Oh hey, good catch! That one sent my alarm bells ringing but I couldn’t figure out where else I might have heard that one from. If talk about getting “clear” comes up, run…
No voting if you have a foreskin.
I confess, I am particularly enjoying the thread. The sheer breadth of opinion is fascinating. I am quite glad I posted to it.
holy shit, you can’t possibly think that’s what I mean. :rolleyes:
All I said was write a test, pass a test, you can vote. If you think that makes me racist or predjudice, then you are a bigger fucking moron than anyone in that thread.
I definately think fuck heads like you shouldn’t be able to vote.
I don’t see the problem - if you disagree with a particular opinion, why can’t you open a GD thread and debate it? This board is all about fighting ignorance, and several of you think that thread really flushes out some ingorant opinions - it seems like something you’d welcome.
Instead of bitching about the idiots posting their particular brand of ignorant clap trap, why aren’t you openly debating them and helping to educate the poor misguided slobs (as it were)?
I should apologize now or I’ll feel guilty all day. I really shouldn’t have overreacted like I did, you can attack the idea all you want just as long as you understand the motives are innocent.
I truely think that making everyone write a test would be a good idea and would allow only the informed voters to cast a vote. Maybe it’s innocent, but I don’t think it would isolate any particular sectors of society.
mayberrydan, perhaps you should pull out your old history textbooks and look up Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, and polling tests.
I most certainly will, thankyou stofsky. Yes, I am being serious.
dan, I didn’t notice your location in the Great White North when I replied. From what I know, Canada is a bit more homogeneous than the US, and doesn’t have the history of racism and exclusion that the US has.
I apologize for the sarcasm–what would be appropriate as a response to a US citizen is not for a Canadian. Mea culpa for my assumption.
dan, there is a very brief synopsis of why Americans are suspicious of poll taxes and poll tests at http://edusolution.com/myclassroom/classnotes/reconstruction/literacytest.htm
Personally, I wouldn’t object to a test where you had to be able to identify some of the people running for office, or even just to identify what the offices are, but there are slippery slope and disparate impact arguments to be made even for such a basic test.
You mean like the “literacy tests” used by the post-civil-war South to disenfranchise black voters? Yeah, great idea.:rolleyes:
Oh, crap. Did I ever get beaten to the punch on that one. Sorry for the redundant post.
“teachers make to much money” should be turned into a bumper sticker!
I truly laughed out loud.
[sub]Wonder if the person who wrote it knows why yet?[/sub]
ENugent
Thanks, I’ll check this out. I’m always welcome to information that might prove my ideas wrong or at least not a good idea. I’ll check it out, thanks.
stofsky
no worries, I"ll still read up on it just for my own interests - I’m all for education. I will be the first to admit that I’m not up to snuff on my American history. I know the basics but not much beyond that I’m afraid.
blowero
actually, without going into too much detail, it’d be someone’s knowledge of the way government works and on the past and current policies and someone’s understanding of them. It would have absolutely nothing to do with overall intelligence or anything like that if that’s what you mean. Hell, I’m not even saying that I’d pass.
friedo
I still feel bad about snapping before. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed and had no business taking it out on anyone else but myself.
Well, you’re wrong about another thing. Spike was the best thing that ever happened to the show, motherfucker!
(In case anybody is thrown by the smilies, I don’t think Legomancer is a motherfucker, I like him quite a lot, and I don’t care if somebody disagrees with me about Spike.)
This is easily the funniest thing I have read in weeks. Some day, when I’m feeling down, I’ll remmeber this thread, and I’ll be able to laugh again.
No problem…I was merely trying to point out that throughout history we can see that systems used to determine who can and cannot vote based on arbitrary criteria are almost always designed (intentionally or inadvertantly) to oppress or disenfranchise a particular group. Even a simple test based on how the government runs can disenfranchise those who simply lack good education, or those who don’t do well on tests.
Often, these ideas are proposed with good intentions, but people with good intentions in power invariably fuck stuff up. It always comes down to some guy who doesn’t know what he’s doing deciding where a line gets drawn.
It is for this same reason why I am an absolutist when it comes to freedom of speech, the press, religion, and so forth.
But who decides if the test is fair - you? It’s not like the people who passed the Jim Crow laws came out and publicly said “We don’t want black people to vote”. The fact is, an unbiased test such as you are proposing is unworkable. There is a very good reason why all such tests have been disallowed - because it is the only workable solution.
And just for the sake of argument, let’s say that somehow, an unbiased test of “how government works” could be developed. Is that really fair? Let me make up an example: Let’s say Joe Farmworker wants to vote. Joe is an intelligent man, but not big on book-learning. He doesn’t know a lot about politics, but he does know that Senator Big-Bucks is up for re-election, and that the Senator has been trying to bulldoze all the farms and build mini-malls. If Joe feels strongly on this issue, but maybe doesn’t know a lot of fancy stuff about political theory, should he be barred from voting?
Senator Big-Bucks is pretty stupid. There’s no need to bull-doze the farms, they’re already pretty flat.
Stunning, absolutely stunning. There’s a poster in there who in another thread made an ass out of himself with his anti-war statements (not that pacifism is a bad thing, however, saying that folks were bloodthirsty maniacs eager to kill babies for stating that it might be necessary to use force to dislodge Saddam is a bit much), and then in this particular train-wreck says we need more violence in the media! Holy Contradictions, Batman! That’s just crazy.
friedo and blowero - that’s certainly a valid point (both of you). I guess my whole reasoning behind this is that I know, personally, of a number of people who put no thought into their votes whatsoever and that makes me angry because their balot, with no thought whatsoever, has just as much weight as mine and I even go to all of the debates. I suppose it would be satisfying for me that it be requested by the government that these people (and I know there are more than just a few of my acquaintences) don’t vote.
It’s becoming clear to me that my (and I’m sure others’) idea of a standardized test of some sort has some major flaws but the major upside would be that the majority of only the most informed voters would rule and that would be the easiest way to eliminate the folk who really don’t care. I guess I just didn’t think that it would also eliminate certain people that do legitimately care about the election process. Back to brainstorming, I won’t give up though.