Should we limit voting rights and change democracy?

[betazed]

And thus marginallizing the votes of others and infringing on thier rights

Precisely. Just like we marginalize the right to vote of kids, criminals, immigrants, mentally unstable people for example.

Your argument of equal rights assumes that all people living should be treated equally. But as my examples show we do not do it in reality. So your argument is invalid since your assumption is invalid.

{btw, I have repeated this point so many times in this thread. Why am I failing to communicate? }

 

[Perfection]

Umm immigrants can gain the right to vote (though the citizenship process is longer then it should be). With children it's because they are not yet full members of the adult society, criminals are no longer full members (at least while incarcerated, voting rights should be returned when they are released) same with the mentally unstable.

How are undereducated folks not full members of the adult society?

 

[betazed]

Umm immigrants can gain the right to vote (though the citizenship process is longer then it should be). With children it's because they are not yet full members of the adult society, criminals are no longer full members (at least while incarcerated, voting rights should be returned when they are released) same with the mentally unstable.

The point still remains that in each of the above cases you are making a value judgement that all these individuals are not good enough to vote for various reasons .

How is that so different from my making a value judgement that some people are less capable to vote judiciously than others

How are undereducated folks not full members of the adult society?

and what the heck is a full member of a adult society? How do you determine that? This is teh first I am hearing that phrase in this thread.

 

[Perfection]

The point still remains that in each of the above cases you are making a value judgement that all these individuals are not good enough to vote for various reasons .

How is that so different from my making a value judgement that some people are less capable to vote judiciously than others

Because it's not about voting judiciously, you can't judge a vote based on the reasons why they chose it.

and what the heck is a full member of a adult society? How do you determine that? This is teh first I am hearing that phrase in this thread.

Someone who has a legal right to participate in the basic aspects of society like getting a credit card.

 

[Mark1031]

I love your system but I would like to see 10^0 vote for primary school education. 10^1 for secondary school education. 10^2 for bachelors level education. 10^3for masters. 10^4 for Phds. 10^5 for Postdocs (professors etc).

This message is approved by university professors for voter reform

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Limiting voting rights or forcing people to vote a certain way is contrary to the purposes of Democracy. The Government doesn't, or rather shouldn't make the decisions, the people should.

 

[Mark1031]

An interesting proposal that being a college professor I have a soft spot for. I can find no logical flaw with this proposal other than the obviousness with which it disenfranchises people (not completely but proportionately). The knee-jerk response of most people on the board is righteous indignation at the thought of losing one man one vote. However, we already have such a system. I don't think the examples you give are the most relevant. Does anyone think that Rush Limbaugh or Tom Browkaw have only one vote like the rest of us. How about George Soros or Rupert Murdock. These guys have literally millions of votes to our 1. What exactly are their qualifications for this position? The problem with your mechanism of disenfranchisment is that without giving the professors and Ph.D.'s more influence over the molding of public opinion you would gradually get a drift to where the opinions of the masses would differ so significantly from the leaders that we would get civil unrest that would require police state tactics to suppress. I love the thought of jackbooted professors. No, I propose a system for the slow and gradual aggrandizing of the intellectual. A carefully controlled plan of helping the public to fall in love with university professors. Perhaps a few carefully planted stories in the National Enquirer on the love child of the chairman of the comparative literature department at Princeton would pique the public's interest. We would then gradually begin moving them into positions of media influence. Out with Bill O'Reilly (he can get a job working for an Internet porn site) and in with Cornell West. We already have Paul Krugman at the Times. No the answer is not giving intellectuals control so directly through disproportionate voting but more subtly through control of the national discourse.

 

[betazed]

The problem with your mechanism of disenfranchisment is that without giving the professors and Ph.D.'s more influence over the molding of public opinion you would gradually get a drift to where the opinions of the masses would differ so significantly from the leaders that we would get civil unrest that would require police state tactics to suppress.

The above assumes that the there is something called a consistent average public opinion; then it assumes that this hypothetical average public opinion will be moving away from the opinion of the educated (who is not considered average for some reason). I think this is flawed on two grounds.

