I highly doubt this. In 2015, only 60% of Americans had some idea of who Snowden was, and only half of those had a positive opinion of him. I doubt this has improved over the past five years either.
His comment says an idea of "who [Snowden] was", not of what he was trying to say.
It's things like this and people who believe the moon landing was faked that convinced me universal suffrage isn't a good thing, and we need some sort of poll test to make sure people are educated on issues before voting. I realize the US has a bad history with "literacy" tests, but it's clear that most people have no business voting.
Probably better off spending resources on improving education and political awareness.
I personally think that if we aren’t going to let someone vote then we shouldn’t ask them to pay tax either.
Agreed.
Conversely I believe that people who haven't paid tax in a reasonable amount of years, through either not generating it in the first place, avoision or being a net beneficiary of state aid shouldn't be offered a vote.
This is the same as saying "I don't believe disabled/poor people should be able to vote"
If you're mentally unfit to contribute to society then I believe you to be unfit to weigh in on our governance.
>unemployment
I previously mentioned within x amount of years (where x is deemed reasonable) to account for short stints of unemployment. I do not want the long term unemployed weighing in on our governance.
>pregnancy that year
Already covered
>international travel but still a citizen
If you're not present and contributing to a society, in my view, you should absolutely not have a say in the governance of that society. In fact, I find the idea abhorrent.
>As soon as you start pointing to reasons that a government can/ can't take away your power to vote you are screwed as a populace.
Not really. Our species has survived and thrived for tens of thousands of years before widespread "voting" became available. The free-for-all in terms of access to voting is very modern, and very Western.
The modern West is, coincidentally enough, now in a freefall downward spiral from which it likely won't recover. We've went from high trust, well functioning societies where one person could go out to work in a blue collar job and support a family, to a very low trust society now hanging on to false premises like a house of cards, where even two people working full time can struggle to put food on the table.
Screwed as a populace? We're already frogs in the pot and that is with this fancy "everyone gets a say" notion in place.
>Not that i have much faith in the voting system anyways cause' who knows how they count the votes anyways.
My lack of faith in the voting system is that some entity, barely through puberty, highly influence-able, no skin in the game and therefore nothing to lose, can be told by some troglodyte celebrity to go vote for their (the celebrity's) candidate of choice and that vote is exactly equal to that of someone who contributes to society and invests their time in keeping on top of the issues that society faces.
Sorry, but when it comes to governing a society in the name of preserving and advancing its wellbeing, the above is nothing more than a joke and a cruel one at that.
Then perhaps folks living internationally shouldn't be taxed. the truth of the matter is that living elsewhere doesn't release you from being taxed or filing tax returns: Folks in high-tax countries won't get additional tax, but folks in cheap places do.
I'll add that there are myriads of reasons folks won't pay taxes: Staying home to take care of children or parents is one of them.
I 100% agree. This is unique to the USA, as far as I understand it, and only applicable to those earning over $100K, but in my opinion no non-resident should be taxed.
Your state’s Secretary of State should be able to describe the vote counting process and how it is monitored by third parties. Confidence in the voting system is crucial in a democracy. Having questions is good but the answers do exist.
Or people who might be expected to get sent away to inflict violence and suffer the consequent dangers of doing so.
Heinlein was all sorts of fucked up, but his repeated idea of ex serving military being more equipped to vote for the people who get to choose to deploy the military certainly has some merit.
Let's come out and say it: this is a policy designed to consolidate power in the hands of the rich.
Universal suffrage is important.
Low information voting isn’t new either.
If it helps, I’d also stop the elderly from getting a vote once they’re within x years of the average life expectancy for their gender. If you’re not going to have to live with the consequences, you really shouldn’t be getting a say in things.
But don't use that as an excuse to disenfranchise the poor. Poor people are often better informed the richer people.
I wouldn't be surprised, but I'm still going to ask for some proof to the above?
1. Future tense because right now the US doesn't have 1 person 1 vote equivalence for most elections.
How does that work once the idiots are in charge of the budget?
> 1. Future tense because right now the US doesn't have 1 person 1 vote equivalence for most elections.
Well it does. The confusion is about what you’re voting for.
Society collapses and we become a failed state - but states fail all the time, universal suffrage appears to minimize the number of states that need to fail.
> Well it does. The confusion is about what you’re voting for.
When it comes to voting for president, my vote as a Vermonter is objectively worth 2.63 times as much as my friend from Washington - additionally the FPTP voting approach and winner take-all electoral college causes a lot of other oddities that make my VT vote essentially worthless when compared with a resident of PA.
There are a few ways we break 1 person 1 vote equivalence and while we can argue whether that's a good or bad thing you can't argue against it being the case.
Curious claim. Has there been any research that shows states are less likely to fail with universal suffrage?
> When it comes to voting for president, my vote as a Vermonter is objectively worth 2.63 times as much as my friend from Washington
See, that’s the confusion. You’re not voting for president directly. You’re voting for who you want your electoral college to vote for. In most states if you’re on the losing side of the vote in your state, your presidential vote literally means nothing.
Your individual vote in Vermont is not “worth more” than your friend’s vote in Washington because your both just voting in state level decisions about who the college should vote for.
