shouldn't vote?

[bryantm3]

it's BS.
we outlawed literacy tests because of this shit.
instead of getting people to 'stay home and not vote', why not provide them with a nonpartisan website where they can learn the issues?

[cacophony]

Originally Posted by Deckard

I have to admit I've occasionally asked myself whether there might be some benefit in making voters have to pass some sort of exam before they're allowed to vote.

POLL TAX!

it's what kept african americans disenfranchised for so long.

[bas_I_am]

Originally Posted by cacophony

POLL TAX!

it's what kept african americans disenfranchised for so long.

actually poll tax is only outlawed for federal elections.

Amendment XXIV


Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

[Deckard]

Originally Posted by bryantm3

it's BS.
we outlawed literacy tests because of this shit.
instead of getting people to 'stay home and not vote', why not provide them with a nonpartisan website where they can learn the issues?

(In case it needed emphasizing... )

Originally Posted by Deckard

I recognize it to be instinctively problematic... I suppose, yet again, like just about everything else, it can only come down to improving education.

[bryantm3]

i didn't read any posts; i was addressing the article.

[Strangelet]

Originally Posted by Deckard

I suppose, yet again, like just about everything else, it can only come down to improving education. It's just that I have this fear - perhaps it's unfounded - that people in the democractic western nations are gradually becoming more and more stupid.

Which is why Malkin's comments are possibly more dangerous than we imagine. You can do two things here. You can lament the voter intelligence as a premise to rigging the democratic process for your own ends, or you can support a general culture of education. I wonder which one will actually strengthen our democracy and which one she's afeared of. hmmmm. tom jefferson had a lot to say about this. want an educated voting mass? don't proscribe education as elitist. don't place stupid meat head american muscle in cultural value over a girl reading a book. stop finding it cute to be willfully ignorant, like its something to be proud of. When people start talking thus, you know they are really interested in the strenght of our democracy, not whining sour grapes about a particular outcome.

there's a whole page of this shit here.
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIV, 1782. ME 2:207


"The most effectual means of preventing [the perversion of power into tyranny are] to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes." --Thomas Jefferson: Diffusion of Knowledge Bill, 1779. FE 2:221, Papers 2:526



"The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom." --Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 1810. ME 12:417