Friday, October 17, 2008

Universal Sufferage

...And why it's bugging me.

Some people should not be allowed to vote. At bare minimum potential voters should have to pass a civics test. Seriously, if YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW MANY STATES WE HAVE, YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS PARTICIPATING IN THE GOVERNANCE OF THIS COUNTRY! If you don't know what a particular candidate is for and against, you should not be able to vote for them. These ignorant, lazy 'citizens' are the reason every political campaign always ends up looking like a high school popularity contest.

Seriously, how is anyone with two brain cells to rub together going to believe that the people Howard Stern's show interviewed aren't voting for Obama because he's black? They we're completely wrong on his policies and even who he picked for VP, but they're all for him. Or maybe they're just hungry for the sweet draught of Hope'n-Change (TM). They don't know anything that actually matters about what is going on, but they're pulling for Obama. I'm willing to bet there are some pulling for McCain/Palin too, just because his VP is a woman.

Does anyone who actually has any business having an opinion still oppose some additional requirement for suffrage? I don't mean that sarcastically either. Are there any well-informed, critically thinking, and literate people out there, who still want the lazy, the ignorant, and the irrational to be able to vote?

All I want is a written civics test. Some basic stuff like how the electoral college works, what a bicameral legislative is, what powers the executive does and doesn't have (that'd be the big one for most people), and maybe, I dunno, some basic idea of what our country is and who is running it. I know it would be opposed as a literacy test, which are verboten, but I think it's about time we got rid of that rule. To be illiterate in this day and age means you are either A.) an immigrant, in which case following naturalization you can take the test with a proctor reading the questions, or B.) too lazy, too stupid, or too cool to have learned in school, in which case...

...you shouldn't get to vote.

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