The legitimate claim is about the number of delegates and (arguably much more important) the number of house representatives each state is getting.
Reiterated, there isn’t a lack of 1 person 1 vote equivalence in any elections I know of in the US (e.g. landowners don’t get extra votes). There are just elections people think are direct democracy when they are far from it.
I don't disagree on the point of voting - it's not technically a direct election of the president. But we're still voting to impact the presidential election and my vote counts more toward that decision than my friend in WA.
The only society's that i can think of that lasted a long time were society's that didn't have universal suffrage. The idea of a republic is pretty stupid to be honest. What you end up with is a bunch of people with completely different agendas to ensure that every issue gets hotly debated and when a decision is 'made', barely enforced or executed on. Additionally, it seems to give rise to massive paternalism and loss of freedom which is suppose to be the opposite of what it was meant to do.
We've decided to go the opposite direction. The US media, celebrities, big companies, etc. have all decided that a huge low-information voter turnout > smaller but better informed voter turnout.
Indeed, apparently democracy is better when everyone participates, regardless of whether a vast amount of those people have the slightest iota of what they're participating about.
Okay, now start thinking about what happens when the political party you like least takes power and starts rewriting the poll test questions to advantage themselves. Then perhaps you'll see why this would be a catastrophically bad policy.
In principle, that's a great idea. I mean, we do have to take driving tests before we are allowed to operate dangerous machinery. We should be required to take tests before we are allowed to affect the lives of millions of people.
You can have a similar argument for parenthood. Require classes before people are allowed to bring another human into their care. Nurses have to, why not parents?
The problem with that is that these tests/lectures are defined by other humans. This shifts an enormous amount of power into the hands of a few. Next thing you know, you now have a handpicked elite eligible to vote. The US has historically used this mechanism for segregation.
Having universal suffrage (which is not yet very universal in a few countries, US included) at least allows the average to smooth out outliers. It does create perverse incentives towards not allowing the population to get TOO literate, otherwise they will be educated enough to see through all the BS.
Collectively, we need to focus on improving education for everyone and fighting disinformation. World War 3 has already begun - except it's using words, not weapons.
Are driving tests not designed by other humans? Drivers test writer could already design the tests in such a way that would have them favour certain groups. They ensure a minimum level of competency, which seems reasonable to expect from those who are voting or raising children.
> Next thing you know, you now have a handpicked elite eligible to vote
This seems like the slippery slope fallacy.
> not yet very universal in a few countries, US included
Who isn't allowed to vote?
A not-so-subtly hidden and totally racist/anglophile question, designed to weed out people/cultures who don't historically follow England vs Australia cricket and know it's "legends". Upper middle class middle aged Englishman? Welcome in sir! Your skin isn't pure white except for the 4 days of summer it turns lobster colour? Well you're not "a good cultural fit" here, sorry.
On the grander scheme, any avenue for political groups to obtain or retain power will be abused. This is why we don't require licenses for people to have children, because the system will be abused in order to ensure a politically desirable future generation.
I absolutely agree that most people are stupid and should not vote (to put it bluntly), but the alternative is much worse.
"The issues" vary between people. How many do you include? Are they just the basic stuff the news covers? Do you need to know federal, state, and local issues? If you vote in a federal election, do you need to know issues in different parts of the country? Wouldn't the test show the biases of the test makers?
That's why they're a bad idea and should not return.
Knowing more than someone else does not make you morally superior or give you more of a right to have a say in your own fate.
We only allow those of a certain age to vote because they are able to understand and weigh the issues fairly.
We only allow those of a certain age to be juriors for that reason.
Yes, but we draw a simple, arbitrary rule at a fixed age because everyone grows older, so it isn't manipulable by anyone who is motivated to do so.
If the vote permission line is drawn by more complex means that gives a different answer for different people, it becomes a primary target for manipulation, abuse, and group selectivity.
For example if it was based on IQ tests or even general knowledge tests, it is already well understood that these are heavily biased tests which test for social background, culture and upbringing, rather than general intelligence.
If there's going to be a voter test, it needs to be extremely robust, something just about everyone has confidence in to be fair and appropriate.
I totally agree that it's sad that we're in this place of apathy. But it's hard to get folks all excited when they don't believe it'll really affect them personally.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200618030047/https://www.balti...
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-jan-16-na-wiret...
And we know that they have such servers from the events surrounding Room 641A. Snowden also released documents from that incident, such as the NSA attempt to stop publication.
And in my article, the NSA claims they can not legally search such data without a warrant. It doesn't say they are unable to access the data illegally though
No, that is not what xkeyscore is. Xkeyscore is a database for metadata.
> And we know that they have such servers from the events surrounding Room 641A.
And thanks to Snowden's leaks, we now know that these are for tapping communications between foreigners where both foreigners are outside the US.
> It doesn't say they are unable to access the data illegally though
Within the US, they can only do so by asking the phone company to set up a tap, just like the FBI. Your article does not dispute this.
For a state-level actor (or the mobile provider itself or those other corporations to which it sells data for advertising purposes) to identify by name the human being who is the source of phone calls, is trivial in most countries today.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webca...