Is It Time To Reconsider Voting Rights Yet?

Argumemnon said:
She didn't win because she didn't energise voters. Can you show that her gender had anything to do with it?
Click to expand...

I think her personality had more to do with it.

Of course, there were a lot of people who would not dream of voting for a woman, but there are lots of people who wouldn't dream of voting for a man, any man, when there was a woman running.

Personality matters, objectively as well. A leader has to be able to convince people, make them go with decisions, or at least accept them, even if they disagree. Leadership is not just qualifications.

Hans
 
MRC_Hans said:
Personality matters, objectively as well. A leader has to be able to convince people, make them go with decisions, or at least accept them, even if they disagree. Leadership is not just qualifications.
Click to expand...
The same could be said of a confidence man.
 
I'm of the school which has it that a healthy electorate, as far as it goes, is an informed electorate. The US citizenry as a group is lamentably uninformed. In an absolute sense, and more risibly so in a relative sense considering its self-induced hallucination of Greatness. For a Nation which projects such awesome power, its people are woefully insular and ignorant, exuding something of the arrogance of the self-righteous.

The very fact of the internal, almost civil war-like battle against religious and fundamentalist nuttery, which has fomented schisms regarding such societal issues as abortion, guns, recreational drugs and sexual identity, points to a still widespread immaturity in the populace. Which is only fed by blinkered isolationism on levels both global and local.

No, it's not all bad, to be sure. Progress is being made in some respects. But sometimes haltingly, and sometimes after enduring worrisome reversals. And these days, there would seem to be a larger number of reversals in progress and in the offing.

Educate them young 'uns to not stop learning just because no more tests need be taken. Teach critical thinking, which is probably more important than raw knowledge. Regard the wider world beyond the end of your nose.

My kneejerk response to establishing a body of 'qualified' voters is to find it a frightening prospect. It's too easily perverted into an elitist control. Nope, democracy can fluorish only via the participation of all. In spite of the ills that can attend and entail.

Just as it must be for, say, a free Press. We must accommodate Fox and Breitbart along with CNN and PBS, and The Washington Post and New York Times. What happens if we or the Party in power haughtily censure any outlets deemed objectionable? Where does that stop?

It's not Democracy if Doofus Donderhead from Hicksville does not have the same voice as Richie Rich of Silverspoons. Ideally we'd not let Doofus wallow in ignorance. But if we can't effect such change, he is still a citizen...
 
Mumbles said:
I'd actually like to make it easier to vote.

Get rid of all prohibitions for former felons. Open up more voting locations, or allow voting by mail or by internet. More places for in-person voting (which I love doing, personally). And stop idiots from harassing voters, no matter who they're for.
Click to expand...

I don't see how reducing even the minimal effort it takes to vote (and expanding the franchise to convicted felons) will actually help lead to a better result. It might be more likely to lead to a result that you would prefer, but that's not necessarily a better one by any objective measure. I think a better system would actually weight somebody's vote by the intensity of his opinion. Why should the vote of somebody who is slightly more in favor of Trump because Hillary has an annoying voice, or slightly more in favor of Hillary because she's a woman or because Trump has ugly hair, count the same as the vote of somebody who is genuinely fearful of a Trump presidency (or a Hillary one)? Obviously, it's not practical to measure intensity, but requiring a small effort to vote (as opposed to allowing same day registration at a convenient polling station around the corner) at least weeds out the people who don't care all that much.

ETA: also, primaries should be held on one day. One reason I didn't vote for Clinton or sanders is that, by the time we got to vote, Clinton had won. The fact that neither was a great candidate was secondary...
Click to expand...

That's a horrible idea. It would exacerbate the already considerable advantage that name recognition and money already has. There is no way that Obama would have won in 2008 if the primaries all happened on the same day. Although, in retrospect, that might have been a good thing.
 
sunmaster14 said:
Why should the vote of somebody who is slightly more in favor of Trump because Hillary has an annoying voice, or slightly more in favor of Hillary because she's a woman or because Trump has ugly hair, count the same as the vote of somebody who is genuinely fearful of a Trump presidency (or a Hillary one)?
Click to expand...

Because your reasons for voting one way or another are irrelevant.
 
Argumemnon said:
Because your reasons for voting one way or another are irrelevant.
Click to expand...

Actually, they're not, at least in the US. You're not allowed to accept a bribe to vote one way or the other.

But, outside of bribery, yes, that's the way it works in the US today. I thought we were discussing whether it should work that way, though.
 
McHrozni said:
No, it's working well enough. USA needs to change the way elections are handled and replace first past the post with either a runoff election or with a single transferable vote and things will improve very quickly.
Click to expand...
Doing away with the winner-takes-all approach would also be a good thing.

If each state is going to appoint members to the electoral college then they should be in proportion to the vote that each party got in the election.
 
Mudcat said:
Well America, I think it's far past time to admit this whole 'absolute freedom' thing isn't working out too well for us. And nothing brings that to light more adequately than the fact that we have Donald "Incompetent Asshat" Trump as president. What makes it worse is that his only legitimate competition for the job was Hillary "Criminally Incompetent" Clinton.