(a) I do not think there is anything called a consistent average public opinion; the public opinion is easily controlled using mass media. Even if it is not controlled it is hardly consistent. Fashion, or celebrities for example are just a manifestation of the public opinion. Can we find anything more transient than that? For all practical purposes it is a random walk. So how can be way that it will gradually drift away. More likely, it will oscillate to and fro from the opinion of the educated.

(b) Second in my scheme where education is equally available to anyone and there is an added incentive to become educated I assume more people will become more educated. In that case the average education should be continuously rising. Hence even if there is a consistent average public opinion, it should be tending towards uniformity since the average education level is rising.

No, I propose a system for the slow and gradual aggrandizing of the intellectual. A carefully controlled plan of helping the public to fall in love with university professors.

I would have put it slightly differently. I would have said "No, I propose a system for the slow and gradual aggrandizing of the intellectual. A carefully controlled plan of helping the public to fall in love with education and learning." {We can still hate university profs. j/k }

Yes, if we could do that, that would be good. But you have to come up with a better plan on how to achieve it before you convince me that it is achievable. Do you really think planting stories about college professors love childs will focus the public stare away from Britney spears love life?

We already have Paul Krugman at the Times. No the answer is not giving intellectuals control so directly through disproportionate voting but more subtly through control of the national discourse.

Maybe. But don't you think that such a discourse already takes place? There is plenty of stuff out there which provides non-partisan objective analysis of situations. Yet it is the likes of michael moore and ann coulter who take the spotlight. Not sure any amount of discourse will change our predisposition to enjoy such commentary. as a species which thrives on conflict we enjoy a good slugfest. How do you propose we go against our nature?

 

[Yom]

I'm a bit surprised that so many people are so adverse to this. So what if it's not a complete democracy? Why is democracy considered such an infallible system of government when it obviously is not. Winston Churchill said himself that "Democracy is the worst form of government, but the best we've got." But why is it the best? It allows those who are completely ignorant of the candidates' positions or even current events and merits have just as much say as those who know the candidates' policies well. For instance, 75% of Bush voters think that Iraq helped Al-Qaeda (this is current, not before the war). I've also seen other appalling numbers where supporters of both sides have thought that their candidate supports something that he opposes, but that the other candidate does support (though I can't find those numbers right now).

I believe that voting rights should be changed eventually, but not until education opportunities are relatively uniform. Changing them now when many are at a disadvantage would be unnecessary disenfranchisement. I do think that either a requirement of a completion of High School/College could be an appropriate limit to voting rights (i.e. if you haven't completed a certain level of schooling, you can't vote), but a weighted vote might work just as well and keep those who can't vote more happy (as long as the weight is kept confidential). Finally, a possible test of the issues before voting (followed by the answers, of course) to ensure that the voter is aware of each candidate's policies (and not just an apathetic educated person) would ensure that everyone votes for whom they would actually prefer, and not just whomever has been portrayed in a better light by the media. Such a system would encourage knowledge of the issues by those who vote and encourage education.

Once again, I don't believe this should be implemented anytime soon as there are simply too many inequities when it comes to education right now for this system to be remotely fair.

 

[Mark1031]

@BZ.: My post was largely tongue in cheek. There is not an average public opinion there is a schism in in the U.S. largely along lines of urban/rural and religious/nonreligious. By overly infranchising the more educated you would simply be skewing the vote toward the urban nonreligious portion of the country. I would certainly favor this as it would favor my class but I voted against your scheme because I think it would lead to a Civil War. If you look at the hot button issues many of them are moral issues based on emotion rather than reason. I'm not sure that reason provides more authority on abortion, gay rights, drugs, etc. As far as controlling the discourse, it is true that there are many sources of information and high-minded discussion but I can't bare to watch C-SPAN or read a long dry article in the Economist. In order to have these discussions accessible to most people they would have to be made entertaining and thus the intellectuals and policy analysts would need to be turned into rock stars of some sort to attract the public's attention. I don't think this is going to happen. I really think the biggest problem is political pandering to powerful interest groups. I know this is a cliche but it is true. I think the best system would be to do away with direct voting on for those who run the government. I say there should be a civil service test to select a pool of approximately 10,000 people. From that group we would select at random 500 people for a single house legislature to serve for one six-year term. This group would elect from among themselves a head of state. No one would stand for election or reelection and after service they would not be able to accept any other employment and would receive a lifetime pension placing them in the upper middle-class. They're only motivation in this case would be presumably doing the right thing based on their best thinking and how history would view them. Every two years there would be a nationwide vote with absolutely no campaigning or advertising allowed in which you could vote no confidence in the current government and we would then get a reshuffling of the deck. How's that for a system?

