Some nations make voting mandatory, or tax the option of NOT voting. Well, not showing up to taking a ballot then turn it back in. Any system of secret balloting allows those disgusted by the choices offered to leave a line, or a page, totally blank. “None of the above”. I think it doesn’t happen often but I would design a system where if the contest has a winning plurality of “NOTA” votes, a new election would be called and all live previously running candidates would be ineligible to run again.
The advantage of mandatory voting is that efforts to “turn out” some smidgen more of very-low-information-voters would be moot. EVERYBODY turns out. The efforts of candidates then would return to issues and — sadly — name recognition. Maybe also party affiliations and slates. But the size of the “harvest” of ballots is more nearly constant and only the share of votes ON the ballots would matter. Which I consider an advantage over the situation at present.
In L Neil Smith’s libertarian alternate history novels, “None of the Above” winning means the post is left vacant for a term.
(And if you object that this would be a dangerous thing to do, it just shows that your polity is too dependent on the plenary powers of that post.)
From your link:
“Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, in his famous novel Starship Troopers,envisioned a society where voters, too, had to demonstrate their patriotism before being allowed to vote. In his fictional society, the right to vote came only after some kind of dangerous public service — in the military, as a volunteer in dangerous medical experiments, or in other ways that demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice personally for the common good. The thought was that such voters would be more careful, and less selfish, in their voting.”
What he doesn’t mention is that in the novel “Starship Troopers” this society only came about after the collapse of the “Western Democracies” (roughly us) precipitated by spiraling social problems at home and the war between the “Russo-Anglo alliance (us) vs the “Chinese-hegemony”. In other words Heinlein didn’t see us getting to that by peaceful means i.e. a Constitutional Amendment, but after a third world war. Not something to obviously shoot for.
We have compulsory voting in Australia. In the State of Queensland, where I live, this extends down to local government elections. I have not noticed any improvement in the quality of our politicians.
“Informal” votes (those deemed not valid – either blank or with amusing obscenities scrawled on them) tend to be in the 5 to 10% range. The numbers aren’t reported nowadays like they used to be but can be found. Except in very safe electorates those informal votes easily can change who wins.
Compulsory voting doesn’t help but this is Australia where everything not prohibited is compulsory.
To be totally contrarian:
How about the argument that people prepared to kill other people just because they are told to should never be allowed near anything as dangerous as a vote in a democracy.
So, people currently serving in the military or those on active reserve (in the US that usually means those serving in the National Guard) would be unable to vote?
Those currently serving in the Minuteman missile program as crew dogs with padlock codes to the launch keys, do they get a special negative voting disenfranchisement based on their death multipliers?*
*Favorite crew dog call-sign: “Spank”
To be counter-contrarian, how about the opposite? The number of votes you get depends upon the number of people you have to ability to kill when told to do so. So in that case 4 Air Force missile-folks get the equivalent of about 30 million votes or about 10 large cities worth. 8 decide the national election?
Actually, the Fail Safe system is much more robust than allowing four missileers to independently launch. To launch missiles, you would need to control all the Launch Control Centers in a Wing at the same time AND have people at Wing who can arrange the scheduling for that AND have somebody at HQ who could send you the Top Secret codes that the LCCs only receive from a launch message, without which the missiles themselves would ignore the launch order.
I am less familiar with the bomber and submarine parts of the triad, but I assume there are safeguards just as formidable to overcome. It may be possible that a bomber could actually drop a bomb or launch an attack missile by themselves, but I strongly suspect they could not arm them without a lot of outside help.
During the Cuban missile crisis Malmstrom crew dogs were supplied with second commander launch control panels with codes, to be swapped in because the secondary LCCs were not finished with construction at the time. A WSSR violation today. Or so I’ve read.
The premise requires that they have been ordered to do so. That presumes all the upper layers have been satisfied. The crew dogs are the last link in the chain After that it’s all hardware. As I have seen in a documentary on Minuteman crew training it is explained that it takes only two launch votes from independent LCCs to launch a missile. That’s 4 crew dogs. Except apparently during the Cuban missile crisis when was temporarily 2. After some console hardware replacement.
Launch one or many missiles or even none! Crew dogs have no idea what will happen when keys are turned. But I presume they do log what happens.
Sure, that will help recruitment. “Join the military, where you get to live in substandard housing, eat mediocre food, and draw pay that will qualify you for food stamps. You may be sent in harm’s way where you face the prospect of debilitating injury followed by poor healthcare, or of being killed. As a bonus, you won’t be allowed to vote to select the people who will fund your service or send you to war.”
