats, which got 18.2% and 16.5% of the vote, respectively. It was an especially hard blow for the SDP, since its loss wasn’t so widely expected. They were blindsided.

One especially bright spot in the election was the five seats picked up by the Greens, bringing its representation up to 15.

Still, the headline news was the “rise”, relatively speaking, of the anti-immigration anti-EU Perussuomalaiset party. I say “relatively” because the 17.6% of the vote garnered by PS meant they actually lost one seat, ending up with 38. The level of support for PS didn’t change significantly. PS was propelled into the Number Two position simply by the collapse of Kokoomus and SDP.

(The fact that PS came out one seat ahead of Kokoomus despite getting a half-percentage-point fewer votes is down to the D’Hondt method used to allocate seats.)

Voter turnout, despite the apparent huge interest in the election, was a somewhat disappointing 70.1%.

And now another inevitable comparison to America: turnout in the US mid-term election of 2014 hit a scandalous post-war record low of 36.4%. Okay, mid-term elections always attract fewer voters than do presidential races, but even in the 2012 vote – in which many conservative zealots I know lusted for the chance to turn Obama out of office — only 58% of Americans bothered to vote. Some democracy. 

Meanwhile, back in Finland, turnout was higher in Helsinki than for the nation overall (almost 75%), and I was pleased to see that my neighborhood did even better, with a turnout of 82.4%.

The earnest voters of this part of suburban Helsinki, where I live and voted myself, went overwhelmingly (almost 40%) for Kokoomus, followed by SDP (16%), the Greens (15%), PS (12%), and in fifth place, Keskusta (only 9%). In fact, Keskusta won only 7% of the vote in Helsinki overall, showing that there is something to the idea that Keskusta is still mainly a party of the countryside.

Since Keskusta's big election night victory 19 days ago, Juha Sipilä has been trying to put together a coalition from among the biggest winning parties, apparently a meticulous process of negotiation. There’s been lots of speculation about who will be included in the new government. The biggest worry among more mainstream establishment types is that, with its second-place finish, Perussuomalaiset will now demand a prominent role in the cabinet, something they didn’t seemed inclined to do four years ago.

With the announcement yesterday of an agreement finally being reached, those fears were proven to be well founded. The next government will indeed be a mashup of the rural Keskusta party and the more nativist Perussuomalaiset party, joined by Kokoomus, though this all remains to be formally finalized next week. 

The SDP was left out completely, as was the smaller, moderate Swedish People’s Party, which has had a role in every government for almost forty years.

The question now is how well will the Perussuomalaiset handle being in government, as opposed to just sniping at it. 

The Small Difference One Little Letter Can Make

To improve my Finnish language comprehension, I’ve been gradually reading through one of my kid’s old lukio (high school) textbooks in history. This sluggish task is made easier by the fact that, in general terms, I already know most of the subject matter. It does help.

So, I was initially a bit confused when I ran across the following sentence about developments in Cuba and the fates of political dissidents (“toisinajattelijat”) there:

Kuubalaisia toisinajattelijoita tuomittiin 2003 pitkiin vankeusrangaistuksiin yhteistyöstä Yhdysvaltojen kanssa.

I understood the individual words well enough and the overall meaning of the sentence, at least the first part. What tripped me up was the word for “cooperation” (yhteistyö). You very often see this word used in the sense of “in cooperation” (yhteistyössä). (The inessive suffix –ssä denotes “in”.)

My first thought was to take that as the meaning for the word in this instance, in which case, the sentence would translate to:

Cuban dissidents were sentenced in 2003 to long prison terms in cooperation with the US.

What? “…in cooperation with the US”? That certainly sounded odd. When did that happen?

After a more careful re-reading of the sentence, I realized my mistake. The word is actually yhteistyöstä, not yhteistyössä, as any idiot could plainly see. 

Unlike -ssä, the –stä suffix, which is used in the elative case, denotes “from” or “about” something, or in this case “for” something. 

The correct translation...

Cuban dissidents were sentenced in 2003 to long prison terms for cooperation with the US.

...makes much more sense.

A tricky language, this Finnish, when a single-letter substitution – buried in a 12-letter word – can turn the meaning of a sentence topsy-turvy.

Side note: the Finnish word for “dissident” (toisinajattelija) is a compound word literally meaning “otherwise-thinker”. I like how plain and descriptive that is. 

Machine Politics

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m preparing to vote in Finland’s parliamentary election for the first time.

In the past, I haven’t honestly paid enough attention to national politics here to have a clear idea which party would be my natural political home. In the US binary system of Republicans versus Democrats, my choice has always been much more clear cut. For someone who is severely liberal, as I like to think of myself, there is only one way to go.

