Don't let ignorant people vote

neptunechimney wrote:

Rockdoc Franz wrote: [And that is not where we really want to go. Where we do wish to go is with a more knowledgeable general public. As note before, this would also force candidates to think a little more before mouthing off, or making proclamations an educated public would know to be BS.

It would be great if every citizen had to pass the same test as naturalized citizens. I knew a bunch of them who were married to sailors and they were knowledgeable enough to embarrass me.

I'm certain that many would expose my ignorance as well.

I don't believe I'm ignorant of political issues...I'm just not a political individual...never have been and probably never will be. I try to listen to all arguments and get as much information I can about the issues and/or candidates; however, there are times I don't know what to believe or where to go to get "good" unbiased information.

So a lot of times, I just listen and gather from a lot of places and figure the unbiased stuff is there and try to figure it out. And when I have to ask a question, I try to ask someone I know who is as unbiased as possible and will tell me facts versus emotional, political stuff.

If I am uneducated about an issue or a candidate, I will abstain my vote because I don't know instead of closing my eyes and throwing a dart and picking the choice closest to where the dart lands.

I don't know that a test to determine ignorance or lack of ignorance regarding issues or candidates would help. It is all about the individual's responsibility to get themselves as informed as possible...and since we are dealing with people...that is difficult, at best.

We don't allow classes of citizens anymore in America thnkfully. We must allow and even encourage everyone to vote. That said, a terrible mistake was made when we mostly eliminated Civics courses from our schools. These need to be reinstated and expanded. Each American child should be raised with clear understanding of how our government works, especially their personal responsibility and accountability. Perhaps one day political debates will be as popular as American Idol. (okay, that may be over the top- how aboutas popular as Three and a half Men?)

ComputerBreath wrote: I don't believe I'm ignorant of political issues...I'm just not a political individual...never have been and probably never will be. I try to listen to all arguments and get as much information I can about the issues and/or candidates; however, there are times I don't know what to believe or where to go to get "good" unbiased information.

So a lot of times, I just listen and gather from a lot of places and figure the unbiased stuff is there and try to figure it out. And when I have to ask a question, I try to ask someone I know who is as unbiased as possible and will tell me facts versus emotional, political stuff.

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I do not know if there are any unbiased sources. I think the trick is to recognize and adjust adjust for the bias.

OT Rockdoc, maybe I am crazy but I thing that anyone who can handle an ax like you do does not need to know anything else. I would buy tickets to watch you split wood.

The Voting Rights Act outlawed this type of discrimination 50 years ago. Some try to resurrect different takes on this from time to time. Just another way to try to keep folks down in my view.

You can't legislate intelligence; you can't legislate personal engagement in our political system; and obviously you can't legislate what passes as fact or "news" any more. IMO -The problem lies more with those that build careers on deceiving for personal gain. The world is a stage for daily acting for camera, absent of facts. Most people are too involved in their own lives to spend much time trying to figure it out. It becomes background noise to their lives. It has NOTHING to do with intelligence level. It has EVERYTHING to do with people seeing it as important enough to look into. Given my experience, things have to become a personal crisis for people to look up and ask "what the...?"

It's not the quality or intelligence of the voter IMO.... it's the quality of politicians from ANY party, they all suck, and it's the sleezyness and lies that the politicians get away with every election.

So, what we should do (again IMHO), is:

Eliminate all corporate campaign contributions.... or even better yet have the ONLY funding come from a pool.. with a set amount for each person. Limited levels for each level of office. Congress, 2mil, Senate 5mil, pres, 8 mil or something like that. And a set number of minutes of on air time from each network.... (low limits would do me just fine....)

Create a non-parisian fact check and enforce what a politician says in regards to stating voting record of themselves or opponent or anything that is based on fact (promises and positions would be impossible to do anything about) and IF they lie, fine them, remove funding.... make them pay.

Create a easier path for actual citizens to run for the roles actually created for them, house of representatives should just be that representatives of the actual group that elected them.... what a concept eh?

Term limits on all of em....

ComputerBreath wrote: I don't believe I'm ignorant of political issues...I'm just not a political individual...never have been and probably never will be. I try to listen to all arguments and get as much information I can about the issues and/or candidates; however, there are times I don't know what to believe or where to go to get "good" unbiased information.

So a lot of times, I just listen and gather from a lot of places and figure the unbiased stuff is there and try to figure it out. And when I have to ask a question, I try to ask someone I know who is as unbiased as possible and will tell me facts versus emotional, political stuff.

If I am uneducated about an issue or a candidate, I will abstain my vote because I don't know instead of closing my eyes and throwing a dart and picking the choice closest to where the dart lands.

