This would likely weed out a great deal of voters. This would not be a bad thing. There is a great deal of emotional support for everyone having a voice through their vote. The problem is a great deal of the population doesn’t have a voice. They are too busy working to familiarize themselves with the current issues. If they do not understand the issues, how is their vote beneficial to the United States?
The reason that only white, male, landowners were allowed to vote in America until the last two hundred years was because at that time, those were the only people that had the opportunity to have a good education. The founding fathers were trying to filter out the votes of people who did not understand the issues. As social progress allowed for women and black people to gain access to the education that they always deserved to have, the more logical it seemed to give them the right to vote. The miscarriage of justice was not that women and black people were not allowed to vote. The miscarriage of justice was that they were kept ignorant on the issues. It was not the intention of our forefathers to have a system where ignorant people decided elections. They were obviously wrong in holding those groups from progressing, but their reasoning for not letting them vote was good: ignorant people make bad decisions.
There is basically no way my plan could happen without some sort of catastrophic event happening. Americans are too apathetic for this kind of change to occur. The NAACP would go crazy over the racist implications of a mandatory voting test. Nevertheless, this plan makes much more sense than the current setup we have now. It would give us the best republic possible.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dave Nalle
So, if I'm boiling this down right, you're basically suggesting that we elect a president and a pope for the US?
Why wouldn't it be better to just ignore the moral issues voters since they're going to vote the same no matter what we do, and do our voting based on the assumption that they will be a bloc applied to the more religiously conservative candidate and just vote on the other issues.
But you also miss another point. The truth is that there are really TWO sets of morally righteous voters. There's also a block on the left which also votes on humanistic moral issues and positions. The pro-choice people are just as absolute, fanatical and predictable as the pro-life people and they form a voting bloc which basically counterracts the similar one on the right.
So maybe the problem you're concerned about sort of takes care of itself.
Dave
2 - pablo
"The reason that only white, male, landowners were allowed to vote in America until the last two hundred years was because at that time, those were the only people that had the opportunity to have a good education."
This article is by far the biggest piece of trash that I have read on this site. Not only is the author advocating disenfranchising voters with a test, and does not understand what a right is, (the right of a person regardless of education, race, gender, beliefs, or any other criteria to have a say in her/his government via the vote), he is also attempting to re-write history as his paragraph above indicates.
The reason that Indians, Blacks, Women were not allowed to vote was because the majority of our founding fathers considered them to be subhuman, and that is fucking fact Benjamin.
I have a better idea, I suggest that YOU Benjamin be given a test by me to determine if you are eligible to vote.
1. Can you explain what the word sovereignty means as it applies to an individual under our form of government?
2. Where under our system of government do rights come from? As in the right to vote, the right to privacy, the right to be free.
3. What does the due process clause of the 14th amendment mean to you? How is that federal amendment relate to state government?
4. Do you think that people that believe that the world was made by a god with testicles in 7 days, and that those people who think that those that disagree with them will burn in everlasting fires of hell, should be allowed to vote?
Your article disgusts me Benjamin, and I suspect that if you answered these questions honestly you should be barred from participating in your government.
3 - Benjamin
Dave,
The executive branch would be left alone as I noted in the article, so no, no pope.
I think the separation of fiscal and social issues would greatly reduce the number of people that vote on the conservative side, which would eliminate that block. People only vote for what they care about. Look at the number of people that directly benefit from fiscal conservatism (without even discussing indirect benefits). It's mostly the rich folks. There aren't a whole lot of them. Somehow a pretty large portion of the lower and lower middle class have been wrangled into voting Republican. How is that? I'm with Obama in that they're "clinging to guns and Jesus."
My supposition is that they are voting based on social issues and without the tug of those social issues, they wouldn't show up at the poll at all.
4 - Benjamin
Pablo,
People have the right to drive, but they have to pass a test to prove that they know what they're doing. There are quite a few rights that one has to demonstrate knowledge to acquire. It's free to everyone that gives a shit enough to put in the time. A country of ignorant voters will eventually falter.
Benjamin
5 - Dr Dreadful
Benjamin, driving isn't a right. That's as absurd as saying playing golf, shopping at Macy's and eating turkey at Thanksgiving are rights. False analogy.
6 - pablo
Benjamin,
Contrary to your sarcasm regarding your assertion that I do not know whence my rights come from, I do, I was merely being sarcastic to Nalle, because I find most of his ignorance so repugnant.
