To be clear, I am not talking about restricting voting based on:
-Race
-Gender
-Religion
-Creed
-Sexual Orientation
What am I talking about restricting voting based on? Property rights, and/or intelligence, to the extent that intelligence can be measured, along with restricting the extent to which the popular vote can decide elections. Does this have any precedent?
Property rights-based restrictions have existed in the past in the United States, although they were eliminated largely by the time of Andrew Jackson's election in 1828, and fully so by 1856, when North Carolina abolished them. This arguably led to the proliferation of populist-based parties in the United States, starting with the Jacksonian Democrats.
This was not the end of popularization of the political system. Whether it were the passage of the seventeenth amendment (which ended the process of senators being elected by the states, and replaced it with popular election of the senators) or the
Additionally, we have seen the attempts to eliminate the last attempts the founders made at protecting the federal government from popular opinion with many states passing a measure that would legally bind their electors in the electoral college to vote for whoever the popular vote winner is, and the repeated attempts by both sides in the now-populist Senate to "Bork" the Supreme Court (looking at the Kavanaugh and Garland appointments). What was once constrained to the House of Representatives and state legislatures has now spread to the whole nation. I ask you: is this conducive to a good political system?
Though IQ is not often a good indicator of intelligence in all cases, it can certainly be correlated to other factors. I'd like to share with you some generally troubling facts about the American populace.
1. This basic scientific knowledge quiz with results suggesting that the average American does worse than if they had just guessed randomly about them on several questions, and not much better on the rest.
2. Only 34% of Americans can name all 3 branches of gov't.
3. American students perform exceptionally poorly on geography and foreign relations-based questions
These indicators suggest that Americans are ignorant, to be generous. As George Carlin once said, "Think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that."
To summarize this lengthy introduction, NSG, America used to have barriers against the masses getting control of the government, and has since shed those barriers. The masses, especially in America, are overwhelmingly undereducated. Should we introduce measures to curb how much influence the average person's vote has, understanding that this is the case?
In my opinion, we should. Voting, and especially citizenship, should be based on passing the US citizenship test. Graduation from high school should include the requirement that this test be passed. Additionally, America should preclude anyone who does not pass standardized math, geography, and English proficiency tests from voting. Furthermore, America should roll back the seventeenth amendment. The average American does not deserve to vote if they cannot understand the complexity of what it means to run the most successful republic on the planet. Of course, I'd also advocate the end of property tax-based education funding before this occurred, to level the playing field.
