Don't vote (unless you want to)

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Frewah
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Re: Don't vote (unless you want to)

Post by Frewah »

LuckyR wrote: November 2nd, 2018, 2:18 am
Frewah wrote: November 1st, 2018, 4:50 pm
There was such a country. It was called South Africa.
No. South Africa was certainly not meritocratic. I’m not suggesting that I think it’s a good idea, merely that it may be suggested some day that certain people can get an extra vote if they somehow manage to pass a test or similar. I can’t think of any such criterion. What Amazes me is that there seems to br many people who can’t make up their mind until the very last moment, when they are in the booth.
Steve3007
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Re: Don't vote (unless you want to)

Post by Steve3007 »

Frewah wrote:Maybe some country will implement some kind of meritocratic democracy. The higher your IQ, education, responsibilty or similar, the more votes you get. If so, we would know assuming that the criterions used seem to be valid. Maybe there would be less political division. I hear that some countries, in certain ways, are quite meritocratic.
The idea that citizens should, in some sense, earn or qualify for their right to vote has been discussed many times before. Here for example:

viewtopic.php?p=261478#p261478

And of course the shortcomings of a system in which the only qualification to vote is being a citizen have been discussed for thousands of years. But the main problem would seem to be deciding exactly how to create a better informed electorate without unjustifiably disenfranchising lots of people. The results of IQ tests, for example, certainly don't seem to be directly relevant to one's ability to make informed political decisions. Unconditional universal suffrage, despite in many ways being a terrible system, still seems to be the best system that anyone has so far come up with (as Churchill is famously said to have observed).
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Frewah
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Re: Don't vote (unless you want to)

Post by Frewah »

Correct. While the idea may seem very appealing, it’s exceedingly difficult to figure out exactly what these qualities are or how to find them. Just because you are intelligent, you could still have very poor judgement. And just because your IQ isn’t very impressive, your judgement could be stellar.

Having said that, I don’t think it’s a bad idea that you have to register in order to vote. At least, you show that you have some interest in an election some reasonable time before you actually vote. Ideally, you go into some kind of responsible voter mode when you register.
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Frewah
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Re: Don't vote (unless you want to)

Post by Frewah »

It just occured to me that the ’dilemma problem’ that many voters fell could be lessened if every voter had, say, three votes. So, if you kind of lean towards one party, you could give that party two votes and one vote to the other party. If you’re a ’hardliner’, you just give your preferred party three votes. I guess some people would only use one vote. It would be very intersting to see what impact this would have and how voters would feel.

In countries where you have many parties, people vote tactically. In Sweden, where I live, the Christian Democrats gets votes from people that would otherwise vote for a non socialist party for fear that this party wouldn’t get at least 4% of the votes which is required in order to get seats in the swedish riksdag. With this approach, you would probably be happier if you could spread your vote.
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LuckyR
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Re: Don't vote (unless you want to)

Post by LuckyR »

Frewah wrote: November 2nd, 2018, 3:40 pm
LuckyR wrote: November 2nd, 2018, 2:18 am

There was such a country. It was called South Africa.
No. South Africa was certainly not meritocratic. I’m not suggesting that I think it’s a good idea, merely that it may be suggested some day that certain people can get an extra vote if they somehow manage to pass a test or similar. I can’t think of any such criterion. What Amazes me is that there seems to br many people who can’t make up their mind until the very last moment, when they are in the booth.
That's your opinion (and mine too, as it happens), but the Afrikaners disagreed with you, and they made the rules, not you.
"As usual... it depends."
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