How is it that only the least qualified people are capable of holding this or other positions of authority? I submit, ladies and gentlemen, is that the least qualified people are deciding who is holding this or other positions of authority in this country. Please note that no, I am not talking specifically about blacks or women or gays or illegals or any other group that conservatives like to target.

I'm talking about your average citizen (of which I include myself when I say 'least qualified') because there's an enormous degree of separation between the common man and the president. Simply put, most people are not informed or qualified enough to be making the decision about who should be running the running the country because they are not in possession of enough of the relevant facts.

If you aren't willing to consider restricting the right to vote to only those qualified to vote then would you note agree that there needs to be a drastic change in the electoral process so that we don't have another Donald Trump in office? Because, let's face it, the whole thing has devolved to the point that calling it a three-ringed circus would actually be an insult... To three-ringed circuses.

Please discus.
Click to expand...


Though in the abstract, I don't think the idea of minimal qualifications to vote is necessarily a terrible idea, given the history of "literacy tests" and the like being used as a means to exclude African American voters, I don't see much possibility of anything like it being enacted
 
When I see threads like these, I just think of Churchill.

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.
Click to expand...

As Arguememnon wrote, you have to take the good with bad.
 
The answer to this problem is both surprisingly simple to state, yet nearly impossible to achieve.

Educate the citizenry more effectively.

Were Hillary to have lost to Pence, Ryan, Cotton, whomever -- it would have likely been due to a difference in political ideology. However, this election was between an idiot and a serious politician (warts and all). Educated people simply couldn't look at Trump and think he was an appropriate choice.

On another note, the electoral college also failed us. They were established, according to my understanding, to be a check against a dangerous cult-of-personality type.
 
Mumbles said:
I'd actually like to make it easier to vote.

Get rid of all prohibitions for former felons. Open up more voting locations, or allow voting by mail or by internet. More places for in-person voting (which I love doing, personally). And stop idiots from harassing voters, no matter who they're for.

ETA: also, primaries should be held on one day. One reason I didn't vote for Clinton or sanders is that, by the time we got to vote, Clinton had won. The fact that neither was a great candidate was secondary...
Click to expand...

I firmly believe that the harrasment includes paid television advertising. I'm all for allowing candidates to make their positions on issues known to as many voters as possible, but paid political advertisements are generally the opposite of informative. They are designed to persuade based on the principles of advertising, which mostly involves misleading the viewer. All paid television advertising for candidates should be illegal.

For heaven's (if it were to exist) sake we have the most effective means of disseminating information and educating the public in the history of civilization (both television and the internet), but are allowing it to be used almost exclusively to mislead the viewers without comment or correction. It is shameful.
 
Argumemnon said:
Yeah well the issue in a democracy is that it works best when the electorate is well informed, something that even with the information age you can't expect. But if you start putting standards on who can vote and why, and who can run for office and why, who writes the rules? Who decides who is qualified, and how do we ensure that those standards aren't manipulated to only benefit a very select few who view themselves as the moral guardians?

There's no solution to this. You want democracy, you have to take the bad with the good.
Click to expand...

Quite right. I'm appalled by the current situation, but the only solution is better education.

Now, that's a hard task. Now that we each choose our own "news" sources online and ignore opposing arguments, democracy has been harmed. To be fair, folks were mighty ignorant in the nineteenth century as well, for different reasons. They had one or two sources of news, and now we have a firehose but choose to sample it.

There is also the issue of plainly false news stories, those that are posted by persons who know they are false or at least have no evidence. But I suppose this was a problem back then, too.

The greatest threat presently isn't a change in the electorate, but in the presidency. Now we have a man who disparages anyone who disagrees with him as a liar, makes up **** that benefits him and is more or less supported by his party. That's the issue I see, not so much a change in the electorate (though there is that).
 
phiwum said:
The greatest threat presently isn't a change in the electorate, but in the presidency. Now we have a man who disparages anyone who disagrees with him as a liar, makes up **** that benefits him and is more or less supported by his party. That's the issue I see, not so much a change in the electorate (though there is that).
Click to expand...

This I find the most frightening. The powers of the presidency have been increasing since WWII and now we have a president with strong authoritarian bent and no respect for anyone who opposes him.
 
The problem with "Let's restrict voting for those who can be trusted to use it wisely" is that 90% of the time "people who Use it wisely" means "People who agree with me".

Robert Heinlein was a big advocate of restricted franchise, but he never really came up with a reasonable way to do this. Even he admitted that the method he uses in "Starship Trooper" ..you earn the right to vote by doing national service...might not work in real life.

Educating the public sounds good ,but problem is how do you do it in an age when people can simply change the channel or go to another website?

There is a strong temptation to go for HG Wells "Turn all power over to a scientifically educated elite and you will hae utopia" but this has a problem:Human Nature. Any elite will end up running things for their own benefit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom