No R or D (or any letter) by the name on the ballot. That would make it a bit tricky for those who don't look at anything else.

Robert A Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" holds this very same criticism: that people do not respect what they have not earned. I really enjoyed the book not only because I'm a sucker for sci-fi, but because it contains several very poignant philosophical debates - one of which talked about their "revised" voting system which was much more like the old Roman system where the path to citizenship lay in serving in the armed forces or by birth. In Heinlein's book, their society only gave voting rights to those who served in the armed forces. His rationale was that if you actually served the nation-state you would be in an exponentially better position to make choices regarding the future of that nation-state because you had "earned" that right/responsibility.

While I'm not quite to the point of agreeing 100% with Heinlein, I do concur with him that humans as a general rule do not value what we did not have to struggle to earn. In one way or another, voting should reflect either a mental or physical struggle. Physical via service time or mental via education.

I also wholly concur that those who work for government as contractors or recipients of welfare should give up their voting rights in exchange for their claims to subsistence. Both are subject to conflict of interest and therefore should be barred from voting with what effectively comes down to taxpayer moneys. I would extend this to all employees of government for the same reason.

I also believe that one of the critical things we should do is repeal the Seventeenth Amendment which elects Senators by popular vote instead of by their State Legislatures. The original major check on Federalism was to be the States, and this Amendment neuters the single most effective tool of the States to reign in Federalism.

I would also propose to overturn the Twelfth Amendment and eliminate Party-line voting for President/Vice-President. The Twelfth Amendment effectively neutered Impeachment of Executive officers because there is no threat to balance of power. And it makes the Vice-President's job largely ceremonial.

I would also remove the payment/funding of State Representatives (Senators/Congressmen) and ALL their staffs from the Federal budget and make the individual States responsible for their upkeep and spending oversight. That would eliminate them from being able to vote raises for themselves. I would also prohibit ALL Representatives from engaging in speculation in any form on penalty of immediate expulsion. All their investments prior to election would be locked in trusts and off-limits to eliminate profiteering. I would also prohibit ALL Representatives from engaging in professional lobbying after they leave office.

That would be a start, but in my opinion a good one.

I've frequently joked that in order to vote you have to be able to identify the President, the Vice President and the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates for the two major parties.

It's a really low bar. But it would probably screen out an astonishing number of voters!

The BIG problem for us as a society is how the franchise has been trivialized from the founding of America until where we find ourselves today.

This country was born from unrest over lack of representation. The franchise, having a say in your own destiny and government, was Important!!

Now, it has become a joke.
The political class does not want informed thinking voters.
They want sheeple that accept everything and question nothing.
The more widely the franchise has been extended, the more collectivist the country has becom.

As was said early on...."We are leaving you a republic, if you can keep it"

It appears that very few of us want a republic, instead the public has become somewhat conflicted.

On one hand hand with the seeming intent to pass the presidency between two families we are trying a new new nod for divine right of kings.
On the other hand, given the last 6 years, the explosive expansion of entitlement programs, and the death of both qualification and accountability, the public likes mob rule.


If you do not care about government and how it affects your life, why on earth do you think Government cares a whit about you?


Government in America was intended to protect our individual freedoms.

Government was not intended to support people unwilling to support themselves.

Pay more in taxes than you are getting in government payouts

Here here, but can we begin with all those people holding office and those who also running? It sounds like a great beginning, we could weed 80% of voters as well as the morons in Washington.

what about the original u.s. situation -- except that
women must be included::: land ownership. . this is
definite skin in the game -- part of the "skin" of the
country itself. -- j
.

In other wrds, take a test in order to qualify as a voter. Good idea! I think it should be similar to the test given to those applying for citizenship. Let's take it a step further and have all those elected to congress and the executive branch take the test before they take office. If nothing else, we'll know that they at the very least know the principles upon which the country was founded. It might even be a good idea to have them pass an oral test as well.

Most of your criteria cycle around the concept of 'understanding', freedomforall. The above-stated criteria would not eliminate any of the liberals of my acquaintance: they are intelligent and productive people. They are also people who have never been taken out of the 'context' of their lives - they have always lived in a peaceful and affluent part of the country.

Right now, we are concentrating in eliminating the deadwood from the voting population, but I think that slfischer has a good point: Once we start putting in barriers to voting, people are going to 'game' the system to prevent their opponents from voting.

I think that a very open and experience based requirement is where I would like to go: I agree with jbrenner that some sort of service is a reasonable requirement, but I would like to open the concept of service so that it is not just the military. I am thinking of something like the Swiss system, but with some changes: where at age 18 you but invited (but not required) to enlist in the military or in some other form of service. (The hidden agenda here is to get people out of their home environments and moved around the country and/or the world. I hope (unproven) that this may give them a grounding in reality.) There would have to be a provision for people older than 18 to enlist as well, of course, but the native path would be to finish HS, do service, come back and get a job and/or go to college. (The service enlistment could also serve as job training.)

No one would be required to participate in service in order to be a citizen or to participate in any way in the USA except that if you had not done service (a) you could not hold office, and (b) you could not vote.

