I've never quite understood the value of denying the vote to felons, unless there's some danger that felons could become a significant majority...in which case we have bigger things to worry about. According to the current rate of growth in the US prison population, that time is comfortably a couple of decades away.

The other circumstantial restrictions, like age or mental capacity, are generally intended to select for competency rather than "correct" politics. Although, come to think of it, in the area of age the stereotypical course is liberal becoming more conservative with age (what happened to you, Justin?). But you're right that an arbitrary threshold like 18 can be unfair, because people are different. Maybe the answer is for students to accumulate voting points as they take civics and history classes, based on the grade points. The scale could be weighted such that somebody who made average grades would be eligible to vote at 18. Higher grades accelerate the date you could start voting. Think anybody'd go for it?

The Achilles heel of any competency test is that whoever gets to set the criteria gets to influence or even control the political outcome, by preselecting people for the "correct" political leaning. Who would you trust to write the questions on a written test to qualify to vote?

Which, when you get down to it, is why anything less than universal sufferage, inside arbitrary basic boundaries like age, isn't truly democracy.

And just like some people could say, if there were the landowner requisite "those who don't own land don't really have a stake in the country as much I.E. they would be voting leaders who don't serve the countries interests, and are voting the wrong way".

Depends on whether you define America as real estate, or as a nation of people.

Maybe we should just open all the doors to election? let every individual vote, the young ones the felons, the foreign citizens (afterall, decisions made here effect the WORLD. Why not let the world vote hu?)

ARF! ARF!

But seriously, since you acknowledge that America's actions affect the entire world, do you think it's improper for America to participate fully in international bodies like the UN? And be subject to international laws as tried in international courts?

Hmmm? If you really believe in democracy, why not extend its principles universally?

I am not argueing for any certain requisite, only that the mindset of regulating the 'right to vote' is shared by nearly everyone on these very basic levels, and is nothing conservative specific.

If I understand "regulate" to mean restrict, I would have to disagree, based on my reading of history, and in the case of lowering the age from 21 to 18, my experience of it. In 1972 liberals promoted it and conservatives resisted; same with getting rid of the poll taxes in the '50s and passing the Voting Rights Act in the '60s, and granting the franchise to women, finally, in 1912. Conservatives consistently resist expansion of the right to vote.

It would be a cheap shot to ascribe conservative opposition to expanding the franchise to mere ageism, racism, or sexism. It has respectable roots in the original debate over whether we should be a republic or a democracy; and Republicans are the descendents of those who took a very dim view of "mobocracy". You can hear the echoes in their modern-day rhetoric.

Besides, consider the opposite that defines American conservativism: Communism, in never-implemented theory, was to have resulted in perfect and universal democracy, after the State had withered away. The People would rule themselves.

What do you get when you implement the economic theories of Adam Smith within a republican form of government?

--Robert