Off Topic — HabitableZone

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Voting
Tom Brosz — (archived)

They can also be fairly well identified by their positions on sufferage: Liberals tend to believe it should be universal, conservatives tend to believe in limiting the right to vote to those who prove themselves "qualified" (how many megawords have Tom and I exchanged on that subject!).

In a government with little power over the citizen, voting is a different matter than a government with almost limitless power over the citizen, including the right to take his wealth and distribute it to voters.

One should be able to see that an unrestricted democracy which permits people to vote the wholesale redistribution of wealth is not what you would call a stable system. And it's not surprising that politicians selling snake oil have a vested interest in lowering the voting standards as much as possible.

I think under the circumstances, universal suffrage is not productive. As you might recall from the "millions of words," I had no plausible mechanism for objectively "testing" the ability to vote (I know for a fact that standard "intelligence tests" would NOT be the way to go), but think we need to look into raising the bar somehow.

There are age limits, and no one seems to mind.

In "Starship Troopers," voting was restricted to those who had completed a term of military or civilian national service. Active service members were not eligible.

It might be interesting, and a little more fair, to restrict some voting on government taxes and spending, like some California referendums, to those who actually pay taxes.

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