 

[ComradeDavo]

Voting rights should never be restricted. That is the way of dictatorships*

*Or Jeb Bush

 

[yoshi74]

I don't see a big difference between forbidding some people to vote or to give multiple votes to some people. Whether the votes are given by taxes paid or education, riches are always favored.
A system you mentioned would soon be spoiled. Rich people would send their childs to the highest level of education. Poorer people could be hindered from getting this high by raising the costs of education.
The vote of the poorer classes would be unimportent. Today the parties spend a lot of money to influence every person. Then they have to influence only 20 - 50% of the people. The remaining people would lose their electoral power, which in turn would mean no politican would really care about them (because their votes would not weight much anyway, and they too don't give money to them).

IMO today politicans hear more to the lobbyist, who bring in the money. When they also bring in the majorty of votes, the others would be completely forgotten.

It would be more honest to dismantle the democratic system at all. A eliterism system pictured in the first post would be no better than a pure dictatorship. The latter at least would be more honest.

The problems of the democracy are not the voter, but the politicans, who are mostly mere junkies of power, might and glory.
More control of politicans, less influence for lobbyist, more responsibility for politicans, and at some points more power could help. Maybe.

 

[Sophie 378]

Sorry to bump such an old thread (linked from this thread), but it is interesting. Should someone's influence over society depend on their contribution to society? I have often wondered about this. I think it might be better for society if those who contribute the most - work, taxes, whatever - have the most say; but it's then more likely to be unfair to individuals who do not contribute, for whatever reason (lack of job opportunities, lack of good education, unable to work etc). To what extent should the needs of society be balenced against the needs of individuals? Society is made up of individuals, too.

 

[MobBoss]

If most of the religious right is not much educated and most of educated college profs are liberal then that says something, don't you think?

Ever hear of the old adage, if you cant make it in the real world...then teach? Back in the day, college professors were considered people who couldnt cut the mustard out in corporate America, so they taught school instead.

As for my thought on the matter, I would advocate something straight out of sci-fi and say you could only vote or hold office if you had served in the military in some capacity. If you never served in the military, then no vote for you.

 

[El_Tigre]

Assumption 3: Democracy works better the more the voting population is educated. The more educated they are they better democracy works.

Germany 1918-1933: An excellent educational system and a large quota of high-school and university graduates.

Which group was the first to fall to Nazi propaganda? College students.
Who came next? The middle class: clerks, public officials, officers, entrepreneurs, ... and professors.
Who resistest for the longest time? Workers.

So far, you argued that there may be exceptions within a society that contradict Assumption 3, but that these exceptions do not nullify the general trend. How about a society at large that contradicts your theory?

 

[JohnRM]

That COLLEGE TEACHES LIBERALISM???

And to say most of the religious right is 'not much educated' is stretching things a bit, no?

LOL..."not much educated"

 

[JohnRM]

This came up in Elgalaads elitism thread and I thought it is general enough to make a thread out of...

To come to some reasonable argument about voting rights first we have to start with some assumptions. Obviously, these are my assumptions and we can argue about those but we have to start somewhere.

Assumption 1: Everyone has a right to have an opinion and every tax-paying member of the society or someone who provably produces worth to the society (like mothers who stay at home and bring up children but do not work) should have a say on how society should be governed

Assumption 2: Everyone is not equal. In a rational society we should strive for equality of oppurtunity and not equality of rights. rights are not given. They are earned. The only rights that are given to everyone without question are (a) right to live (b) right to equal oppurtunity. {this comes from an ideal that I hold that I have stated earlier in this forum. Everyone is not equal, but they are equally precious }

Assumption 3: Democracy works better the more the voting population is educated. The more educated they are they better democracy works.

Given the above assumptions it is almost trivial to make a better system than we have now. The rules of the system works like this.

