Should everyone be allowed to vote? By that I mean all people, who are citizens and over 18 years of age. I am assuming that we all agree that dead people should not vote, nor should your dog, cat or Mickey Mouse have the franchise. If you disagree with that you probably need to go read the Huffington Post or some such drivel.
In ancient Athens you had to be free, male and I believe a property owner to vote. In the Roman Republic you need to be a property owner and a soldier in the local army to be a citizen. Conversely, you could not be in the army if you were not a citizen. In England there were certain requirements dealing with your net worth, income and property. I have never taken the time to figure those out.
Property has been a traditional requirement to voting. But what about being able to read and write well enough to understand the ballot? Should a person be able to understand the issues in order to vote?
One of the problems with setting standards is that they can be interpreted to discriminate in an unintended way. For instance, in the south in order to keep black citizens from voting they would give a difficult test to a black man and a simple test to a white man. So there would be problems with any standards.
Here are some things I would like to see.
Proof of citizenship to register. This would only need to be established once if we could develop a foolproof way to transfer registration when a person moved. In order to keep central control out it might be necessary to require new proof each time you moved. Once people were used to this they would keep the documents handy.
Required identification to prove you are the person registered and live at the address on file. The people who oppose this are usually those who vote early and often.
Only allow people who own property to vote on issues effecting property. Bond issues that are added to property taxes should not be voted on by people who think someone else will have to pay the bill.
Only allow people who pay taxes to vote on any tax issue. This is the same logic of the property tax issue.
This will never happen but what about short answer ballots instead of multiple choice. It would be a bear to count but make people know who they are voting for enough to be able to write their name.
On initiatives make them multiple choice in that there would be a lot of fake issues printed and they would need to know what they were voting on to identify them.
Require judges to get a super majority. No one knows who they are anyway. Vote the suckers out.
homo unius libri
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Comments are welcome. Feel free to agree or disagree but keep it clean, courteous and short. I heard some shorthand on a podcast: TLDR, Too long, didn't read.