Comment on Have Americans always been this stupid?
abbadon420@lemm.ee 21 hours agoDemocracy might be the problem. You could put a threshold to vote in place, something to test that you know all the views from all the parties and the relevant topics. It’s a slippery slope though, because once you enable restrictions on voting, it’s hard to disable it again. If you accidentally get a Trump in power, he might just as easily restrict voting back to cis, white males only.
Condiment2085@lemm.ee 20 hours ago
I was wondering if a top age restriction could be good though. People use to not live so damn long that they could fuck over the future generation.
Like shouldn’t people who will actually be alive to see the changes they are making make the decisions? Why are we letting people vote who are on their death bed, probably base their decisions on stuff from 50 years ago, and don’t really care about what the people who will actually live that reality will experience?
Not sure what the cutoff should be. But if 17 year olds aren’t old enough to vote, maybe 60+ year olds aren’t young enough to vote?
OpenStars@piefed.social 15 hours ago
Maybe, just maybe, it shouldn't be an age but a knowledge requirement. Some 10 year olds know that there are (were?) e.g. 3 branches of government, while I kid you not there are some 20+ year olds that are not aware of that plain and simple fact fact. On average, older people tend to be a little bit more knowledgeable than young, if only due to having had more time to figure stuff out, although otoh also society does change out from under them - e.g. which is more trustworthy, something seen on the TV "news", or something shared on TikTok?
It seems more like an attitude of responsibility to me than an age or anything else. Perhaps make college degree a requirement - while keeping the GI bill offering college funding to people who successfully serve (without being dishonorably discharged) in the military. Or just a test of how government "works".
Or rather, used to work. We aren't coming back from this, methinks.
Condiment2085@lemm.ee 13 hours ago
Yeah all good points honestly.
I was thinking changing something age related would be more hard to argue with, but any “test” we give people could feel unfair. Like think about how many languages it would have to be translated to, and what if you accidentally entered the wrong answer?
I kind of love the idea but it’s just hard to imagine the problems at scale.
Maybe we should go after the electoral college instead since ultimately they make the decisions??
OpenStars@piefed.social 12 hours ago
Omg, you might not have been paying attention lately, but I 100% guarantee that it will be solely in English. Assuming we are allowed to vote again, which tbf we probably will, it's just that the options will be preselected for us. As it has pretty much always been, but moar so now.