Wow. Good proposals. I like it

I was going to mention that citizenship (according to Heinlein) was also for bureaucrats and cooks, but got off into our Constitution. Thanks for the correction.

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

One of my favorite books.

One correction, citizenship was awarded for Federal Service, not necessarily in the armed forces. A difference he pointed out a couple of times in the novel. The most illustrative being when Rico was going through induction processing.

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.

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

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!

Ever see the YouTube video of the street interview with Melowese Richardson? She's the one who was sentenced to 5 years in prison for several counts of voter fraud ("I voted for Obama lots a times!") She was subsequently released (before she finished her sentence) and appeared on stage somewhere with Al Sharpton, who gave her a big hug for all the support she gave to our president. The only thing she could ever qualify for would be a place to live in a zoo, where she could earn a living doing funny animal tricks for the spectators.

I like it.
Add, Graduated high School +2, GED +1

I think you described High School prior to 1980.

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.

There's no "probably" about screening out an astonishing number of voters.
Well, old dino would not be astonished..
I got over being astonished after seeing my first three presentations of Watter's World on the O'Reily Factor.
I no longer find those questioned low information for dumb as a brick voters funny.
I have cringed and gone channel surfing during that segment.
No one so stupid should be allowed to vote--or maybe even drive a car.

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.

How about brains as a qualification?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ebpa1YS...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBG1AsBx...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4iTZrbx...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_yUM3gt...

I would love that.

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

I disagree with the whole notion of qualifications for suffrage other than being an American of age. If you put any qualifications on it, then they can be twisted to reject anyone.

I like that idea. No D or R or even L party line voting either. They would at least have to know something about who they are voting for. Even if it is just their name.

Their voting themselves raises is not direct as say teachers in a local election voting on their own school budgets.

Their votes elect representatives (house & senate) who then have to create and pass legislation to raise military pay as a whole. The same as any other voter.

Vote dilution is another factor to consider, military votes span the entire country. So their votes are not a single block, they are diluted among the general votes of every state and territory entitled to vote.

Of course this makes me wonder about the non-citizens they are allowing into the military. Do they get to vote? (I am against non-citizens in our military and given the franchise under any circumstance)

Not sure I am understanding what you're saying. The military personnel are voting for government officials the same way that someone on govt. "assistance" is so they are essentially voting for policies that affect their pay. opening and closing of military bases, and combat operations. Please don't get me wrong, I do not intend to put military personnel on the same level as a class of moochers. I just put it out there as something that would have to be considered in the unlikely event that making restrictions on voting ever was seriously considered.

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.

You are right. "Paying taxes" doesn't necessarily mean you have skin in the game. Which is nuts!

Since so many government employees outside the military are unionized, voting the way trade unions do follows.

Allowing government employees to unionize did much harm.