Independent++ : comments [Matthew's Journal]

Yes, I came to the conclusion that you either had to be honest, and make democracy unfair (some sort of voting test, to weed out mad and bad voters, to go with the ideas of driving and parenting tests) or you had to make democracy what the people wanted. As you'd be mad to put the power of who can vote in the hands of the government that option is out. Especially as "mad and bad" often mean "don't agree with me".

I still can't see (aside from buerocratic d00m) too many flaws in the idea of having to prove you know your parties policies before you're allowed to vote for them. A short number of multichoice questions on the main issues to which the parties get to write their own answer, and you have to be able to tick the answers of the people you're voting for. And you can have as many goes as you like until you've proved you know what you're voting for and can go and vote. However, a combination of burocratic d00m and Bad People probably makes it impossible, and if people had to spend any more time voting the turnout would be ever lower. Although personally I don't mind if we loose the "Can't be bothered to educate myself" vote... :-/

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Well, that's a reasonable position to take, but I don't see on the one hand how you (i.e. "one") can bang on about the inequities of FPTP while on the other requiring some kind of filter of intelligence/knowledge in order that the true views of the people not be reflected from the ballot box to the legislature.

How would you feel if the line was arbitrarily drawn above you and you were consequentially disenfranchised? It's an arbitrary line after all - you've just said "main issues" - your main issues are almost certainly very different from the one which decided the way I'd cast my vote this time. So what if the only thing which came above my horizon was an irrational fear of being taken over by Europe or swamped by immigrants?

Let me put it another way. A lot of people were pissed off when we went to war on the basis of government leaders who said "Trust us - we know what we're doing, and we believe that what we're doing is in your best interests, and we know more than you do". Isn't what you're proposing pretty much the same thing, with a line drawn in a different place?

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No. Because I'm not proposing a test one can fail. I'm proposing that it be very much like the driving theory test, only much much shorter. So the questions and answers will be made publically available (along with which answer belongs to which party/MP) at the time when the election is announced / manifestos are released. You could also have as many goes at sitting the thing as you liked, free of charge. So all my test requires one to do is to take the half an hour(?) to memorise the answers for your party. In fact, I wouldn't be against making it open book - if you're organised enough to write down / cut out the answers and take them with you to the polling booth then good on you. It's not really an intelligence test at all, it's a "can't be arsed" test, or a "has the faintest idea what these parties actually believe nowadays" test.

If your irrational fear about Europe being swamped by immagrants was that great, it could probably spur you on to learn and remember some trivia about the anti-immagrants party for 5 minutes, which in turn might give you a broader idea of the issues for the next election.

Obviously it may be possible to think of edge cases who should be entitled to vote, but are not capable of answering four simple open book questions. In which case there should be an exemption committee to deal with them on a case to case basis. But I can't think of any myself.

(I don't think this would actually work, because it's so open to abuse, or to skewing whole campaigns until they become soundbites on the four issues chosen by the government. But I think in a hypothetical situation it's not a bad idea.)

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In a democracy, everyone is entitled to vote, on whatever basis they see fit, be that "who the Sun editorial said to vote for", "the party with the prettiest logo", "the party on the top of the ballot paper", or "the party who closest represents my views". Certainly, it would be better if everyone went for the last option, but democracy doesn't give you the option of trying to enforce this. As someone once said "democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the others".

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Err, to clarify: I agree that it would be better if everyone thought carefully about who to vote for, but I don't agree that we should attempt to impose this on people.

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In a democracy, everyone is entitled to vote, on whatever basis they see fit

I really can't see how that assertion flows from the meaning of "democracy".

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I think you're missing something fairly key here - one of the effects, and indeed, I think, one of the original aims of the way we vote in this country is that people who are either fully or functionally illitterate can vote without any problems - you recognise the party icon, and you make a cross. Easy.

These people will rather fall into your 'Can't be bothered to educate myself' category. I don't think we have any right to nick these people's votes, and the more complex the system, the more that's exactly what we're doing, whether we put them through multi-guess exams or not.

And before you say 'but hardly anyone's illiterate in this country' think again. Think of the number of kids who leave school with no qualificiations. Think how many more there were thirty or so years ago. I always come back to something we were told in a 'how not to get sued' session at the vet school - that you should be reading the consent form to all your clients, because a good proportion of them won't actually be able to read it.

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Ok, this is obviously one of the edge cases I couldn't think of, and they should be allowed to go and do the test by talking to people. (How does recognising the logo work if they want to vote for independants in the current system, BTW?)

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Most illitterate people recognise word-shapes.

By doing it orally, they lose their secret ballot.

I'm really not at all sure this is the point, though. We have no right to ask people, literate or otherwise, to jump through hoops for their vote. Universal suffrage should mean just that. Not universal suffrage of clever people, or educated people, or people who are engaged in politics, or of people with views we aggree with. Just universal.

Most people who don't care don't vote, in any case. And I'm sure your BNP / UKIP / random loony party voters would have passed your test, because they *do* care, and *are* engaged with the issues.

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Err, the test happens completely seperately to the vote. You earn your right to vote, and then you can go off and vote on a piece of paper just as you always did.

And I'm not arguing against the engaged right-wingers. I'm probably arguing most about the people who think New-Labour are Labour, but I wasn't arguing anything in specific. I'm arguing against the people who don't have a clue what they're voting for. The "I don't know anything about their policies, but the Sun said..." or the "my husband always told me to vote for.." etc etc etc. I don't care if people disagree with me politically. But I do want them to know what they're doing, and to vote for the party they actually "agree with"/"think they're voting for".

I think we (and me and Emp) just fundamentally disagree. I think that letting people who don't have a clue and just randomly tick boxes based on 30 year old information is bad for the country, and devalues the idea of democracy and the vote, and you think that everyone should be able to vote easilly, regardless of whether or not they have a clue what they're voting for.

And yes, this was just a mad idea I jotted down in a comment at 8am in the morning, and of course I'd never want it implimented in practise because giving the government that sort of power is a Bad Thing. But I honestly think people who don't know anything about what they're voting for shouldn't go out and randomly tick boxes that affect everyone.

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How does the theory test deal with illitterate people? ("I don't know" is a fair answer to this...) Or are you happy with the idea they shouldn't be allowed to drive but should be allowed to vote?

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The trouble is that it might depend a bit on which policies you care about. If (say) I'm voting LibDem because they're the only major party to even mention civil liberties in their manifesto, and if (say) my expertise in economics is so small as to be actively harmful if I try to think about it too hard, then it isn't clear to me that I should be required to come to an understanding of their economic policy in order to express my strong and (IMHO) important opinion that civil liberties are worth paying some attention to.

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Who said anything about coming to a full understanding of their economics policy? See my reply above :

If your irrational fear about Europe being swamped by immagrants was that great, it could probably spur you on to learn and remember* some trivia about the anti-immagrants party for 5 minutes, which in turn might give you a broader idea of the issues for the next election.

Why should you have to? To prove you can be arsed and have thought about stuff

*Or read, I think I've made the damn idea open book by this stage in the arguement

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October