Comment 6184

By appalbarry (registered) - website | Posted April 01, 2007 at 11:55:51

The late great Robert Heinlein once proposed that that potential voters should have to answer an intelligence testing question before being allowed to vote. Something like solving a simple quadratic equation, a high school level test.

He also suggested that as a condition of voting you should make a cash deposit, take the test question, and get your money refunded only if you passed and were allowed to vote.

More and more I like his idea. My sense is not that our problem is with the people who don't vote, it's with the people who DO vote, but who accept whatever the politicians and media tell them without question.

Anyone who has worked a poll on election day can tell you stories about voters who walk in and who cannot name even one candidate, much less discuss their platforms.

Why are these people voting? What damage does that do to our system of government?

I'm looking at Stephen Harper, and honestly I assume that he'll come out of the next election with majority government.

He'll do that by flat out pandering to whatever group he thinks can give him votes, even if he has no intention to follow through on any of those promises.

He knows that most of the media won't challenge what he says, and that most voters are too lazy to bother exploring the veracity of what's being said or the likelihood that it will actually happen.

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