We're All Mad Here - As Long As Votes Aren't Being Counted Anyway

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America contains many stupid people. Generally, I don't have a large problem with this. Sure, they may irritate me when I'm driving, and they can't seem to manage the self-checkout lanes at the grocery store, but most of them are pretty harmless -- at least, until voting time rolls around. Then many of these stupid people say to themselves, "Hey! I live in a democracy, and it's time for me to go vote for the guy who best represents my views! Sadly, I have paid no attention to the world around me, so I'm just going to go vote party lines!" Then they tromp on down to the voting booths and drool all over the ballots.

Clearly, what I'm saying here is that people who are stupid, or at least uninformed (which is not necessarily the same thing), should not be allowed to vote. I think that the first few questions on every ballot should be some multiple-choice current political issues. I'm not asking for anything obscure; something like "Did we find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?" would suffice. "Have we had a budget surplus or a budget deficit this year?" is another good one, as is "What is the unemployment rate?" or "Has the dollar risen or fallen against the euro this year?"

There could be maybe ten of these questions, and if you don't get at least eight right, then the ballot machine simply doesn't score your vote. If people can't be bothered to be up on current events, then they shouldn't be allowed to pick the guy who's controlling the current events. I think that's fair. Sadly, I don't think this plan will be accepted, because it "discriminates against the common man." I hate to say it, but in a voting situation, discriminating against people for being willfully ignorant and uninformed is okay in my book. It's a rectifiable situation -- if you want your vote to count, make sure you know what it's counting for, first.

I've got to stop reading Republican/Democrat flamewars. The stupidity on both sides always gets me all riled up.

Mood of the Moment: annoyed
Auditory Hallucination: Dashboard Confessional -- Hands Down

	From: atommoore	Date: December 5th, 2003 08:05 am (UTC)		(Link)

	From: baronmind	Date: December 5th, 2003 08:38 am (UTC)		(Link)

Yes, it is. I'm not usually one for reading lists like that -- I tend to skim them -- but I just read that straight through and laughed the whole way. Good choices, supported with both solid reasoning and unnecessary personal attacks. Thanks for showing me this!

	From: alpheratz	Date: December 5th, 2003 10:26 am (UTC)		(Link)

A test is a good idea. But then, I also think that it's a good idea to give tests before allowing a person to have sex, get married, have children, and *exist*, period.

	From: baronmind	Date: December 5th, 2003 10:37 am (UTC)		(Link)

Well, I've been saying for years that we need to develop a safe, reversible sterilization procedure. That way, we can sterilize everyone at birth. When they want to have kids, they can come take a test, like for a driver's license. If they pass, they can get de-sterilized. If they fail, they can go study some more and come back and try again later. It'd make the world a much nicer place.

	From: skos	Date: December 5th, 2003 10:47 am (UTC)		(Link)

In principle, I've always liked the idea of a test to see if one should be able to vote. I can see some problems with it though - not least the question of bias. If the current government were designing the test questions (or an "independent" panel chosen by the administration), you can bet the questions would be set up to disqualify some opposing voters. It's also just another place where the highly flawed voting machines can miscount, get confused, or just flat out ignore results.

I'd be curious what your opinion is of computer/electronic voting machines given the numerous security flaws reported, and the implications that some of the companies (Diebold notoriously) may have other agendas.

For the record, I also think people should have to take a test before they are allowed to have kids.

	From: baronmind	Date: December 5th, 2003 11:08 am (UTC)		(Link)

I think that electronic voting machines are a step in the correct direction, and that they will eventually replace non-computerized ones altogether -- but this black box thing they've currently got going on is a terrible idea, and needs to go. The machines are no more susceptible to outside interference than a human counter, since machines can only be hacked, not bribed, but there needs to be a way to check and see that what went it is what came out. Just generating a number and claiming it's an accurate count is not good enough.

That said, I firmly believe that cheating is, and has always been, an important part of politics, so the fact that the machine makers have their own agenda doesn't bother me at all -- since we know about it, we can watch them easily enough. There'll always be ways to cheat, so we may as well pick the one where we know the obvious cheats, and go from there.

	From: liquidv	Date: December 5th, 2003 08:15 pm (UTC)		(Link)

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baronmind

Name: Diseasemocker's Crepe

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