In Finland, however, with almost 10 viable parties, some more major than others, I’ll have to give the matter a bit more thought.

In past city council elections, I’ve voted for the Green Party, out of – if nothing else – a vague sense of shared philosophy and the hope that it could affect more eco-friendly policies at the city level.

Of course, when it comes to the broader national government, there are other issues beside waste disposal or public transport to consider.

It often seems that Finland is a very consensus-based country, with no contentious issues seriously polarizing the population. For example, unlike in the US where the two parties are diametrically opposed to each other on government’s role in health care (the Republicans vowing time and again to roll back Obamacare), no credible party in Finland, on the left or the right, would advocate anything as radical as dismantling the state-run healthcare system.

To be sure, there are differences between Finnish parties on other issues, for which the two parties in the American system would be practically indistinguishable, such as the role of capitalism in the economy. (Despite what a Tea Partier would tell you, Democrats are no socialists.) I assume the tiny (only 0.05% of the vote last time) Communist Workers’ Party – For Peace and Socialism (that’s its name, Kommunistinen Työväenpuolue – Rauhan ja Sosialismin Puolesta) truly does want to toss capitalism onto the dustbin of history. You can’t say that about Hillary Clinton.

Still, this Finnish election cycle seems unusually lively, with more placards along the roadside, advertisement on buses, commercials on TV than I ever remember seeing before. Perhaps it’s just because I’m trying to pay more attention, but my sense is that this election is seen as more crucial than most.

Since my command of Finnish still isn’t up to following the political discussions on TV or even always in the print media, my impression of the issues that might make this election so urgent (or seem so urgent) is a bit vague, and perhaps totally incorrect.

Off the top of my head, I can think of three.

I can’t say whether Finns vote with their pocketbooks any more than anyone else, but the economic situation of any country is always an issue. And the situation in Finland isn’t sterling at the moment. In fact, it’s dismal.

Unemployment currently stands at a tad over 10%, not the highest it’s been since the start of the Great Recession, but still up two percent since the last election four years ago and three percent since the summer. Clearly, not a good trend.

Finland has been in a recession off and on for the past seven years, with seven quarters of negative growth (out of 15 reported so far) since the last election. Projections for the next couple of years are for weak growth, at best. Though Finland still retains a AAA credit rating from Fitch and Moody’s, it lost the top rating from Standard & Poors in autumn, sending a minor shock wave through the government.

A recent blog post by Edward Hugh, a Welsh economist and blogger, paints a very dire picture of the future Finland is facing due to something called “secular stagnation”.

For someone like me, who is not an economist and barely a blogger, Hugh’s erudite thesis requires a bit of digestion.

After two readings, what I was able to gleam (or so I think) from it is that the runaway success of Nokia, the bellwether of the Finnish economy back in the pre-crisis glory days, distorted the national labor market (by inflating incomes) to the point that Finland now finds itself uncompetitive against its main trading partners.

The combination of that with a growing population of aging pensioners and a shrinking population of working-age folks threatens to make economic stagnation a permanent feature of Finnish life. That is, at least, without some unpopular and unpleasant changes in government policy, especially related to labor.

Whether Hugh’s post has affected the election campaign in any way, I can’t say, but another economics assessment certainly did create some waves. It was related to another big issue in this campaign – immigration.

As in any country, immigration is a touchy issue here. With Finland’s climate, difficult language, and the current state of the economy, you might wonder there would be any rush to migrate here in the first place.

That said, some 32,000 people moved here in 2013. That’s the highest yearly influx ever, though that’s still only 0.6% of the population (one-fifth of the per capita legal immigration into the US). It has changed Finnish society, no doubt, though to what degree or to what lasting effect might be debatable. Many people I know see immigration as having a neutral or mostly net positive impact on Finnish life.

Others would disagree. And those Finns who feel uncomfortable, even hostile, over the prospect of more immigration have increasingly been drawn to the xenophobic Finns Party (Perussuomalaiset), which upset the apple cart of Finnish politics in the last election with its unexpected success in parliament, boosting the party's presence from 5 to 34 seats.

Since then, the Finns Party doesn’t seem to be softening its stance any on immigration. A paper by a think tank associated with the party made headlines recently when it claimed to show how much immigrants from different countries cost Finnish taxpayers, with those from war-torn third-world nations (Iraq and Somalia, in particular) not faring well at all by comparison. Even if the numbers crunched in this analysis are valid, breaking down the cost of immigration along ethnic or nationalistic lines unfortunately adds an element of divisiveness into the election. Which, I guess, was largely the point.

