And precisely what would that accomplish, aside from fulfilling a nebulous philosophical point in the value of participation for the sake of participation? This is analogous to the people who argue that “freedom of religion is not freedom from religion,” and that everyone should worship (and generally from a narrow selection of permissible deities).
There were several nations in the former East Bloc that had mandatory voting. And as you could only vote for the Party candidate, it was both democratic and autocratic at the same time.
Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way, even if the electorate is fully informed.
Suppose you have five citizens, and two more people who are candidates. (Candidates don’t get a vote in this scenario.) Suppose candidate A will benefit all five citizens by one point. Suppose candidate B will benefit three citizens by two points, and two citizens by no points.
The vote, in this case, assuming the electorate is fully informed and each of its members is voting in her own interest, will be three to two for candidate B. But candidate B does not benefit the greatest number of citizens.
Didn’t we try this for a long time? Weren’t the white, land-holding males over 21, who were the only people originally allowed to vote in the US, quite a bit more educated and informed than the ignorant, disenfranchised women and blacks? The end result, however, was that women and blacks got the shaft. (Of course, they had the shaft beforehand, which is why they were both ignorant and barred from voting… it was a vicious cycle.)
The point is that no matter who is excluded from voting, there will be government bias against them on the part of (or at least allowed by) the group that gets to vote.
For example. Right now children are essentially slaves, with no legal ability to make their own decisions at all. And it isn’t like this is some reviled underclass; everybody loves kids! So we end up with plenty of consideration by voters for the safety of children, but very little for their civil rights, and none at all for their freedom. Whether or not you agree with the situation, do you really think children would have voted for this outcome had they been given the choice?
A similar outcome, I guarantee, will meet whichever disenfranchised groups have been targeted as “uneducated and uninformed”, no matter how cute and cuddly they are and no matter how the rest of us cherish them. It will only make it worse if these are groups we all look down on, like the homeless, mentally ill, criminals and atheists.
I didnt say that I advocate shutting down public schools. I said that I advocate shutting down failing public schools. Better luck with your next attempt to smear me by misrepresenting what I say.
Exactly the opposite. At the moment, the ‘elitism divide’ exists because some children, chiefly in private schools and in the best public school districts, get a good education, while others, most notably in inner-city public schools, get no education at all because they’re in public schools. (On the later point, there’s no need to take my word for it.) The action of shutting down failing public schools and moving the students to better schools while the old ones get overhauled and reinvented has been tried in several cities in the past few years. The results have been so good that, unsurprisingly, the idea is being discussed in quite a few places, much to the distress of teachers unions. President Obama has budgeted several billions dollars to help states with the process.
Do you always thing that what’s underlying a thread is topics that have no relationship whatsoever to that that thread, or just in this particular case?
I admit I was being a bit too glib in my post. My main goal with the questions was to set up an idealized situation that seemed to me to be the basis behind the theory of democratic government, so that we could analyze whether inclusion of uninformed individuals helped or hurt the system.
I should also say that when I speak of people voting their own interests I don’t necessarily just mean direct interest. For example I consider paying taxes to support welfare to be in my best interest because I don’t like others to suffer.
Also I know that there is no perfect voting system since it fails to take into account strength of favor, multiple issues etc. etc. But since not alternative weighted voting schemes are being suggested I thought that this simple metric would be a to evaluate the effectiveness of alternative voter inclusion scenarios.
I think this is a bad idea. When I voted in a recent election I didn’t vote for anyone on the school board. I have no children and so it doesn’t affect me directly, and further I didn’t know anyone on the ballot. Sure I could have filled in names at random, but then my vote might have canceled out someone who actually did care and was informed. See also the nomination of Alvin Greene NC. Voters should at the very least show enough knowledge about the candidates to form an opinion.
Presumably he means because Hitler was appointed Chancellor by the President of Germany in spite of, or perhaps because of, the fact that the Nazi’s seemed to have passed their peak among the rank and file voters, and then proceeded through a variety of criminal acts to seize totalitarian power.
The Nazi party had by far the largest share of the vote, as well as the support of enough other parties to form a majority government. A coalition government with Hitler as Chancellor was all perfectly democratic. It’s what happened afterwards that was undemocratic.
In any case, I feel I need to spell out my point, lest it get lost. The argument that “The last time there was voter exams, it was to keep black people from voting” is specious. Democracy As We Know It has a blemished history and is also open to abuse.
No, I wouldn’t have disputed that – the party did indeed lose seats prior to Hitler being made Chancellor.
My dispute was with ITR Champion’s “refutation” of “um, no”, which you seemed to be supporting.
anyway
The only reason for opening this can of worms, was to make the point that if voting tests have a blemished history, so do elections.
