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Comment by _mitterpach | Hacker News Reader

I agree that many people are not.. well intelectually suited for voting and making important decisions.

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.

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> You could try to give people a basic test, but these 'literacy' tests were historically used to supress all kinds of minorities.

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.

Have you not looked around lately?

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.

> In some places, of course it would be used to oppress minorities.

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.

Sure, but who, what body, would be established to do this and who would give the power to do so? With what oversight and with what enforcement?

With the current partisan deadlock, yeah, it would be kind of impossible to get anything passed. Ideally though the answer would be an independent, transparent body relying on solid research and making it's reasoning public and foolproof.

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.

So it would only be misused in places that have big problems, and would not be misused in places where there aren’t big problems?

And therefore it will actually help?

Is anyone actually this naive?

It wouldn't have to be misused anywhere. There is nothing naive about what I wrote, only your misinterpretation.

There exists a whole discipline in political science and mathematics about optimality in decisional workflows. So: you advance the discipline as a priority, then you reform states.

> 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.

You introduce weighted votes. Your vote carries more weight, the higher educated you are and the younger you are. This could be as simple as adding (85-age)/100 points to a vote for age, and GPA(or higher education = 5)/5 as a bonus for intelligence.

Then, as duly, you ask "what is under scrutiny and test wrong with the draft proposal, and fix and improve, iteratively"... There are a number of clear weaknesses in the above post already.

Repeat: there is a whole academic discipline about optimal voting. But it must become a real concern...

> There are a number of clear weaknesses in the above post already.

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?

> You mean my post

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.

> That means, find solutions, propose them, convince the public, have them implemented.

How? Half the public outright denies truth and fact, proudly.

By catching the train of a party that makes fixing problem P according to new academic solution S part of its electoral campaign programme.

Yeah, no shot. Half the population will reject solution S no matter what.

That has no impact on legislation unless the rule gets later repealed.

Don't you have that backwards in assuming the solution is already implemented? My point is it would not be able to be.

No, I said that once the legislative powers biased through the influence of party P implement solution S, then the burden of the other side is to repeal it. It's how things work, already without reforms...

> once the legislative powers biased through the influence of party P implement solution S,

My point is that isn't happening. Due to partisan deadlock party P can't implement solution S.

> that isn't happening

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...

Need to ban propaganda that benefits our enemies on social media, news, etc.

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