Being Wrong - Kathryn Schulz [72]
To answer this question, I want to return to the Appenzells, the two cantons in Switzerland where women couldn’t vote until 1989 and 1990. To understand these two cantons in specific, you have to understand something about the cantons in general, which is that their independence is a sacrosanct pillar of Swiss political culture—a kind of state’s rights sentiment on steroids. There’s a joke in Switzerland that illustrates the point: a German kid, an American kid, and a Swiss kid are sitting around talking about how babies are made. The German kid claims that they are brought to their parents by storks. The American kid describes the mechanics of sex. Then the Swiss kid pipes up and says, “In Switzerland, it varies by canton.”
The point is that in Switzerland, virtually everything varies by canton. One of these variables is communication. The country recognizes four national languages—German, French, Italian, and Romansch—and the differences between and loyalties within these language groups and their associated cultures run deep. (If Switzerland has an analogue to America’s red state/blue state divide, it is between the country’s German-speaking population, which is more conservative and isolationist, and its French-speaking population, which is more liberal and internationalist.) Another variable is geography. The more mountainous southern cantons have smaller populations and heavily agrarian economies, while the northern cantons are more populous and urbanized. Then there is religion. The country is almost evenly split between Catholics and Protestants—and, in 1847, it almost did split between them, when a civil war broke out between the predominantly Catholic and predominantly Protestant cantons.
This Protestant/Catholic divide also created Appenzell Innerrhoden and Appenzell Ausserrhoden. The two cantons were one until 1597, at which point they separated along religious lines. Today, Innerrhoden is largely Catholic, Ausserrhoden largely Protestant. Otherwise, though, the two are very similar. Both are tiny, rural, mountainous, sparsely populated, and almost entirely German-speaking. And, as you might infer from the suffrage situation, both are deeply conservative. The extremely apt motto of the tourist department for Appenzellerland—the collective name for the two cantons—is “As If Time Had Stood Still.”
Until recently, voting practices ranked high among the frozen-in-amber aspects of life in the Appenzells. Beginning at least as early as the 1300s, voting there was conducted through an institution known as the Landsgemeinde, possibly the oldest continuous form of direct democracy on earth. On voting days, every eligible male citizen gathered in an appointed town square, bearing either a sword or a bayonet. These weapons, often handed down from father to son for generations on end, served as a kind of voter-registration card; no other proof of citizenship was necessary—or, for that matter, admissible. (To this day in Innerrhoden, where the practice persists, women must present official voting cards, while men need only bring their swords.) Voting was conducted openly, via voice vote or a show of hands. There were no ballot boxes, no electronic voting machines, and most assuredly no women.
How did the men of the Appenzells defend