To be totally contrarian: how about we have voting as part of the process of producing mature adults? After all, the present state of affairs didn’t result in immature young adults because of the way those young adults voted. It’s older, supposedly more mature peoples’ fault. And there’s no reason to expect that the above 25 year threshold will be the last word as the infantization of the US continues.
Rendezvous With Ramaswamy!
I prefer to refer to spending time with him in detailed discussion, dissecting the issues of today, as mispronounced Vivek-sections (soft ‘e’) heh, heh, heh….
All of the brass asses driving the present debacle in the U.S. military have been there for some considerable time. I don’t see where someone that spent a hitch in a motor pool or kitchen is any more capable of exercising good judgement than if they spent the same amount of time pulling cappuccinos. Even during a war, only a minority get close enough to the action to hear gunfire and the proportion is getting smaller every year.
I have asked quite a few native born Americans some of the questions on the citizenship test. The results have not been, shall we say, spectacular, even for people with very high levels of “education”. Most admit that if given the test cold, they would fail. From my own assuredly unscientific viewpoint, I believe that most Americans would fail without some sort of preparation. This used to be done in grade school. The test is an exceptionally low bar for achieving full citizenship and I would endorse having to pass it to be able to vote and sit on a jury. Maybe some accommodation could be made for people with learning disabilities, but I don’t think most immigrants get that. The test can be administered in a different language.
My daughter took her test while she was a teenager, and after she got the first 6 answers correct, the person administering the exam stopped the test. All you need is is 6 out of 10 to pass, so she easily passed. She was disappointed that she could not get a “perfect” 10 out of 10.
How about, you can’t graduate from high school without passing the citizenship test? Not a perfect solution, but it might help. It doesn’t require a constitutional amendment, and is the kind of simple sound bite policy you might be able to get passed.
I might settle for you can’t graduate from high school if you can’t read the citizenship test.
All these great ideas about who gets to vote, but what matters is who counts the votes. In our state, to great fanfare, they proudly returned to manual balloting, meaning you color in the circle for each candidate you choose. Then they turn right around and feed the ballot into an electronic counting machine.
The Sainted Robert Anson Heinlein (PBUH) did not write only science fiction – he dabbled with politics in his home town of Colorado Springs, shortly after the end of WWII…. And wrote a book, detailing another method of voter selection:
You want to vote? Great! Show up to the polling place, with one ounce of gold (current value around $1,925). Anyone big enough to be able to reach the desk, smart enough to understand the question.
You put the ounce of gold on deposit and go into a polling booth. The door closes behind you, and a screen shows a quadratic equation, made fresh just for you. You solve the equation, and you get to vote, leave the booth and get your ounce of gold back.
If you don’t solve the equation you don’t get to vote, and you don’t get your gold back. Either lights and bells go off as the booth door opens and you slink out shamed…….or the door opens, and a greasy vapor wafts out….
The book was called, I believe “Take Back Your Government”
It wouldn’t work any more; there would be multiple smartphone apps for it.
Make the income tax a poll tax, anyone who pays taxes gets to vote on the person who will raise and spend their tax money, anyone on the dole is locked out.
“No representation without taxation.”
I’d go for that
Catchy phrase.
To request your ballot present your photo ID with legal address and last year’s W2?
I like the taxes idea, it is simple – but the gold standard I think would be to require net positive return to society.
If you quit school at 12 and get a job, you should be able to vote. If you stay is school living off the government stipends and loans, you should not be able to vote – even if you pay taxes on the stipends.
Let me warn you that Vivek did some pretty wacky things when he was running (I think for Senate) here in Massachusetts. For all that he speaks of the opportunities afforded him as a child of immigrants, he always, always always acted as if his election by the voters was something that was mandated to add to his ‘immigrant story’. He kept on talking and talking and talking, and was oblivious to how his “in-your-face” style was a huge turnoff to voters. In his mind he _had_ to win but he was so anxious about that that he acted like a spoiled brat.
He is only 37.
I think we should bring back the draft. Draft the president. You can re-up or cash in after 4 years on the GI Bill.
Why do you think a test would cover the questions you want asked rather than what the Progressive Marxists who control the federal workforce want? Want to vote? How many genders are there?
Similar questions needs to be asked of people who champion mandatory service.
Also, didn’t SCOTUS rule tests unconstitutional?
I believe so, although the rule obviously does not apply to legally naturalized citizens. We truly are the oppressed minority. Heck, I’m not even allowed to be president, even though I might actually be as good as one of the first 50 names in the phone book. Time for a couple of constitutional amendments!
