What do you think about utilizing tests to qualify a citizen the ability to vote?
The Stiletto blog came across an article written by Jonah Goldberg suggesting this very same thing.
I understand the rationalization: a huge segment of eligible voters are horribly uninformed and thus indifferent to voting or vote an ideological propagandized line associated with life time familial Party association or the journalism of their favorite media.
The former is irresponsible and the later is dangerous because media and educational institutions (teachers and professors) are highly dominated by Left leaning or secular humanistic thinking. Those that are mentors in education often teach a leftist slant or dumb down civics to disinterested students.
Here is a shocker for you though: I disagree with conservative The Stiletto and Jonah Goldberg. This is my simple reasoning: My childhood was the late ‘50’s and the 60’s. I remember the “Jim Crow” tests that African-Americans were forced to take when they were of age to vote to qualify to vote. In the South Caucasians were given a simple test, African-American were given a test that Caucasians would even fail. The result: Whites voted and Blacks were prohibited from voting.
It is interesting to note that the Founding Fathers had the same concern about qualified voters as opposed to potential ignorant voters. Thus the Founding Fathers tagged voter eligibility to age and property ownership. If you were not a tax paying property owner, you were not able to vote. The rational was if you had the smarts to manage your property, you probably had the smarts to make informed voting decisions.
Jim Crow were racially prejudiced and property rights voting were a concern about informed privilege. The evolution of voting enfranchisement in America has done away with both.
So how does America further evolve voting so that uninformed morons (not a reference to IQ but rather to laziness) become informed responsible voters? Presenting laws to a retroactive past will cause more problems than solve them.
My thought is to provide various levels of neutral civics lessons in primary and secondary education as the best way to enable a responsible voting consciousness. Thus when a person becomes enfranchised at eighteen if the person chooses to vote (indifference factor), a person can vote responsibly according to the personal political choices. Voting enfranchisement can never return to race exclusion, wealth certification (i.e. property) or intellectual testing. These factors simply disenfranchise too many citizens.
Non-American residents (legal or illegal) are the only group of people that should be non-enfranchised in the USA. That is right: ONLY citizens should have the right to vote.
The Stiletto blog came across an article written by Jonah Goldberg suggesting this very same thing.
I understand the rationalization: a huge segment of eligible voters are horribly uninformed and thus indifferent to voting or vote an ideological propagandized line associated with life time familial Party association or the journalism of their favorite media.
The former is irresponsible and the later is dangerous because media and educational institutions (teachers and professors) are highly dominated by Left leaning or secular humanistic thinking. Those that are mentors in education often teach a leftist slant or dumb down civics to disinterested students.
Here is a shocker for you though: I disagree with conservative The Stiletto and Jonah Goldberg. This is my simple reasoning: My childhood was the late ‘50’s and the 60’s. I remember the “Jim Crow” tests that African-Americans were forced to take when they were of age to vote to qualify to vote. In the South Caucasians were given a simple test, African-American were given a test that Caucasians would even fail. The result: Whites voted and Blacks were prohibited from voting.
It is interesting to note that the Founding Fathers had the same concern about qualified voters as opposed to potential ignorant voters. Thus the Founding Fathers tagged voter eligibility to age and property ownership. If you were not a tax paying property owner, you were not able to vote. The rational was if you had the smarts to manage your property, you probably had the smarts to make informed voting decisions.
Jim Crow were racially prejudiced and property rights voting were a concern about informed privilege. The evolution of voting enfranchisement in America has done away with both.
So how does America further evolve voting so that uninformed morons (not a reference to IQ but rather to laziness) become informed responsible voters? Presenting laws to a retroactive past will cause more problems than solve them.
My thought is to provide various levels of neutral civics lessons in primary and secondary education as the best way to enable a responsible voting consciousness. Thus when a person becomes enfranchised at eighteen if the person chooses to vote (indifference factor), a person can vote responsibly according to the personal political choices. Voting enfranchisement can never return to race exclusion, wealth certification (i.e. property) or intellectual testing. These factors simply disenfranchise too many citizens.
Non-American residents (legal or illegal) are the only group of people that should be non-enfranchised in the USA. That is right: ONLY citizens should have the right to vote.
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