IMO, it is extremely illogical to suggest that the country is better served by enabling the incompetent or the degenerate the same input in all matters. Can you honestly say that you think a model citizen should have the same voting rights as a drug lord? Or someone who is so mentally incapacitated that they can't even remember the names of the candidates should get the same input as an informed, intelligent person?
Yes I can honestly say that. I don't even really have to dwell on it much. Good government has balance between the will of the common people and the will of the elites, that's the social contract and a representative republic should have that. Representatives make the decisions that count but it is imperative that they be held accountable on election night to people of all incomes, intelligence levels, races, etc.
It's kinda moot though, as we haven't topped 63% voter participation in 108 years. And the record in my lifetime is 57%, in a 2008 campaign with pretty remarkable energy. So it's not like people are voting in large numbers anyway,
especially the poor.
I have no faith in the government being able to use objective measures to decide who votes. As I stated previously, I think not allowing felons to vote is little more than
southerners finding a way to be racists. So I feel that I don't have to look much further than that to see why intelligence tests or credit scores would be a bad idea.
The country was designed to be a representative republic. It was designed for people to have significant input at a local level, and then for those various representatives to choose things like senators or the president. Now we let the masses directly elect every official, and it frankly does not work. It doesn't produce the most qualified leaders in these positions.
They changed it because it didn't work. The corruption in the late nineteenth century was simply absurd.
The masses do not directly elect every official, in fact it is uniquely American that the officials directly elect their masses every ten years by gerrymandering the competition out of elections. For instance my district, OH-5, hasn't seen an incumbent lose an election since 1938.
I think you are assuming that the previous system produced qualified leaders, I don't think there is any evidence supporting that. If anything I'd say the Presidents elected in the 20th century were superior to the 19th century, which had a really bad run of Presidents whom historians say were our least effective.
Furthermore, it's basically an accepted fact of political science that pure democracy is a horrendous form of government. Over time, we have inched closer and closer to that... which is not good.
I don't think we have inched closer to that at all. The influence of the voters on federal policy weakens every year.
The federal government is not swayed by public opinion any more, despite more direct elections for representatives. Public opinion, the will of the masses of idiots you may fear, has no effect on voting in DC. It is simply money vs money that squares off behind doors, like with SOPA when some people thought their phone calls to Reps mattered in a people vs Orwellian state showdown...but they were wrong it was simple Hollywood money vs Silicon Valley money and Silicon Valley won that round.
I think if anything we need wider voter representative and substantial structural reform to restore a balance in the government between the people and the elites.