The Finns Party is also strongly Eurosceptic, which brings us to the last big issue in this election, Finland’s relationship with the EU, Russia and NATO. Well, actually, relations with the EU isn't a big issue. My impression is that support for the EU is still strong among most Finns, despite complications with Greek debt and Russian sanctions. 

A major issue that wasn't even on the horizon four years ago is relations with Russia. In the marathon TV debate Thursday night between leaders of the eight major parties, I kept hearing the word "venäjä" repeated over and over.  

Russia's annexation of Crimea and sable-rattling elsewhere, especially in the Baltic Sea, has also breathed some life into the perennial, but usually peripheral, question of whether to join NATO. 

The current Prime Minister Alexander Stubb and many in his National Coalition Party support NATO membership. Most Finns (57%) still oppose it, though with Russian nationalism and military adventurism on the rise, support for joining the Western alliance has increased to 27% from 16% about four years ago. 

NATO will surely be one of those issues on the minds of voters this Sunday, though there are many others. Which can make choosing the right candidate or party a challenge, especially for me.

Luckily, there is a tool called a Vaalikone (“Election Machine”) published by the Helsingin Sanomat, to help you gauge which is the correct party for you. It’s a questionnaire, covering the economy, laws, society, and world affairs, that attempts to match your views to the positions of different parties. Several of the 30 questions have to do with the role of government in social services and the balance between environment and business. And naturally, there are questions about NATO, the EU, and immigration, but also about the government regulation of taxis, apparently inspired by Uber. That’s an issue I didn’t see coming.

Maybe I’ll also be surprised by the results I get from the Vaalitkone. We’ll see, though I'm pretty sure the “machine” won’t be telling me I should be voting for the Kommunistinen Työväenpuolue on Sunday. Too bad for them. They could probably use the votes.

Vaalit 2015: Not Any Given Sunday

On Sunday, Finns go to the polls to elect a new parliament. And so will I.

I have voted here several times. As an ulkomaalainen (foreigner) with permanent resident status, I had been eligible to vote in municipal elections for years, which essentially means I’ve been allowed to cast votes for Helsinki council members. This would largely be unheard of in the States, where outside a few places like Chicago, apparently, folks need actual citizenship to vote in any election, no matter how local.

Actual citizenship is a strict requirement for taking part in national elections in Finland as well. For that reason, until now I haven’t had much cause to think about which candidate, or even which party, would best match my politics. Now, as newly minted Finn, I do.

Deciding which party or candidate to support will be the hard part. The voting itself is made easy here, in some ways much easier than in the States. That, of course, should come as no surprise.

Both the red tape associated with voting and the practicalities of elections are much simpler.

In the States, Election Day is always on a Tuesday, a regular weekday when, obviously, most people have to go to work. The choice of Tuesday as a day for voting is a weird leftover from the 18^th century, when Tuesday was presumably seen as more convenient for farmers, which most Americans were at the time. It gave folks from the far corners of the county enough time to travel into town. Also, it didn’t interfere with the all-important church going on Sunday or the also important market day on Wednesday. Maybe it allowed those rural farmers to – in one trip – exercise their right to vote on Tuesday and then stay in town to sell their produce the next day – if they had sobered up enough.

Often in the past, Election Day in America was also a good excuse for some heavy partying. I recall hearing a story, from my grandfathers’ time of almost a century ago, of Election Night revelers riding mules through the courthouse in my home county.

Those kinds of rowdy hijinks on Election Day are long gone, though a much more subtle, even subversive, species of hijinks seems to reemerge now and then.

Anyway, the fact that working folks have to take time out from a busy day to vote seems inconvenient enough. As outmoded as Tuesday voting might seem, it’s written into the Constitution, and so it will never change. Sadly.

In Finland, voting is always on Sunday, a day when most people don’t punch a clock or go into the office. Likewise, most don’t ordinarily go to church, so religion doesn’t interfere with voting, and vice versa. It’s a much more leisurely, practical approach, if you ask me, generally making it easy for Finns to make it to the polls on Election Day.

Some can’t wait that long. Ten days before the election, I happened to step into the library in Oulunkylä, a northern Helsinki neighborhood. I was at first a bit perplexed why the periodical section of the library was unusually crowed with older folks just standing around. Then I realized they were actually queuing to vote in the library’s activity room.

It was the second day of advanced voting, which is arranged on seven dates before the actual election. Around Helsinki, early voting is possible in some 35 locations, mostly libraries or post offices, but also in a shopping mall. It seems a popular enough avenue for Finnish voters, and as far as I know, not the least controversial.

Unlike in the States, that is, where in some minds increasing the opportunities to vote is considered unfair to certain groups. The logic of this escapes me. Or maybe they think it’s too fair to certain groups. That sounds more like it.

