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From: liberte@uiucdcs.UUCP (liberte )
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: voting (more FLAME) - (nf)
Message-ID: <6418@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 27-Mar-84 03:27:30 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.6418
Posted: Tue Mar 27 03:27:30 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Mar-84 05:06:33 EST
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#R:yale-com:-296400:uiucdcs:29200111:000:3901
uiucdcs!liberte    Mar 27 01:55:00 1984

Although the concept of limiting voting has serious problems, as scott has
pointed out, there are certain aspects of it that still make sense.  (I hope
this hot air I am letting off here is not too flamable. :-)

First of all, you must recognize, as hogpd!keduh pointed out, that we already
limit voting in a number of ways.  By age, by criminal record, by U.S.
citizenship, and maybe other criteria I am unaware of.  I do not necessarily
agree with these criteria, but only point out how we accept them, by default,
as valid criteria.  Seems to me that there may be some pretty serious
problems with each of these.

In addition to these legislated criteria, there are also a plethora of
non-legislated criteria which serve to inhibit, limit or prohibit otherwise
eligible people from voting.  People dont *want* to vote if they dont know
who or what they are voting for.  People have a hard time voting if they are
disabled.  Sometimes people *wont* vote if Nobody is running.  These kinds of
criteria must be considered if you are trying to achieve a better system of
government.  These are things people dont always have a choice about.

None of this directly addresses the question of an education criteria.  But
all of it is indirectly related.  It seems that the main justification for
an age criteria is that older people are wiser, in general, and younger 
people tend to do foolish things (as well as very wise things too).  Why 
else do you think we have an age criteria?  Granted, wisdom is not knowledge.
But they go together to a great extent.

To become a U.S. citizen, and thus be eligible (responsible?) to vote, an
alien humanoid type person must pass a certain test, I believe.  This test
involves some knowledge of the English language and of the U.S. constitution,
or something along those lines.  But natural citizens dont have to pass any
such test.  Is this fair?

Criminals who have commited a felony or some such "serious" crime are not
allowed to vote, I believe.  But is their felony conviction always fair?
If they were better educated, might they have gotten a better lawyer or
might the jury have been more leanient?  ("They" in the singular sense)

What I am trying to do here is weaken the absolutely clear boundary between
no voting criteria and "unreasonable" voting criteria.  All criteria have
problems, and "no criteria" may have more problems.  We as a government of
people (supposedly) decide what we as a whole (majority anyway) want those
criteria to be.  Of course, if we are good people, we will try to set up
criteria that benefit everyone as much as possible.

I have no specific arguments on the education criteria, but I think there
may be some value to it.  It would *not* be a fair criteria if it served
to keep people uneducated or oppressed in other ways.  But it seems to
me that it would be a good criteria if it served to promote education of
and for everyone.  The question is could it serve that positive goal?
Another question thet comes before that is whether education is good
in the first place?


One final topic (and the original motivation for writing) on alternative
voting rules:  If everyone could vote for as many of the available
candidates or choices on issues as they wanted, then perhaps the more
agreeable choices would win.  Instead of primaries to eliminate candidates,
have all candidates on the final ballot and voters may vote for as many of
them as they wish.  If they vote for all, that is as good as not voting.
(A refinement to this method is to prioritize votes, but that is sometimes
impossible.)  The winner would be the candidate who was ok by more people.
This method has a name which escapes me.  There have been articles in
Scientific American on voting methods.  One thing that impressed me from
one article was that no method is totally fair.  Each had problems.


Daniel LaLiberte
(uiucdcs!liberte)
Urbana, IL