This is what needs to change. Recently there was a story that Reese Witherspoon was in a jury, and the other jury members thought she was a real lawyer because of Legally Blonde. These people are not qualified to serve on a jury let alone vote.
Why are we getting input from people that couldn't run a small low traffic corner store on how to run a country? It's ridiculous, and it's the reason the US is in the mess it is now.
But how do you decide who votes? The fairest is obviously to allow voting for everyone. As soon as you try to single out 'unsuitable' people, you run into a problems of how you would do so? You could try to give people a basic test, but these 'literacy' tests were historically used to supress all kinds of minorities.
That is the true problem of democracy, it sucks, but everything else is miles worse. The people voted, the people get what they voted for. If you want a different result, convince people to vote differently.
That doesn't mean they would b e used to oppress minorities today. Except the minority that is deemed too ignorant to be granted a right to vote based on failing the test.
> That is the true problem of democracy, it sucks, but everything else is miles worse.
I don't think that's true, it's just that there is little motivation to come up with better alternative and people who try just get shit on for even trying as though it were an insurmountable goal.
In some places, of course it would be used to oppress minorities.
In other places, it would likely be used to oppress some other majority faction.
Not if the test and infrastructure for administering it is designed well to be resistant to this type of abuse, which it's possible to do.
Ideally, the goal would be not for people to resent not passing thee test and being unable to vote, but being motivated to better themselves until they are able to vote.
And therefore it will actually help?
Is anyone actually this naive?
> The fairest [would be] obviously to allow voting for everyone
Certainly not, you are playing on a shade of meaning of "obvious" (i.e. "apparent"): that is strongly unfair to the gifted, cultivated etc. - it is unfair in terms of merit. And it is unfair to those who want an optimal system at their residence, etc.
Repeat: there is a whole academic discipline about optimal voting. But it must become a real concern...
You mean my post? I'd say the weakness in what I propose are no where near as bad as the weaknesses in the system we currently have.
> there is a whole academic discipline about optimal voting.
And I would never discard that or the results of the relevant research, but I genuinely think the system we have in place is too flawed, to fundamentally broken, to really make progress or fix things. Half the country literally considered anything from any legitimate source that clashes with their beliefs as 'fake news'.
How does academia suggest this problem should be addressed?
No, I meant that about «weighted votes» with heavily imperfect criteria for the weighing.
> no where near as bad
Never an excuse for skipping due diligence.
> suggest
I suggest the problem is taken into serious consideration, because already looking at phenomena like gerrymandering is astonishing, and anti-intellectualism is abasing on both sides (of the failed and the failing), etc. There are leaking faucets: stop ignoring them, plan and fix them. That means, find solutions, propose them, convince the public, have them implemented.
How? Half the public outright denies truth and fact, proudly.
My point is that isn't happening. Due to partisan deadlock party P can't implement solution S.
If that «half the public outright denie[d] truth and fact, proudly» caused such «partisan deadlock» that «party P [couldn]'t implement solution S», what you had stated would be that no legislation would be passed...