Being contrarian, just for practice.
Make voting compulsory.
Some nations make voting mandatory, or tax the option of NOT voting. Well, not showing up to taking a ballot then turn it back in. Any system of secret balloting allows those disgusted by the choices offered to leave a line, or a page, totally blank. “None of the above”. I think it doesn’t happen often but I would design a system where if the contest has a winning plurality of “NOTA” votes, a new election would be called and all live previously running candidates would be ineligible to run again.
The advantage of mandatory voting is that efforts to “turn out” some smidgen more of very-low-information-voters would be moot. EVERYBODY turns out. The efforts of candidates then would return to issues and — sadly — name recognition. Maybe also party affiliations and slates. But the size of the “harvest” of ballots is more nearly constant and only the share of votes ON the ballots would matter. Which I consider an advantage over the situation at present.
In L Neil Smith’s libertarian alternate history novels, “None of the Above” winning means the post is left vacant for a term.
(And if you object that this would be a dangerous thing to do, it just shows that your polity is too dependent on the plenary powers of that post.)
From your link:
“Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, in his famous novel Starship Troopers,envisioned a society where voters, too, had to demonstrate their patriotism before being allowed to vote. In his fictional society, the right to vote came only after some kind of dangerous public service — in the military, as a volunteer in dangerous medical experiments, or in other ways that demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice personally for the common good. The thought was that such voters would be more careful, and less selfish, in their voting.”
What he doesn’t mention is that in the novel “Starship Troopers” this society only came about after the collapse of the “Western Democracies” (roughly us) precipitated by spiraling social problems at home and the war between the “Russo-Anglo alliance (us) vs the “Chinese-hegemony”. In other words Heinlein didn’t see us getting to that by peaceful means i.e. a Constitutional Amendment, but after a third world war. Not something to obviously shoot for.
We have compulsory voting in Australia. In the State of Queensland, where I live, this extends down to local government elections. I have not noticed any improvement in the quality of our politicians.
“Informal” votes (those deemed not valid – either blank or with amusing obscenities scrawled on them) tend to be in the 5 to 10% range. The numbers aren’t reported nowadays like they used to be but can be found. Except in very safe electorates those informal votes easily can change who wins.
Compulsory voting doesn’t help but this is Australia where everything not prohibited is compulsory.
To be totally contrarian:
How about the argument that people prepared to kill other people just because they are told to should never be allowed near anything as dangerous as a vote in a democracy.
So, people currently serving in the military or those on active reserve (in the US that usually means those serving in the National Guard) would be unable to vote?
Those currently serving in the Minuteman missile program as crew dogs with padlock codes to the launch keys, do they get a special negative voting disenfranchisement based on their death multipliers?*
*Favorite crew dog call-sign: “Spank”
To be counter-contrarian, how about the opposite? The number of votes you get depends upon the number of people you have to ability to kill when told to do so. So in that case 4 Air Force missile-folks get the equivalent of about 30 million votes or about 10 large cities worth. 8 decide the national election?
Actually, the Fail Safe system is much more robust than allowing four missileers to independently launch. To launch missiles, you would need to control all the Launch Control Centers in a Wing at the same time AND have people at Wing who can arrange the scheduling for that AND have somebody at HQ who could send you the Top Secret codes that the LCCs only receive from a launch message, without which the missiles themselves would ignore the launch order.
I am less familiar with the bomber and submarine parts of the triad, but I assume there are safeguards just as formidable to overcome. It may be possible that a bomber could actually drop a bomb or launch an attack missile by themselves, but I strongly suspect they could not arm them without a lot of outside help.
During the Cuban missile crisis Malmstrom crew dogs were supplied with second commander launch control panels with codes, to be swapped in because the secondary LCCs were not finished with construction at the time. A WSSR violation today. Or so I’ve read.
The premise requires that they have been ordered to do so. That presumes all the upper layers have been satisfied. The crew dogs are the last link in the chain After that it’s all hardware. As I have seen in a documentary on Minuteman crew training it is explained that it takes only two launch votes from independent LCCs to launch a missile. That’s 4 crew dogs. Except apparently during the Cuban missile crisis when was temporarily 2. After some console hardware replacement.
Launch one or many missiles or even none! Crew dogs have no idea what will happen when keys are turned. But I presume they do log what happens.
Sure, that will help recruitment. “Join the military, where you get to live in substandard housing, eat mediocre food, and draw pay that will qualify you for food stamps. You may be sent in harm’s way where you face the prospect of debilitating injury followed by poor healthcare, or of being killed. As a bonus, you won’t be allowed to vote to select the people who will fund your service or send you to war.”