Admittedly, on even days I think that any infringement of the right to vote is a bad idea...but the more I read on this list the more I wonder if setting some sort of requirement for 'doing' (as opposed to 'thinking') is not the best idea.

Jan, of two minds

How about a multiple vote point system?
Citizen of legal age? 1 point
Job? 1 point
Own Property? 1 point
Own a business? 1 point (each?)
Half a brain? 1 point
Whole brain? 1 point

Receiving entitlements? -2 points
Govt. paycheck? -1 point

And so on....

A surprising number of issues with Presidential and Congressional voting come from the fact that the system is rigged against new minority-party candidates.

The thinking goes like this: "Wow, Betty Smith makes a lot of sense, I'd love to vote for her. But she's not polling well, and if I vote for her, that's one less vote for Party X. Party X and Party Y are neck and neck, every vote makes a difference. I hate them both, but Party X is the lesser evil. Therefore I'll vote for Party X.

Meanwhile, everyone else thinks that way, so Betty Smith's votes count to almost zero.

There are countries such as Germany, New Zealand and Australia (Senate only), where votes are never wasted. In these countries, Betty Smith types will win Parliamentary seats, will have a voice, and will have the casting vote on critical issues. These countries have an electoral ecosystem which allows smaller parties to grow and thrive. In some cases, new smaller parties have grown to become the majority party.

Check your premises. Would you endorse literacy tests (again)? Without intention of insult, why not say only Objectivists may vote? Why not everyone on government subsistence being denied suffrage - which would include politicians, military, civil service, police, firefighters, and everyone else receiving a federal or state or city paycheck? -- Is there a "right" to vote or is it the entitlement earned by acquiring citizenship? So, define citizenship in the United States of America and in the individual states and in the cities, and what it means to acquire and evidence citizenship and under what circumstances citizenship is forfeit (e.g. felony or the denial of individual rights to another person). One cannot argue that voting should be based on taxes since taxes are acquired by force, nor that government service should be a condition, nor any concept be advanced that would deny individual rights or property. This Republic of the USA tried a number of these premises and you understand where we are today. And, yes, as another contributor suggested, the constitutional restrictions of amendments 12 and 17 might be best struck down by the Supreme Court, but we might be better off by striking down executive privilege first (across all three branches of government) and eliminating restrictions imposed on or by political party affiliation. Paraphrasing another contributor, other than citizenship (to be defined), qualifications placed on suffrage will be used to deny that privilege. Deal first with the definition of citizenship - and then suffrage should follow.

"Proving understanding" of anything necessarily implies a test that will be judged, opening the door to biased awarding of the right to vote, which I believe is exactly why the Supreme Court banned literacy tests for voting. All of (a), (b), and (d) above have this problem.

I'm all in favor of (c), though, at least in part. I think I would set a property qualification (and/or a requirement that the voter not be on the government payroll, including welfare) on voting for only one house of Congress (or any state legislature), so that new laws require the effective approval both of the entire population to which they will apply, and of the producers who are going to have to pay for them. If done right this should reduce welfare-state schemes to a reasonable level, though it won't shut them down completely as long as a majority supports them.

I would want to pair this with a sunset law so that existing subsidies don't continue indefinitely just out of habit.

Finally, I would require voter approval *in addition to legislative approval* on major changes to the system. A major change means any treaty; any constitutional amendment; the creation of a new agency (not subject to the sunset law); or the creation or abolition of any tax, or any new federal power. The Swiss do something like this.

Literacy, at least at an eighth-grade level. Proof of citizenship. These are bare-bones requirements. Oh--raise the voting age to 25. Recent research indicates that the human brain does not fully mature until around that time.

Prove that one contributes to society, by not accepting welfare.

Honestly, I don't think that the problem is suffrage. (Proof of citizenship of course, but that should be a given...but that's a whole 'nother discussion.). The problem as I see it is in who we elect and what they do post-election. Something must be done, I think, to rein in these career politicians who immediately start dispensing tax dollars to whomever. That problem is twofold: first, the cretins themselves who generate these pork barrel programs ad nauseum, and second, the rest of them who allow it to happen in order to get their turn at the trough. I don't pretend to know how to stop the cycle, but I can say with a great amount of certainty that nothing is going to get any better until this changes.

How would someone prove their understanding of the topics you mentioned?

this would make voting only accessible to, what 10%? 20%? of the population?

Any comments on how voting qualification should be done in the real Gulch, Atlantis? The original topic can be applied in that scenario, too. Many comments I see here are about minor changes to the existing voting system (however unlikely), but what would you do if you were a 'founder' of Atlantis?

I think you are all dreamers. You will never get those restrictions passed. Instead we should demand that the election laws we have be enforced. Make voter ID mandatory. To vote you must be a US citizen and have proof of residence. You can only vote in your place of residence and would require voter registration.

Stop the fraud. It should be harder to vote than get on an airplane not the other way around.

I like it now let's also add those brought up "blarman" and we would have a great first step!

Maintain a good productive lifestyle. Have no man live for my sake or I his.

The best qualification for suffrage is being a white working american male. The government makes us suffer more than any other group in the country!

I think you described High School prior to 1980.