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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (91619)	10/23/2008 8:09:24 PM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541345

I don't think everyone should vote. I support the right to vote but think people who don't know enough to vote should do the right thing and stay home. ... Anyone too lazy or busy or stupid to register has no business voting, IMO. I do know what you mean there. I often feel there should be some minimum tests, like having to name all the main candidates and at least one policy of each before being allowed through. However I just can't quite ethically justify it to myself, though, no matter how tempting disenfranchisement of the stupid and/or ignorant might be. And looking at the other POV, it seems right that people should be reminded of their duty (as well as right) to vote. After all, even once registered people are not forced to vote, so the "don't cares" probably don't affect things anyway - as a rule. Actually it's one of the few areas where I almost align with Heinlein, politically. The novel "Starship Troopers" glorifies militarism almost to the point of fascism, but one of the interesting philosophical stances it takes is that the right to vote is granted only after national service (though it implied this is generally military service, whereas I as benign autocrat would include certain other voluntary services). A 'right' granted for nothing but being alive is not valued. There's a saying here... if you didn't bother voting, don't bother to complain. But I think that's as far as it goes. And we generally only get 60-70% turnout at general elections these days, the trend has been downwards for some decades. BTW in many European states voting is compulsory, so I don't know what they do for registration but I'd assume it's address-linked somehow.