One solution the author proposes is to give the elderly less of the vote (like the 3/5ths the Founding Fathers used for black people.)
intercst
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I would be in favor of that if we changed it from ‘elderly’ to ‘stupid people’!
JimA
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That’s an idea I’ve never heard of, and I think I like it. We could have people take a short test each year before the election, and give them a 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, or 100% vote depending on how many questions they got right.
The questions would be easy, like “Who won the 2020 Presidential Election?”, stuff like that.
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Outstanding! {{ 15 characters }}
intercst
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The Founding Fathers never gave slaves a right to vote. They gave slave-owning states the right to count 3/5’s of their slaves in the census, skewing representation in Congress and the Electoral College. There’s a reason 8 of first 10 US Presidents were slave owners.
The analogous proposal would prevent nursing home residents from voting entirely and giving the nursing home CEO another 3/5 vote for each resident.
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How about giving voters the same test that is given to applicants for U.S. citizenship?
Wendy
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I think that would be a great idea. I’d also add in a section on ballots where voters have to identify the policy positions of the candidates they’re voting for. Candidates could be required to provide their positions as part of their filing/ registration to run. If voters can’t correctly identify the policies their voting for, their vote gets kicked to the curb.
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I’d like to see a 10 question test on the Ten Commandments, up or down on each item.
intercst
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I rec’d with a great big LOL for real.
Yep. We still haven’t come to terms with that, and it requires keeping a large portion of the electorate ignorant and uninformed to maintain the status quo.
intercst
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So modern day “literacy tests”? Now we are reaching back to Jim Crow for a model?
How about this? Citizens who are not allowed to vote don’t have to pay taxes or provide any sort of civic or national service.
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Some people take the fun out of everything. 
JimA
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Or
Wasn’t the economy much better from 2020 to 2024, even with COVID?
@RedCloud1 I was joking.
Wendy
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I think you bring up an important point, but I don’t think requiring voters to be informed citizens necessarily equates to Jim Crow. Jim Crow literacy tests were implemented with the specific goal of disenfranchising black voters. White voters were either grandfathered in, or were given the easiest questions to ensure they passed. Black applicants were given impossible tasks to ensure they couldn’t pass.
Our democracy would be stronger if voters had at least a basic level understanding of US civics. Some voters might need help to pass the test, let’s give it to them. As long as our goal is focused on educating voters, and not disenfranchising them, I’d support it.
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In that case, may as well make each vote worth proportional to the taxes paid by that individual. It’s been proposed before.
Given the airheads who post on Nextdoor, giving a test to be allowed to vote would be a good idea. Requiring some basic knowledge of democracy, history, geography to vote would be a plus. People who get their news from social media if at all should not be voters.
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Two observations. First, while I love a philosophical debate as much as the next person, the current crisis within the U.S. should give any thoughtful person some insight on how such ideas of voter qualifications will actually be used. You may be concerned about the civic knowledge of voters, but I can assure you that your “allies” are not. They are only concerned with disqualifying voters who may oppose their agenda.
Second, while the U.S. has drifted far from an ideal of government “of the people, by the people and for the people,” that should be our aspiration. Setting up obstacles for citizens to choose their representatives takes us further from that rather than closer. If you fear for the civic education of the average American, then educate them. One doesn’t strengthen the republic by stripping basic rights from its citizens.
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Exactly, but not enough. Democratic Republics require a reasoning and reasonably knowledgable Demos, but also require an actual public dialog or they degenerate into what we increasingly have now — idiocracy subverted by plutocracy into the service of the whims of the few, all driven by elections paid for by the rich and run as competitive entertainments and demagoguery.
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Liberty does have its downside buy it is still better than the opposite.
The Captain
1 Like