OK, all you chuckleheads. Turns out, as I read these GD and Pit threads, that the majority of people that voted Bush into a second term are idiots, and have wasted - or at least improvidently exercised - their franchise.
Who knew?
But we have four years to solve the problem - four years to design a new set of criteria for voting that will remove the franchise from idiots, and leave only right-thinking people who will vote correctly.
I propose a test - twenty simple questions, five from each of the two major parties and five each from two non-partisan groups selected by the two major parties. Fifteen correct is a passing score. Get less than 15, and you’re banned until the next election. And your score (or at leats your pass-fail status) should be a matter of public record, as befits a open-to-scrutiny system. I also propose removing the age limits: under this system, smart twelve-year olds can vote, while their idiotic parents are banned.
That kind of kills the democracy idea. Plus, there’s the issue of people being governed by laws that they were unable to have any say in (with who they voted for).
Don’t get me wrong; there are a lot of people who probably shouldn’t be able to vote. However, that ruins the basis of our country and constitution.
I think we should have a poll tax and if someone shows up to vote who may not vote for the proper party, make them tell us the birthday of the 14th Vice President’s wife.
Friend Bricker is joking – well, let me say rather, he is exploring the irony he finds in the lack of confidence in the current democratic process expressed by many SDMB members in the wake of the November elections, based on their avowed love of the democratic process. I would not go so far as to say that he is trying to bait the more anti-Bush dopers into supporting transparently antidemocratic principles: rather, I think, he is conducting an experiment to determine how much antipathy to the current administration is due to principled policy issues, and how much due to self-diagnosed intellectual superiority. Frankly, as virulently anti-Bush as I am, I’m also interested in the results, and am willing to play along and respond, though it labels me a chucklehead in Bricker’s estimation to do so (I’m willing to accept the opprobrium).
The learned Bricker’s proposal is unlikely to result in better government because:
Much is determined by circumstance – sometimes the “wrong” candidate (measured by any hypothetical standard) might be more likely to react in a way that results, even by sheer dumb luck, more favorably than the “right” one;
The democratic process is an ideal not measured by its results, but by its adherence to the principles of liberty and equality. It is expected that a government of men by men will make mistakes – the democratic ideal implies that such mistakes can be exposed and reacted to more readily, but it does not guarantee it. The point of democracy is that no individual’s dignity can be compromised by the assumption that other individuals matter more to the polity as a whole;
A few questions cannot take into account the fact that individuals differ in their self-interest and will therefore vary in the attention paid to different issues – well-informed citizens could easily be excluded if their interests were underrepresented on Bricker’s questionnaire;
As** Bricker ** well knows, his plan is a recipe for dictatorship. Any government could disenfranchise it’s opposition by the selective control of information.
There’s more, but that’s enough: I’ll be, for the sake of not skewing Bricker’s results, enough of a chucklehead to suggest, tongue-in-cheek, that if his hypothetical questions were applied not to voters but to candidates, his experiment might be unnecessary.
Lots of people seem to be saying this is a bad idea.
If we’re not going to do this, what is the value in griping about the foolish voters? In other words, you don’t want to change the system to REMOVE the foolish voters - why are you acting like you do when you really don’t?
I don’t mean to criticize, but the approach that I’ve seen thus far: (“You’re a bunch of fucking morons for voting the way you did!”) seems unlikely to produce the desired result.
Well, obviously the “how” is where things get complicated :). But this is just a part of the broader goal we all should have of working toward a more well-educated electorate.
I don’t think that the “approach” you describe is intended to be part of this process. It is neither designed to remove voters nor to remove their foolishness. It is more of a visceral response to the level of foolishness out there. I agree that it is probably counter-productive to express ones response in that fashion.
By the way, you should also recognize that many people to not say, “You’re a bunch of fucking morons for voting the way you did!” Rather, they say, “You’re a bunch of fucking morons for voting for the reason you did!” Having read your posts, Bricker, I believe that your vote was the outcome of a reasoned comparison of your principles and the candidates. Therefore, I would never say that you voted for foolish reasons. However, the woman described in this thread, who voted for Bush because she didn’t believe that Teresa Heinz Kerry deserved to be in the White House, did vote for foolish reasons.
I admire you. You have expertise, gained through intelligence, experience and diligence, that I do not. Your point, as I interpret it, has value, and I said so. That said, I’m a little disconcerted by your quoting the only part of my post that was not serious (clearly labeled so, by the way) and posting a riposte that would be funny and coherent only if it was. If I were to do the same, I would point out that I was assuming your own criteria, and your response merely meant that under your proposal the questions would consist of randomly chosen Jeopardy questions and that only Ken Jennings would be allowed to vote, etc.
But this is silly. Your posts subsequent to the OP make it clear that you have posited a position you have no intention of defending, that this is merely a joke or an experiment or an effort to gain *ad hominem * ammunition in future debates, and I have no reason to be offended. Given your apparent purpose, I don’t know why you posted in this forum. Good luck with your endeavors: this chucklehead is bowing out.
I apologize - I was responding to your jest in jest myself, and evidently failed to make that clear.
I could actually defend a system under which the vote went only to the well-informed in theory – it is the practical application which bothers me. But my point is neither a joke or an experiment. It’s a serious, albeit dual-edged, point: if you complain about the idiocy of the American voter, what is your scheme to fix the system? And if you resist any scheme to fix the system, how seriously do expect your complaint to be taken?
But in all honesty: if we could imagine some politically neutral method of assuring basic voter competence, I’d likely support it.
Maybe Bush would still win even if they had your test… I mean lots of people might have preferred Bush because he seemed like a stronger Christian with Christian values, who was more strongly against gay marriage, who wasn’t portrayed as a “flip-flopper” - and Bush has offered lots of tax cuts. A lot of the things Kerry offers would be better for the poor, but the poor mightn’t be educated enough to vote. The knowledgeable people would be expected to vote on behalf of the poor even though that voter might benefit more by ignoring the poor. (though there could be some knowledgeable poor people)
Even though most educated people here don’t like Bush, this board doesn’t accurately reflect American society. Many of the people on this board don’t even live in America (like me), and there seem to be a lot of non-Christians and liberals here even though most Americans are Christian. There are other messageboards that have the opposite bias (the “Christian Forums” I think) and they’re pretty knowledgeable about politics and yet they’d be Republicans.
One of the biggest parts of the problem is that the news media mindlessly repeat “talking points” from the competing political partisans, effectively acting as a giant marketing device for their intentionally misleading glurge rather than as a reliable source of information. Figure out a way to fix that, and you’ll go a long way to fixing the system.
Skill testing questions prior to voting aren’t a serious solution to the problem, for reasons already pointed out.
BTW, 75% is a high mark to get. Even in universities where people can be told what possible things are going to be on the test, the passing grade is only 50%. The questions in the election test might often be things that people had missed since they didn’t watch or read the news every day - or there could be questions that are based on information that has changed. e.g. before Bush went to war, some of his team said that their were WMD’s, and that would have been reported in the news. But later on it seemed that Iraq didn’t have WMD’s… (there could be questions that are far less obvious than that)