Tuesday, June 28, 2005

A friend had an idea about voting...

we were discussing this evening about the downfalls of our current voting system. and as usual, I had my defeatist pessimistic approach "it's rule by the majority, and the majority are fucking idiots, so we're perpetually fucked. the end."

My friend, on the other hand, had an idea... mandatory testing to ascertain your fitness to vote. if you don't have a fucking clue about the truth behind the candidates involved, or about the social issues, international issues, cultural issues etc... then no vote for you... or at last your vote would have diminished value relative to your actual knowledge of the pertinent events.

you want your vote to count? then try actually putting the slightest effort into learning something about why you're voting, what you're voting for, who you're voting for and what your vote is likely to actually accomplish etc.

this was one of the factors that brought about the electoral voting process in the first place... so why not take it a step further and start to actually move towards a voting process that wouldn't shut out a candidate for actually having the intelligence to understand and act correctly on very complex domestic and foreign issues etc... rather than a stupid monkey who is "trying to do his best"?

we're shooting ourselves in the feet if we elect the worse candidate simply because we allow a bunch of clueless dolts to be led around like sheep and to vote for the moron most like themselves, which is exactly what happened in the last election.

I could go on, but that's a sufficiently inflammatory start. ;-)

2 comments:

Françoise said...

very interesting idea, but I think the problem would erside in which institution or group of people gets to correct these tests, and determine the truth behind the candidates... it could also open the door to even more control from the government, and brain washing the americans..

JStressman said...

yeah, I know it wasn't the ideal solution, but definitely one of the more interesting that I've heard. :-)

I was looking into voting system reform a lot during the last election. it's something that I should probably look into more... but it's one of those things that without the election to remind me about how screwed up it is, I forget and get wrapped up in other things.