[michaelmrose]

I'm saying that objectively people who are privileged by existing broken systems and people who are uneducated both make bad choices.

If we made college free I would absolutely be OK with making completing a degree a prerequisite to being allowed to vote along with an IQ test every 10 years excluding people under 90 and a pop quiz on current events where people who couldn't answer such questions as who their senators are would see their vote go straight in the trash.

Excluding people who are lazy, stupid, or ignorant would result in a better decision making process. None of this is politically possible.

[nradov]

Are you familiar with the ugly history of literacy tests being used to disenfranchise Black voters? Let's not repeat that kind of discrimination.

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

[incadenza]

Strip just under 50% of the country of voting rights to combat creeping authoritarianism? At least you’re shameless I guess.

[michaelmrose]

Do you actually think 50% of the population couldn't get a college degree even if it was free or do you think half both desire to vote but couldn't be bothered to attend to such trivial details as who their senators are?

Only about 15% have an IQ less than 90. 85% could absolutely get a degree and pay minimal attention. Will they all? No and if only 50% of the population bothers that would in that case be on them. They would in that scenario be throwing away their own rights by declining to participate. Spending A 4 year cycle reading your facebook feed and voting for the guy you saw in between the beer commercial and the game last night isn't participation.

[imaginariet]

> people who couldn't answer such questions as who their senators are would see their vote go straight in the trash

Your proposal would send to the trash the votes of 90% of black people. How progressive...

> Only 16 percent of Latinos and 10 percent of African-Americans were able to correctly identify one senator from his or her home state

> 77 percent of Americans between 18 and 34 could not name one senator in his or her home state

https://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/poll-millennials-stat...

Maybe we should just remove voting altogether and just have 20 PhDs from Harvard/Standford/Yale and MIT decide who should run the country to avoid the unwashed masses decide such an important aspect of our life.

[michaelmrose]

How can people who don't even know who they are voting for until they go in a booth and see whose name has an R or a D by it possibly pick good leaders?

If in a century people are living in the carcass of civilization will we celebrate that we achieved our ruin progressively or inclusively?

Let's be real though people aren't worried about being progressive they are more apt to worried because they support a political party that could never survive without the ignorant and the stupid.

If only people with college degrees who actually made a minimal effort to follow non Facebook meme politics could vote the republicans would only be competitive vs the green party.

[isoskeles]

If only people with college degrees who actually made a minimal effort to follow non Facebook meme politics could vote, both the democrats and republicans would be different parties. The parties and their message to voters are influenced by who is voting in the first place.

Additionally, which party do you associate with calls to lower the voting age? I do not associate Republicans with this. How does this fit with your belief that allowing "only people with college degrees" would overwhelmingly vote for Democrats. Why isn't the Republican party demanding we lower the voting age to 16? Granted, neither party directly asks for this, but you can find little organizations here[1] and there[2] asking for it, and maybe the occasional individual House member[3].

1: https://www.fairvote.org/lower_the_voting_age

2: https://www.youthrights.org/blog/young-democrats-of-america-...

3: https://meng.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/meng-rein...

[jazzyjackson]

lmao this guy wants to bring back literacy tests

[michaelmrose]

Literacy tests were biased in the post civil war era not only because black folks were at a substantially disadvantaged insofar as becoming literate in that era but because veterans of the civil war and their progeny were exempt as were other fellows of "good character".

That is to say it was used as an excuse to prevent black folks from voting whilst many white illiterates were welcomed into the voting booth.