I don't know that a test to determine ignorance or lack of ignorance regarding issues or candidates would help. It is all about the individual's responsibility to get themselves as informed as possible...and since we are dealing with people...that is difficult, at best.

Boy can I relate to you on this whole issue starting with being apolitical and going on to take personal responsibility to educate yourself about various issues so you can make an educated decision. But you are not the primary target for an educational system. It's individuals who do not even know we have a three branches of government, yet cast a vote to elect a judge or senator and are totally clueless about much of what our government is about regarding key issues. You and I may be in the dark to start with, but we know we are ignorant and will go out of our way to educate ourselves or abstain from voting because you are responsible in what you do. You are admirable in this regard.

how to obtain a useful perspective on contentious issues is a matter of listening to debates between people, sorting out fact from fiction and doing some critical thinking. It seems you do all that and there are some very bright politically active people who make it a point of being well educated. In fact on occasion, some good discussions evolve on this forum during which facts come out and biases get dissected. It is during these rare instances that I enjoy listening in to the varying perspectives.

netdude wrote: It's not the quality or intelligence of the voter IMO.... it's the quality of politicians from ANY party, they all suck, and it's the sleezyness and lies that the politicians get away with every election.

So, what we should do (again IMHO), is:

Eliminate all corporate campaign contributions.... or even better yet have the ONLY funding come from a pool.. with a set amount for each person. Limited levels for each level of office. Congress, 2mil, Senate 5mil, pres, 8 mil or something like that. And a set number of minutes of on air time from each network.... (low limits would do me just fine....)

Create a non-parisian fact check and enforce what a politician says in regards to stating voting record of themselves or opponent or anything that is based on fact (promises and positions would be impossible to do anything about) and IF they lie, fine them, remove funding.... make them pay.

Create a easier path for actual citizens to run for the roles actually created for them, house of representatives should just be that representatives of the actual group that elected them.... what a concept eh?

Term limits on all of em....

LOL. There has been a dearth of good choices, mostly choices of which one is the less bad than the other.
You offer many good points that would benefit an responsible voter to decide on issues and candidates. Let's face it, many issues are very complex and even an intelligent voter must depend on thorough explanations by an expert.

However, there are voters who are not intelligent enough or care enough to educate themselves on political issues/candidates to cast an informed vote. It is those voters who are under the microscope here. Along the way we are finding a profound need for responsible voters to make better decisions. I'd be amiss if I were to claim that I always cast an informed vote. I do not because it is so difficult to get enough solid information.

Wily Weasel wrote: The Voting Rights Act outlawed this type of discrimination 50 years ago. Some try to resurrect different takes on this from time to time. Just another way to try to keep folks down in my view.

You can't legislate intelligence; you can't legislate personal engagement in our political system; and obviously you can't legislate what passes as fact or "news" any more. IMO -The problem lies more with those that build careers on deceiving for personal gain. The world is a stage for daily acting for camera, absent of facts. Most people are too involved in their own lives to spend much time trying to figure it out. It becomes background noise to their lives. It has NOTHING to do with intelligence level. It has EVERYTHING to do with people seeing it as important enough to look into. Given my experience, things have to become a personal crisis for people to look up and ask "what the...?"

We are not advocating discrimination, rather more responsible voting. As originally exemplified by the author of the article discussed. Ignorant voters equate to others doing the following.

If I were to ask you to ingest an unknown medicine from someone who knew nothing about the medical field, you probably wouldn't do it. And I doubt many of us would feel comfortable as a shareholder in a company that asked people who knew nothing about business to hire its next CEO?

Unless we view our government as something less important than the above examples, we owe it to ourselves to do something about it. The it is everything you opine, If we see it as unimportant we have no right to complain about our state of affairs as a nation. While apathy may prevail, it takes only a one seed to start a tree to grow and ultimately a forest to develop. Someone somewhere needs to plant the seed for a grassroots movement that not only makes voting responsibly attainable, but also forces politicians to re-evaluate how they present their platforms. Come election time, we could take a lead in this by at least those of us who have taken time to espouse our opinions and thoughts now, encouraging the more politically scholars to help us sort through confusing issues/candidates. Just a thought.

"Informed" is subjective, just as "ignorant" is subjective.
Remember the Foxfire series of books? There were many interviews with very old backwoods people who were questioned about complex issues of life, marriage, death, and such. These people were totally unschooled but the wisdom sparkled in their words and advice.

If you had read this series of books you could hardly say that these old hillbillies were not qualified to vote.

(please do not bring up the fact that the man responsible for the creation of these books was a child molester.)