Last October, a predominately Democratic county in Georgia, one of the 33 states that allow early voting, experimented with opening a polling place in a mall on the Sunday before Election Day. At the time, it was roundly criticized by state Republicans, apparently for making voting too easy for the local black community, and led to proposed legislation to correct this by reducing the number of early voting days from 21 to 12, explicitly excluding the Sunday before election. The bill was recently defeated.

To be somewhat fair, however, even 12 days is perhaps better than Finland’s seven. Still, making a point of reducing voting opportunities doesn’t appear to be a very democratic impulse, which is surely why it comes from the GOP.

As anyone who knows US history will remember, similarly non-democratic impulses were prevalent in the past, even institutionalized, especially in the South. I’m talking about using voter registration as a means of voter suppression.

In the US, voter registration is done on the county level, and in the Jim Crow South prior to 1965 local white officials put up as many barriers as possible to prevent blacks from taking even this first step for voting. People died, were murdered, for daring to help ensure US citizens could register to vote, black citizens, that is. And this in the country that styles itself as the role model of democracy.

Well, that was long ago. I would hope that unfair registration practices have never been used as a political weapon in Finland’s past. Chances are, registration has always been automatic and universal, just as it is now.

About a month before this year’s election, I received an ilmoituskortti (literally “notification card”), essentially confirming that I am registered to vote. I didn’t have to take any action to register. It happens automatically, just as it does for all Finnish citizens of voting age (my 19-year-old daughter also got registered, automatically). As I said, universal registration.

Of course, one big reason Finland can register every voter unsolicitedly is that everyone here is already in a government database. Whenever you relocate in Finland, move to a new town or address, you are required by law to register with the local police. It simplifies things.

People in Finland would see this as an easy way to ensure you’re properly integrated into the social services system and that the government can send you stuff, like ilmoituskortteja and tax returns. People in the US (at least some) would see it as an easy way to ensure the government can find you when it’s time to confiscate your guns. Those black helicopters have to know where to land, after all.

To me, this gap in mentality between the practical and the paranoid speaks volumes about the differences between the two countries.

A couple of weeks after the black helicopters my registration notice arrived, I received an unexpected official-looking envelope with the somewhat imposing letterhead of the Ministry of Justice. I was a bit startled and almost thought for a moment “This is what deportation looks like.”

Instead, it was a welcoming letter for first-time voters, along with a small pamphlet with some basic information about the process. It’s almost as if they are encouraging people to vote. As it should be.

The basics for a national election is just the same as for the municipal ones I’ve participated in before. At the polling place, you give your name and present a photo ID. The poll worker checks your name on a list, hands you a blank paper ballot with only a circle in the middle, which you take into a booth and mark with the number of your candidate. You fold the ballot to hide your choice, have the poll worker stamp the ballot, and then drop it in a box. No hanging chads here.

As I mentioned, a photo ID is required. This is another area that, in the States, can lend itself to election hijinks. But, frankly, I’m puzzled why this should be an issue.

In recent years, Republicans have pushed for stricter ID requirements for voters in order to counter what they claim is the problem of voter fraud. This is seen by many Democrats (no doubt, correctly) as an attempt to discourage voters who are more likely to support Democrats (namely, blacks and other minorities). It’s a weird issue.

First of all, the “issue” of voter fraud seems like a bald-face excuse, since many studies have shown that fraud based on identity is rare, apparently outnumbered by the cases of legitimately registered voters being turned away at the polls for lack of an ID.

At the same time, I see no reason why voters shouldn’t have to prove who they are. In other words, the motivations of the Republicans are cynical and conniving, but I have no problem with the “solution” of a photo ID requirement. After all, folks have to show an ID for many transactions that involve money, why not also for casting a vote?

While most Americans already have a photo ID in the form of a driver’s license, not all do, so there is the argument that requiring those citizens to obtain an ID just to exercise their constitution right is unfair.

That might be true in cases of some citizens – used to showing up at the polling place with nothing but their word to vouch for who they are – haven’t been given enough notice to get an ID (which some states do provide for free). Maybe I've lived in Finland too long, but it seems that requiring all citizens to have an ID shouldn't be such a huge deal.

I seem to recall the last time I voted in person in Georgia a few years ago, I had to drive back to my parents’ house to fetch my passport before I was allowed to vote at the volunteer firehouse down the road, even though some of the people there knew me. I don’t recall that it particularly bothered me.

Anyway, when I go to vote at the schoolhouse near my home on Sunday, I’ll be sure to take along my driver’s license. But first, I have to figure out who gets my vote. That’s the subject for another day, and it probably involves a vaalikone (“election machine”).