For prisoners who are proven to have committed heinous crimes (rape/murder of a minor, etc) should be barred from voting
By proven, I mean those who have exhausted ALL of their judicial rights/channels to appeal.
If you’re insane enough to rape a minor or kill one or something comparable, then you have no right to have a proper life, let alone vote
Pretty much. I’m not sure age is the right line to draw if you’re worried about uninformed people voting.
I find this debate about uninformed people voting funny. Whenever someone doesn’t vote on the same side as you that person is considered uninformed. If we had radical parties getting elected in office, then it would be a problem to look into. Someone voting either for the Democrats or Republicans can’t be labelled uninformed considering you don’t have to follow an election campaign to know exactly where both parties stand on major issues.
^ What of European elections? All sorts of moonbats get elected there.
^In Italy and Greece, sure, but mixed member proportional representation (like Germany and New Zealand) is pretty stable and can put limits on small parties.
That epidemic - electing extreme left and right wing parties - hasn’t hit North America. The only way I see it happen is if the middle class continues to see stagnant income or if there is a growing anti-immigrant (islamic) sentiment.
I’ve never seen any evidence individuals (talking the majority of people) are informed for voting. This is irrespective of their party lines. I took a few classes on the research behind voting and it is disappointing. The only good thing is it seems we aren’t getting worse, we’ve just always sucked.
Scottish parliament allowed 16y/o to vote in the referendum on independence. 16y/o are not allowed to vote and will unlikely to be able to unless the liberal democrats get elected which wont ever happen.
In this Idiocracy, the fewer people who vote, the better.
agree, we would definitely have way too many idiots voting. terrible idea. deserving of the hacksaw
the voting age was lowered from 18 to 16 for the independence referendum.
The main election isn’t the problem. Over the last 12 years or so, it’s the primaries that matter the most. And, for those you need to know your candidates. If you’re uninformed you could end up sending Rick Santorum to the general election and find yourself in a very regretful situation.
The problem with the Republican party is not necessarily that their voters are uninformed, but that they are just very right of the US median. So, maybe you know perfectly the positions of Santorum, Herman Cain, and others. In the Republican primary, the winner could still be someone in the center of the Republican voter pool, which would be too far to the right to win the general election.
If this is in response to my post above, your reply is a bit off topic. I was replying to FT that essentially said everyone is informed to a certain degree because they know the basics of republican vs democrat. I just wanted to point out the real differences occur in the earlier stages of the election process when being informed really does matter.
Your topic is something else entirely, and I’d argue that although it’s worse on the republican side, democrats face similar challenges. There are plenty of blue-dog dems that are fiscally conservative (as far as moderate dems go) but they face challenges of their own. Repairing social security for example. There are dems that know it needs to be done, but the far left won’t touch it.
Another point you raise is where exactly is the center of the republican party? If someone asked me to name the candidate that best represents the center…I guess maybe Rand Paul?
That’s a really cynical view. I would argue anyone who votes with a party is uninformed (or at least non-thinking). Also, it’s important to read and research initiatives and propositions on local elections- there was one here a while ago that didn’t get passed which would have required labelling of GMOs. Sounds like a yes for left right? The law was so poorly written and the guy behind it works in media. He doesn’t understand GMOs, and neither do I, but I won’t trust a media guy to come up with a law about something he doesn’t understand. So voting out of emotion and saying yes with party lines would be incredibly irresponsibe.
Too far right for you does not imply too far right for America.
Ok. Maybe I was a bit lost. Who reads text here anyway?
Where is the Republican center? Well, the “market” answer is whoever wins the election. So, the latest data point would be the weird Mitt Romney of 2012. The Republican center is probably biased towards the left of the Republican field, since the population probably skews that way.
However, from Mitt Romney, I would place the Republican center a bit further right, since Republican strategists put more money into supporting a more moderate candidate.
No, I did not say anything about my political preference. What I said is that the Republican median voter will choose a candidate that is to the right of median for the overall US population. This is because Republican voters are naturally already in the right half of the political distribution.
Long ago, you needed to A) own land or B) actually pay taxes to vote
We should return to (something like) that system, because the only people we’d be excluding are the parasites.