Dread,
I know you are used to her Majesty's laws, however here in the good ole usa, the right to travel, including on the highways is not a privilege but a fundamental right.
What most of you slaves do not realize is that your rights have been trampled upon, and instead of living in a free republic you live in a corporate police state, and have been fooled into thinking that a right is a privilege, it is not.
Below are numerous court cases with citations about this fundamental right, to travel, and to travel on the highways. Does this mean that I can travel without a driver's license, not in today's police state you cant, but that is only because not only the common law (of which 95% of americans have no clue about, even though it is fundamental to our form of government AND mentioned in the Constitution) but the constitutional law has been usurped by tyrants.
Robertson vs. Department of Public Works, 180 Wash 133, 147.
16 C.J.S., Constitutional Law, Sect.202, p.987
"Personal liberty largely consists of the Right of locomotion -- to go where and when one pleases -- only so far restrained as the Rights of others may make it necessary for the welfare of all other citizens. The Right of the Citizen to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon, by horsedrawn carriage, wagon, or automobile, is not a mere privilege which may be permitted or prohibited at will, but the common Right which he has under his Right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Under this Constitutional guarantee one may, therefore, under normal conditions, travel at his inclination along the public highways or in public places, and while conducting himself in an orderly and decent manner, neither interfering with nor disturbing another's Rights, he will be protected, not only in his person, but in his safe conduct." [emphasis added] II Am.Jur. (1st) Constitutional Law, Sect.329, p.1135.
"The use of the highways for the purpose of travel and transportation is not a mere privilege, but a common and fundamental Right of which the public and the individual cannot be rightfully deprived." [emphasis added] Chicago Motor Coach vs. Chicago, 169 NE 22; Ligare vs. Chicago, 28 NE 934; Boon vs. Clark, 214 SSW 607; 25 Am.Jur. (1st) Highways Sect.163.
"Heretofore the court has held, and we think correctly, that while a Citizen has the Right to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon, that Right does not extend to the use of the highways, either in whole or in part, as a place of business for private gain." Barney vs. Board of Railroad Commissioners, 17 P.2d 82; Willis vs. Buck, 263 P.l 982
"the right of the Citizen to travel upon the highway and to transport his property thereon in the ordinary course of life and business, differs radically and obviously from that of one who makes the highway his place of business and uses it for private gain in the running of a stagecoach or omnibus. The former is the usual and ordinary right of the Citizen, a right common to all, while the latter is special, unusual, and extraordinary." Ex Parte Dickey, (Dickey vs. Davis), 85 SE 781.
So yes Dread I disagree fundamentally with your assertion, and have cited the relevant jurisprudence involved.
7 - pablo
Oh and Dread?
You said:
"That's as absurd as saying playing golf, shopping at Macy's and eating turkey at Thanksgiving are rights."
Those too are rights, unenumerated as per the 9th amendment to the US constitution, incidentally most State constitutions have a similar amendment guaranteeing unenumerated rights as well.
I was born free, the fact that now the government has said I am no longer free does not change that, it just goes to show that we live in a police state, that was formally a constitutional republic. My rights do not come from government but from on high, which is where I take my refuge. The fact that government now says that I am not free only means that there are those that would deny me what was given to me by my creator, and they will be held to account either in this world or the next, thats not my problem.
8 - moon
The republic is broken because you elected folks that we call "vendepatrias" here in Latin America--who sold their souls for a plate of lentils and the illusion of power to what Eisenhower called the Military-industrial Complex (now better known as Big Oil and Big Guns).
What you didn't realize until now--and some of you, millions in fact, still don't realize is that they sold YOUR soul and YOUR rights right along with their own.
9 - pablo
Moon,
They sure as hell did, and the vast majority of americans dont have the vaguest clue that they were sold down the river decades ago, particularly Nalle and Company.
10 - moon
Which IS an example of cognitive dissonance--the term the CE incorrectly applied yesterday to one of SJ's posts.
They cannot believe that the folks they believed in as if they were the Holy of Holies would sell THEM, their loyal subjects and minions, down the river.
So they DON'T believe it.
There is no one so blind as he/she who chooses not to see.
11 - pablo
Oh and Benjamin?
I assume that your a youngster, if not your article is even more atrocious than I said earlier. They do not teach basic civics and constitutional law in public schools anymore, if they did, you would have realized that your litmus test to vote was tried in the deep south decades ago by racists. What they did was demand that citizens particularly african americans ones have to show basic understanding of law etc in order to vote. It was done for ONE reason and ONE reason alone, that is do DENY people (blacks) the right to have a say in their government. We call these laws JIM CROW laws, I suggest you google it before you write another article that is so completely full of it Benjamin.