(a) The minimum vote that a person can cast is 1. A person can chose to cast 1 to the maximum number of vote)s he is eligible to cast. A person can be eligible for more than 1 vote
(b) A person becomes eligible to vote if and only if he makes provable contribution to society. You make a provable contribution to society if any of the following criteria is met

• You pay taxes
• You have earnings but they are not taxable
• You are a house-wife (or house partner for gays etc)
• You are compensated for work you do in non-monetary terms

{the above list is not exhaustive; we can probably add to it. However, the key point is there is no age based voting right. You get the right only when you contribute.}
(c) The number of votes that you are eligible to cast depend on the maximum amount of education that you have achieved. Once again the details can be argued about but we can go with a simple system first. 1 vote for primary school education. 2 for secondary school education. 3 for bachelors level education. 4 for masters. 5 for Phds. 6 for Postdocs (professors etc). 10 for Nobel prize winners.

So do you agree that the above system is better? If yes, why? if not why not?

I believe it is better of course.

Sounds to me like the perfect plan to widen the power gap between the rich and the poor. I just have the feeling that somehow people like Bill Gates would end up buying votes by donating money to charity. I am not completely opposed to some form of oligarchy, but please, let us not delude ourselves into pretending that it is anything close to democracy.

 

[JohnRM]

Wrong. That is the reason I specifically stated in the above scheme that there is equal oppurtunity.

Equal oppurtunity means that everyone has an equal oppurtunity to pursue whatever education one chooses to.

Adding to the list:
Oligarchy-type political structure.
Nationalized Education system.



On a side note, you have said it on more than one occasion that the greater education one has, the better a voter one is, as though it were inherent. The best voters are highly educated, yes, but not all highly educated voters are best. Those with better education often use that knowledge to vote in a manner which best suits themselves, not the nation at large.

@Elgalad: Yes, I know your stance. And I expect that 95% of OT will vote no in this poll. But I am yet to find a single rational answer to the following question.

Limits based on education, [..snipped...] are no less detrimental to a free democracy than are limits based on race, sex, or land ownership.

Why?

People go to college and pay thousands of dollars for a piece of paper that says they know something about something. I can educate myself with as much success as a college can, which is in fact, what I am currently doing with regard to various subjects. I would in fact be highly educated, but denied a vote in your system.

 

[IglooDame]

This one has been bouncing around in my head for a while.

Voting rights are limited, right now in the US (and in every other democracy that I'm aware of), in that minors, felons, mentally ill/handicapped, non-citizens, and possibly others are not enfranchised. The reason that this doesn't matter to any significant degree is that their voting blocs are insignificant numbers-wise, or their disenfranchisement fades before they can really cause any problems. Everyone remaining, no matter how much they dislike the policies of the government, can always fall back on the ballot box and their own vote. They got their say every two/four/six years, and will continue to do so. In order to continue that inherent stabilization, there'd have to be some way to convince the plebes that their opinion still counts, but not necessarily have their opinion count all the way through the process in a pure form.

I'm thinking the founding fathers did have a sense of this. Originally the US Senate was designed to be exactly what we're talking about here - less beholden to public opinion than the House of Representatives. What was the average lifespan of a male in 1775, 35 or thereabouts? And senators had to be 30 to run for office? The average US senator right now is 60 and he has served two full terms. Robert Byrd (8th term) and Ted Stevens (6th term) would have been freaks of nature in the late 1700s. On the Executive side, the Electoral College was a filter between the general public and the electing of the President. Today they're just an odd rubber-stamp and numbers game, I think primarily because of the lock the two-party system has upon the entire political process.

So, making the Senate more immune to reelection campaign populism (and thus pork barrel politics, campaign financing issues, and lobbying temptations) and making the election of the president more insulated from the popular vote (and not just in the urban vs rural way that it has developed into) is really just taking the system back to the way the founding fathers designed it in the first place.

 

[Kayak]

So, making the Senate more immune to reelection campaign populism (and thus pork barrel politics, campaign financing issues, and lobbying temptations) and making the election of the president more insulated from the popular vote (and not just in the urban vs rural way that it has developed into) is really just taking the system back to the way the founding fathers designed it in the first place.

So should we make the age to fun higher? or create a madatory retirement age for public officeholders?

The way the President was insulated though, was that less people were enfranchised. The quote "who has the vote, the man or the mule" comes to mind. How and where does one set the bar?