Jonah Goldberg thinks there should be a test for voting, and there is much merit in his argument. The American public, including large swaths of the voting public, are abysmally ignorant of how our government works and what they're voting on. Millions of people pay no attention to politics for four years and then, a week before the election, listen to the news sound bites for some reason to vote against one candidate or the other.
Every election season our local newspapers urge people to get out and vote as if the act of voting itself indicated political responsibility and a healthy democracy. This advice is as wrongheaded as it can be. If anything, people should actually be discouraged from voting. Voting should not be made overly convenient and should only be undertaken by those who really want to vote and who have taken the time to learn a little bit about who and what they're voting for. No one who cannot name two or three Supreme Court justices, at least one of their U.S. Senators, or the Vice-president is, in my mind, qualified to enter the voting booth. Nor is one qualified who can't speak English.
Here's Goldberg:
So, maybe, just maybe, we have our priorities wrong. Perhaps cheapening the vote by requiring little more than an active pulse (Chicago famously waives this rule) has turned it into something many people don't value. Maybe the emphasis on getting more people to vote has dumbed-down our democracy by pushing participation onto people uninterested in such things. Maybe our society would be healthier if politicians aimed higher than the lowest common denominator. Maybe the opinions of people who don't know the first thing about how our system works aren't the folks who should be driving our politics, just as people who don't know how to drive shouldn't have a driver's license.
Instead of making it easier to vote, maybe we should be making it harder. Why not test people about the basic functions of government? Immigrants have to pass a test to vote; why not all citizens?
An uninformed citizenry is a threat to a democracy. An uniformed citizenry that votes is a calamity. The right to vote, like the right to bear arms, should not be granted to everyone without qualification.
RLC
