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[fqllve]

If you live in the US legally and are of a certain age you ought to get a vote, excluding stupid people because stupid people are easily influenced and manipulated by the charisma and eloquence of the likes of Obama.

When it comes to a field as nebulous as politics I'm sure everyone is stupid. There are so many issues relating to just about every other field of study that regardless of your intelligence you are bound to make some poor decisions.

Which is why I feel it's my responsibility not to vote. Because there's about a zero percent chance of me not mucking it up.

[madk]

Yes, but the stupid people make the most mistakes.

And let me clarify that by stupid I don't necessarily mean dim, I mean ignorant.

[Realmfighter]

Who defines ignorant?

[fqllve]

Yes, but the stupid people make the most mistakes.

And let me clarify that by stupid I don't necessarily mean dim, I mean ignorant.

The problem is that there isn't any such thing as categorically stupid. People can be intelligent in one thing, but ignorant in another. What about a brilliant economist who has no clue about ethics and so just parrots what he's heard? Should he be allowed to vote? What about someone who's foreign policy is unrealistically isolationist but is an expert on climatology? And a lot of these areas don't even have something as nice as a poor decision except for a decision that you don't actually agree with.

Edit: And some people would say that that's the only kind of poor decision you could make when voting.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

If you live in the US legally and are of a certain age you ought to get a vote, excluding stupid people because stupid people are easily influenced and manipulated by the charisma and eloquence manipulative lies and fearmongering of the likes of Obama Glenn Beck.

Fixed that for you.

I don't hate him or anything, but he certainly wasn't elected for his politics.

I'll give you that, Obama was mostly elected because a) historically, the presidency tends to switch parties when the incumbent's two terms are up, b) he was running against people radically worse than himself (including in the primaries; fuck Clinton and Edwards), and c) he was a rousing speaker who managed to inspire a large number of people who wouldn't have voted otherwise to get out and vote. Obama might be a weak rightist, but ultimately any other candidate that had a chance would have been much worse, being either a batshit extremist or a fucking clinton.

The essence of a "test" is to verify that the person who's voting knows the first thing about the office and the people they're voting for.

The problem with a test is that it would automatically be biased in favor of whoever wrote it in the first place.

[kuro_suna]

How about all citizens can vote except those convicted of a felony?

Seems too easy to abuse since the people who get voted in can decide what constitutes a felon.

[Phmcw]

Well I can't say I'm surprised to see republican trying to censor the vote of those opposing them, but, sadly, there are not alone suggesting it.
For the more subtle proposition of Redking, how do you plan to avoid the obvious bias toward the rich, given that those, especially in America, will perform better given their superior education.

[Leafsnail]

How about all citizens can vote except those convicted of a felony?

We have that here, even though denying prisoners the vote turns out to be against European law :/.

It's interesting to note that most criminals are very conservative (so conservative that they probably don't have a party to represent them here).

If you live in the US legally and are of a certain age you ought to get a vote, excluding stupid people because stupid people are easily influenced and manipulated by the charisma and eloquence of the likes of Obama. I don't hate him or anything, but he certainly wasn't elected for his politics. The essence of a "test" is to verify that the person who's voting knows the first thing about the office and the people they're voting for.

Man, how do you even define that?  In any case, it's pretty difficult to think of any leaders who were elected based on policies (and, as much as I hate to say it, sometimes voting based on the person does make sense in politics.  It's no good having awesome policies if the guy has a track record of reneging on all his promises).

[Nikov]

I'm not too worried that the House and Senate might pass a law saying its a felony to vote for Republicans, or be a minority, etc. Obama might executive order it, however.

[Rilder]

Don't worry, eventually republicans will get office and they will make it a felony to vote democrat, then an independent will get office and just make it a felony to vote for anybody.

[Tsarwash]

Regarding democracy, I'm in favour of giving the vote to sixteen year olds. I think that at least some sixteen year olds are able to use their vote in a more informed way than many 30 somethings and 40 somethings. I also think that having the vote is taken for granted in the UK so much so that sometimes most people do not bother to turn out to vote. Part of this is that often, parliment does not listen to the will of the people. The British people did not want the country to invade iraq, and they did not want identity cards, and the Government went ahead and did it anyway. We had to vote in a party that noone really wanted, just to get rid of a party that had long outstayed it's welcome and had stopped listening to people more than five years previously.

The situation is that we now have all three major parties being deeply unpopular, but there being no real alternative.

[ed boy]

sixteen year old certianly think that they are mature and responsible enough to vote, and I certainly thought so when I was sixteen, but now I would be against it. One of the biggest factors of maturity is humility, and sixteen year olds nowadays possess absolutely none of that. Hell, I would barely trust a teenage me with scissors, let alone a vote.

[Nikov]

The situation is that we now have all three major parties being deeply unpopular, but there being no real alternative.

Open primaries?

[Tsarwash]

Why should we kill stupid people?

so they'll stop clogging this thread

No comments like tihs please. This is an intelligent, respectful debate.

[Tsarwash]

We are running out of money thanks to our experiments with socialist policies, thank you for setting that one up.

I would say that many people would strongly disagree with you here. Could you please outline which experiments with socialist policies you are talking about, and maybe how much they have cost the country.

If you are talking about an attempt to put in place a decent universal heathcare system, just remember that such stalwarts of socialism such as Singapore, Israel, Australia, and most of Asia have some kind of system in place. If universal heathcare is seen as a socialist policy then it is one that has been accepted and implemented across most of the civilised world. America is PROBABLY the only first world country that doesn't have some kind of system in place.

It would be interesting to see the dollars involved compared to the dollars used up in Afganistan and Iraq.