12 - pablo
Moon,
I was wondering if you would care to relate how Nalle and company several years ago attempted to locate you via the internet. I am very curious as to the circumstances, and no I am not being paranoid as Nalle loves to assert, I just want to know to what levels Nalle and Company stoop in their quest to silence dissent.
13 - pablo
Dave re post 3
"We hold these truths to be "self evident" [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor] that all hu-mens are created equal, and that they are ENDOWED [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor] by their creator with certain unalienable RIGHTS [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor], that among these rights (that means that these rights are not inclusive) are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness..."
Yes I do know where my rights come from Nalle, where do yours come from, the republican party of Texass perhaps?
All people are born free, the fact that governments tend to deny them their innate freedom, is the very proof of despotism, and tyrants that would have you believe otherwise, ie that rights are delegated from the ruling elite.
I know your not a big fan of freedom Nalle, but I have been attempting in my own humble way to educate you, its not easy.
14 - Cindy D
As social progress allowed for women and black people to gain access to the education that they always deserved to have, the more logical it seemed to give them the right to vote. The miscarriage of justice was not that women and black people were not allowed to vote. The miscarriage of justice was that they were kept ignorant on the issues.
Sorry, I hereby deny you your right to vote. You have failed to demonstrate any accurate knowledge on this subject and you are also just making things up out of the thin air of your imagination and trying to pass them off as history.
Not only do I heartily support your not being able to vote, I support sterilization for people like you, so that you won't be able to pass along any defects along to innocents.
15 - moon
This will have to be brief, pablo as I have to do the makeup for my niece who is going out doing the Mexican version of Trick or Treat in a few minutes.
1. Because I disagreed with them, first someone--probably clavos--posted what they found under the name I was posting under--Marthe Raymond--including petitions I and other Latin American intellectuals had signed for the En Defensa de la Humanidad. And I believe they also made snide comments because I had a couple of poems, on request, on the Poets Against the War site.
2. Next someone posted the coordinates of where I was posting from. Suposedly it was franco--which is why I knew he was a Nalle clone, as otherwise he would not have had access to that info. Nalle also tried singlehandedly banning me by disabling said IP at that time--another clue.
3. I stopped posting for awhile as I was en route to Bahrain--and when I posted from Bahrain Nalle told everyone I was an Chinese government agent posting from Beijing! That set off a bunch of paranoid ramblings by Nalle, his clone Franco and Clavos--and maybe others about how they were going to have to be careful because I was an agent of China and Venezuela and Cuba and who remembers what other countries.
4. Besides accusing me of the above, and of being an alcoholic who slept with a Mexican gardener, I really don't remember. All I can tell you is that giving clavos the shot to the shorts I eventually gave him was small potatoes by comparison with the harrassment and invasion of privacy they directed my way because I disagreed with their Good Ole Boy Shitkicker politics.
16 - Benjamin
Pablo,
Wasn't one of the biggest problems with the testing that there were exemptions? For instance, the only people that had to take the tests in some parts of the country were those not eligible to vote before black suffrage? And the poll taxes that only black people had to pay? It wasn't the fact that people were required to know the law, the problem was that only black people being targeted.
I'm not suggesting a test that only a law student could pass. I'm suggesting a test where people have to know a minimal amount about each candidate. Just enough to stop people from voting down party lines.
Benjamin
17 - Cindy D
Benjamin,
Knowing a minimum about history would be a greater priority in my book. After all, what difference does it make if you know where a candidate stands if you have no historical context that would allow you to analyze the likely outcome of their stances?
If what you believe is false, how will you be able to exercise any meaningful judgment?
18 - Cindy D
Or, why not just design a questionnaire that really cuts to the chase and upholds the real purpose of our Republic.
Just ask: What is your net worth?
Then: Deny suffrage to everyone below a certain amount.
Allow me the liberty to hazard a guess about your political affiliation: I am going to go with, hrmm, it's a tough one--Republican!
19 - Benjamin
Cindy,
I agree. It would be in everyone's best interest to have a complex understanding of history, economics and political science before voting. But I'd settle for people knowing more than the political party and the stance on abortion/gun control of the guy they're voting for.
