Proposal: to vote for a candidate you must be able to name 3 of their major positions
- Thread starter Rob
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Why not? We're not supposed to have a democracy in our country, we're supposed to have a Republic. This is a point totally lost to most people today. The Founding Father's didn't give everyone the right to vote and I think it was a very good idea in theory. The problem was they restricted it based on wealth, race, and sex. I think voting rights should be restricted to at least a minimal level of political awareness. I believe that the Founding Fathers would overwhelmingly approve of this idea.
billjarrett
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Agree, I think there should be a basic civics test with a pool of a few thousand questions and people get a selection from them. The questions should be pretty much basic reading comprehension type questions and not really ones that could be "up for interpretation".
e.g.
1. How many supreme court justices are there?
2. Which branch of government is given the ability to declare war?
3. Which of the following is the 2nd amendment? (put the second amendment in a list of four, and three other amendments).
4. Who is the current Commander and Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces?
I bet if people had to get above 75% on a test like that, we'd see alot let voters in general, but alot more educated voting base.
Jeremy
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Well back in the days of racism and segregation, parts of the south had a reading test, which of course prevented a lot of black people from voting since it prevented the poorer people from voting (and slavery was not too long ago) that didn't have a good education. If you bring that up, I beat someone will bring this up.
Soccrmastr
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Actually I do disagree with them voting for Paul, even though it helps us personally. If people were required to have a much higher level of political awareness to vote, we might not be in the position we're in right now, needing someone like Paul to show the country the way.
I suggest that you learn your history, son. What you are referring to were the tests given to African Americans that did not qualify for the Grandfather Clause exemption (i.e. if your grandfather had voted in elections, you did not need to take the test). I've actually read those tests and they actually tended to be decent questions. However, as I said before it was just a charade to stop blacks from voting. If they were applied uniformly to all voters, the outcome would have been dramatically different.
We were supposed to have a Republic, not the mob rule democracy we seem to have these days.
billjarrett
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Yes, I was aware of that. But why we should let people who don't understand the process participate in the process is beyond me. They do have ways to get people who can't read through the drivers test, I'm sure we could overcome that obstacle with a civics test.
Which brings up another question about the poor, and I've been thinking of the pros and cons of this for awhile. I heard a guy on the radio promoting that anyone that receives a check from the government without working for the government should not be allowed to vote until they are off the dole. This would prevent people living off the state from being able to vote against us paying their paychecks to keep them coming. There are several ways I thought of that this could be abused, or could also be unfair to people who actually for the most part are paying their way (For example, if you went on unemployment a month before the election, but had been employed steady for 10 years before that and were actively looking for a job)..
To clarify, I don't think anyone should be discriminated on the basis of wealth, race, creed or any other arbitrary quality.
However, just take the extreme opposite of my argument, that qualifications and knowledge shouldn't be used to "discriminate" against anyone.
Think of the disaster that would result if firms couldn't hire people based on their qualifications.
Arguably voting is more important in this country than holding any private position. Why shouldn't there be qualifications. All the Founding Fathers thought there should be.
As long as politicians can buy votes from those who are ignorant of their ways, the problems we face today will exist.
We're approaching the point where fully half of the voting base in the U.S. will not pay any income taxes. That's approaching a majority to fleece the minority with voting impunity.
Something like this would be a difficult sell, but it wouldn't be bad if implemented across the board and only in terms of intelligence and knowledge, and not any "discriminating" factors (race, religion, creed, sex, age, etc.).
I personally believe that enforcing a minimum age law of 18 is FAR more discriminatory than giving a civics test. If a 16 year old can demonstrate superior knowledge than a 60 year old, I'd rather have that 16 year old voting, personally.
So in other words: we ALREADY discriminate! Let's actually make our rules worthwhile for a change.
Hell, has anyone SEEN the tests that are given for naturalized citizenship here? I'm confident that naturalized immigrants have a better understanding of our country than most kids coming up through school.
We're approaching the point where fully half of the voting base in the U.S. will not pay any income taxes. That's approaching a majority to fleece the minority with voting impunity.
Something like this would be a difficult sell, but it wouldn't be bad if implemented across the board and only in terms of intelligence and knowledge, and not any "discriminating" factors (race, religion, creed, sex, age, etc.).
I personally believe that enforcing a minimum age law of 18 is FAR more discriminatory than giving a civics test. If a 16 year old can demonstrate superior knowledge than a 60 year old, I'd rather have that 16 year old voting, personally.
So in other words: we ALREADY discriminate! Let's actually make our rules worthwhile for a change.
Hell, has anyone SEEN the tests that are given for naturalized citizenship here? I'm confident that naturalized immigrants have a better understanding of our country than most kids coming up through school.
billjarrett
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Yes, I have.. My wife is a naturalized immigrant from South Korea. I helped her study for it and was with her through the process (I couldn't sit in on the test though, but I was in the lobby).
After studying, she pretty much knew every article and amendment in the constitution. She knew the names of the Supreme Court justices. She knew every representative at the local, state, and federal levels for the area we lived in.
They ended up asking her about 3 questions. Could have been up to 5, I don't remember off the top of my head. I know one of them was "Who is the president of the United States?". The other questions were about equally as difficult.
It was pretty sad that she studied that hard (because we made sure she had everything memorized the guides said she should know), and it ended up being a joke of a process that was more just asking questions for the sake of asking questions because federal laws say we have to test you than it was an actual test of her understanding of our government structure.
See my reason above.
Also, another reason why this would be a terrible idea is... think of it this way, who will be in charge of writing the questions for these voter tests?
It'd be damn easy to write certain questions that favor certain candidates.
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