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Comment by ptero | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if it would be better if voting cost a small amount of money, say $50 (everyone can easily afford to save $50 once every two years). That would encourage those who choose to vote to research the issue (if they care enough to pay $50 they likely care about the choices).

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That's a poll tax, and in implementation is what is known as "regressive". That $50 is far, far more dear to some minimum wage single mom, than a CEO. That in fact is the objection to many of the voter IDs GOP states keep pressing for; the goal, as stated, is simply to prevent voting fraud, but the actually results are to disenfranchise the poor, who can't necessarily afford the $25-50 cost, nor can they afford the time off work to take public transit to a DMV (or similar) during the times they're open. Effectively, you're setting the bar higher for the poor than for the rich to vote.

> That in fact is the objection to many of the voter IDs GOP states keep pressing for

Tangential, but this is a great example of a fabricated wedge issue in American politics. The solution is so simple, just issue everyone a free national ID card. Passports should be free too and could also double for this purpose. Then the Republicans can stop complaining about voter fraud and Democrats can stop complaining about voter disenfranchisement (the latter of these I am legitimately concerned about, I just wish someone would actually follow through and do something about it).

Also, it's ridiculous that there isn't a national holiday at least on the day of the presidential elections.

There are many voting laws/rights regarding employment for states. If you don't like that there isn't one, or it isn't paid, or it doesn't give you enough time; well then, you should probably talk to your representatives.

http://www.findlaw.com/voting-rights-law.html

Oh yeah they're going to be real eager to hear from someone who can't vote.

In the United States, that's prohibited (for federal elections, at least) by the 24th Amendment.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxxiv

You know why voting taxes were ruled unconstitutional, right?

I don't.

They grew out of Jim Crow laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_taxes_in_the_United_State...

(In addition, imagine an interest group instituting a "we'll pay your poll tax for you!" campaign, but only in counties carefully selected for demographics.)

Yea, but the racist origins are not an explanation why poll taxes are inherently unconstitutional. I feel like there's a step missing in the explanation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fourth_Amendment_to_the...

See, tangent128? This is an example of an explanation.

I have better solution: Break up Mega Govts. They are truely too big to fail. USG can exploit as much as it wants because it knows citizens have nowhere to go.

This will happen eventually. That which is unsustainable will not be sustained. I hope it will happen the "easy way", through popular votes in the seceding areas, but that will depend very much on the attitudes of federal officials at that time. Also it will probably depend on which areas secede first, and why they are popularly understood to have chosen to secede.

One possible sequence:

1) Trump fever sweeps Rs to power in 38 state legislatures two years from now.

2) Those legislatures pander to morons by passing a Constitutional Amendment barring those without physician-issued certificates of femininity from women's restrooms.

3) Millions of Californians take to the streets in protest for weeks at a time, unable to accept life under what comes to be called "wrong-partheid".

4) Desperate business owners cast about for some way to get everyone back to work, and hit upon secession. A plebiscite is called, and with 90% of California citizens voting, every county except Modoc and Lassen vote to secede. Those counties petition Oregon for admission, but are turned down and have to join Nevada instead. Then Las Vegas has a vote to secede from Nevada, but last-minute distributions of maps illustrating where the water comes from cause secession to fail.

At this point, Trump could send in the Army to enforce the Union, but I really hope he doesn't. If he did, many soldiers would refuse the order, and many generals would push for some other solution. Perhaps California will bribe Trump with some real estate deals. They can write it into their new constitution to make sure it's legal.

After that I would hope for many more secessions. This nation needs to be drastically shrunken to put all the lobbyists out of business.

I'd rather people just be required to take a quiz like http://isidewith.com I'm guessing a fair number of people would be surprised by the result.

The problem is who gets to set the questions on the quiz. This inevitably ends up being discriminatory.

I was pretty surprised to see I aligned with Trump on most issues, but I am also skeptical that Trump really holds all of those stances.

George Santayana would like you to visit Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test

So have an audio version available?

Literacy tests were not about literacy; the questions were often intentionally ambiguous (Think "What is the last letter of the first word?" or "Write backwards forwards."), allowing the instructor full discretion in passing or failing the would-be voter.

Predictably, nonwhite voters tended to be failed.

Then what I suggested bears no resemblance to a literacy test. You wouldn't need to "pass" the test, just simply take it in order to encourage you to consider the issues and how the candidates align with your views.

But I agree with the other commenter, selecting the questions in a fair way would be challenging.

I just think that the more emotional voters, the ones more easily manipulated by propaganda, are more likely to keep voting when it costs something, whereas people who don't care all that much will just not bother anymore. I'm not sure if that will generate a representative and, uh, positive outcome.

Better for who?

There's also the problem that many jurisdictions have 2+ elections each year. A federal poll tax would create quite a bit of room for local poll taxes that would be that much more abusive.

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