Maybe it's a pipedream to think that any sort of testing could be enacted, but it's even more unlikely that a history portion could be added to said test. I was attempting to make an unrealistic idea somewhat more feasible.
Benjamin
20 - pablo
Benjamin,
You miss the fundamental premise of voting. Lets assume for the purposes of discussion you were born in the USA. You as a person born here have a fundamental RIGHT to have a say in who represents you in government which is what a representative democracy means, as opposed to a direct democracy, which in my opinion is little more than mob rule, and most of our founding fathers abhored that type of government and for good reason.
If as your argument proposes that there is a litmus test for whatever reason voting is no longer a right but a privilege, and I can assure you that it not only would ruin what little is left of the republic, it would be used to deny opposing views for representation by those in power.
I do understand your reason for advocating this, indeed in my view the vast majority of americans are extremely ignorant of what freedom means, and a constitutional republic, and of what liberty means.
I watched McCain giving one of his campaign stumps today, and I was greatly amused, as he said lie after lie, about how he would change government, bring it back to the people etc, and the people were so dumb ass ignorant they cheered, at every lie that he told. That is indeed how ignorant many american are, particularly of the republican ilk. If these folks can vote in complete denial, and ignorance then anyone can, regardless of education, gender, race, or prejudice.
I however choose not to vote, but it is my choice. The reason that I do so, is because I believe fundamentally that our vote does not count, because the ruling elite has usurped that basic right with black box voting machines that are not accountable to anyone but the people that made them. Until such time as my government, state and federal can show me in a clear and concise fashion that I can understand that my vote counts I will continue to not participate in a process that I know is a lie, as the elections of 2000 and 2004 so clearly show. As the government derives its power from the consent of the governed, it is incumbent upon them to make every vote count, which they do not.
Have you seen the lines Benjamin in the early voting? It is 2008, and they still cannot make a system that does not allow a person to vote easily. Do you think its just an accident, they just cant seem to make a system where a person can cast their vote easily? I do not think it is an accident and indeed argue that it is done on purpose. We are little more than a banana republic at this point, ruled by men that you never see, whose interests have nothing to do with promoting and spreading freedom or liberty either at home or abroad.
[Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]
21 - Benjamin
Cindy,
If you read the article, I can't see how a seperation of social and financial sectors would benefit Republicans, at least as far as finances are concerned. The main point of the article is that people (mostly the lower classes) are voting Republican because of moral reasons despite the fact that the Democrats have what most would consider to more beneficial programs for poor folks.
Benjamin
22 - moon
I would like to see all the elitist crap cut out.
Just because the founding fathers were privileged and believed only the economically privileged should be allowed to vote doesn't mean that those late 18th century ideas should be running the show in the 21st century!
The democratic posture is that everybody is SUPPOSED to have equal rights and equal access.
That means that it is your perfect right to be an ignorant shitkicker against women's rights to choice and against minorities and against gun control.
Rules of the game. Not All animals are equal but some are more equal than others, a la Animal Farm.
Anything else is Fascism [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor].
What really hacks my butt is that some of the folks who think they are the Elite are actually the villains of Carl Hiaasen novels....aka crackers.
23 - Benjamin
Moon,
I think the old guys were on to something. At the time, I'm sure the founding fathers couldn't imagine an age of such apathy that those who could vote would cast their vote with such ignorance.
I think everyone has a right to be an ignorant shitkicker as well. I don't think they should have a right to vote in complete ignorance, though. What's the point? Who is helped? There are people on both sides that would be excluded. We aren't in an age were black people are mostly illiterate like in Jim Crowe days.
All I call for is a basic knowledge of each person that you're voting for, not who has the most signs in your neighborhood, or what political party they're affiliated with. If you don't know that then what are you voting on?
If everyone was required to take the test it would be equal access.
Benjamin
24 - Cindy D
Benjamin,
I did read the your entire article. I was guessing at your political affiliation for other reasons.
Okay, let's put your theory to the test. Can you name one fiscal issue that is entirely separate from social issues?
25 - moon
Benjamin,
Like I said--anything else is Fascism.
Who are YOU to decide who is more qualified to vote? By what test? All education is, after all, POLITICAL (somebody decides what YOU should learn).
As an educator, I tell you that your idea is crap, pure and simple.
Take it or leave it.
Personally, I left the US because there are too many ignorant fascist racist assholes there.
And most of them think they are The Elite.
The republic is broken, yeah, but beyond that, almost everybody in it is fucked--and fucked up.