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Comment by epgui | Hacker News Reader

> If we're going to arbitrarily require a competence test for all voters under 25, then I say we should also mandate a competence test for all voters over age 65

I would agree that this is a prima facie good idea. I would say that it would be a prima facie good idea for all ages.

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One would have to be pretty ignorant of history to think this would in practice be a good idea. In reality these tests would be abused to ensure certain voting populations would have a lower rate of representation.

https://americanhistory.si.edu/democracy-exhibition/vote-voi...

Bad implementations shouldn’t prevent you from toying with an idea in theory in your head. That’s just a failure of the imagination (in many cases).

But its not just a bad implementation that led to abuse, its practically every implementation was a bad implementation that led to abuse. See the White Australia policy and the Franchise and Ballot Act in South Africa for even more examples. Got any examples where such an action was actually a good thing for society and not just to repress minorities? I could probably continue coming up with more with enough thinking about it and reading history.

But hey, feel free to continue arguing for policies which historically were only implemented to suppress minorities. I'm sure it'll all go well this time.

"Toying with an idea" is fundamentally considering its real world implementation unless your toy idea is intended to only ever be just fantasy.

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