Hacker News Reader

Comment by enlightenedfool | Hacker News Reader

It will get worse when electorate instead of choosing the right candidates, chooses the more electable ones. The constitution cannot provide safeguard against ill-informed electorate. Not just the US, applies to any democracy. Most democracies have similar awesome constitution texts.

View on HN

One of the key issues in elections is that candidates promise stuff to specific interest groups - which is basically the same thing as buying votes (with future government funds, on top of that). That kind of behaviour should be explicitly forbidden and should be prosecuted because it actively damages Democracy.

It would be interesting if candidates were not allowed to promise what they would do, but merely campaign on their morals and good standing in the community so we can pick people who would make intelligent decisions but not necessarily ones that would choose a specific way on a specific issue. That's what you're asking for here.

That's actually why historically only land owners could vote. They had the most to lose and we're the most educated.

Regardless of "right or wrong" that did provide a safeguard against the likes of people like Trump, probably Hillery and Bernie as well.

Would it have safeguarded against Nixon, Reagan, Bush or McCarthy though?

(yes, I know, the latter was never president -- but still elected)

If you're throwing Reagan in as a bad president, you should throw JFK in too, since regarding policy/politically they were very close to each other.

I don't have any experience or knowledge on which to judge any presidents before Clinton. I just listed the usual suspects that come up in such discussions. Sure, consider JFK on that list too.

But no safeguard against Andrew Jackson.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com