To be totally contrarian: how about we have voting as part of the process of producing mature adults? After all, the present state of affairs didn’t result in immature young adults because of the way those young adults voted. It’s older, supposedly more mature peoples’ fault. And there’s no reason to expect that the above 25 year threshold will be the last word as the infantization of the US continues.
Rendezvous With Ramaswamy!
I prefer to refer to spending time with him in detailed discussion, dissecting the issues of today, as mispronounced Vivek-sections (soft ‘e’) heh, heh, heh….
All of the brass asses driving the present debacle in the U.S. military have been there for some considerable time. I don’t see where someone that spent a hitch in a motor pool or kitchen is any more capable of exercising good judgement than if they spent the same amount of time pulling cappuccinos. Even during a war, only a minority get close enough to the action to hear gunfire and the proportion is getting smaller every year.
I have asked quite a few native born Americans some of the questions on the citizenship test. The results have not been, shall we say, spectacular, even for people with very high levels of “education”. Most admit that if given the test cold, they would fail. From my own assuredly unscientific viewpoint, I believe that most Americans would fail without some sort of preparation. This used to be done in grade school. The test is an exceptionally low bar for achieving full citizenship and I would endorse having to pass it to be able to vote and sit on a jury. Maybe some accommodation could be made for people with learning disabilities, but I don’t think most immigrants get that. The test can be administered in a different language.
My daughter took her test while she was a teenager, and after she got the first 6 answers correct, the person administering the exam stopped the test. All you need is is 6 out of 10 to pass, so she easily passed. She was disappointed that she could not get a “perfect” 10 out of 10.
How about, you can’t graduate from high school without passing the citizenship test? Not a perfect solution, but it might help. It doesn’t require a constitutional amendment, and is the kind of simple sound bite policy you might be able to get passed.
I might settle for you can’t graduate from high school if you can’t read the citizenship test.
All these great ideas about who gets to vote, but what matters is who counts the votes. In our state, to great fanfare, they proudly returned to manual balloting, meaning you color in the circle for each candidate you choose. Then they turn right around and feed the ballot into an electronic counting machine.
The Sainted Robert Anson Heinlein (PBUH) did not write only science fiction – he dabbled with politics in his home town of Colorado Springs, shortly after the end of WWII…. And wrote a book, detailing another method of voter selection:
You want to vote? Great! Show up to the polling place, with one ounce of gold (current value around $1,925). Anyone big enough to be able to reach the desk, smart enough to understand the question.
You put the ounce of gold on deposit and go into a polling booth. The door closes behind you, and a screen shows a quadratic equation, made fresh just for you. You solve the equation, and you get to vote, leave the booth and get your ounce of gold back.
If you don’t solve the equation you don’t get to vote, and you don’t get your gold back. Either lights and bells go off as the booth door opens and you slink out shamed…….or the door opens, and a greasy vapor wafts out….
The book was called, I believe “Take Back Your Government”
It wouldn’t work any more; there would be multiple smartphone apps for it.
Make the income tax a poll tax, anyone who pays taxes gets to vote on the person who will raise and spend their tax money, anyone on the dole is locked out.
“No representation without taxation.”
I’d go for that
Catchy phrase.
To request your ballot present your photo ID with legal address and last year’s W2?
I like the taxes idea, it is simple – but the gold standard I think would be to require net positive return to society.
If you quit school at 12 and get a job, you should be able to vote. If you stay is school living off the government stipends and loans, you should not be able to vote – even if you pay taxes on the stipends.
Let me warn you that Vivek did some pretty wacky things when he was running (I think for Senate) here in Massachusetts. For all that he speaks of the opportunities afforded him as a child of immigrants, he always, always always acted as if his election by the voters was something that was mandated to add to his ‘immigrant story’. He kept on talking and talking and talking, and was oblivious to how his “in-your-face” style was a huge turnoff to voters. In his mind he _had_ to win but he was so anxious about that that he acted like a spoiled brat.
He is only 37.
I think we should bring back the draft. Draft the president. You can re-up or cash in after 4 years on the GI Bill.
Why do you think a test would cover the questions you want asked rather than what the Progressive Marxists who control the federal workforce want? Want to vote? How many genders are there?
Similar questions needs to be asked of people who champion mandatory service.
Also, didn’t SCOTUS rule tests unconstitutional?
I believe so, although the rule obviously does not apply to legally naturalized citizens. We truly are the oppressed minority. Heck, I’m not even allowed to be president, even though I might actually be as good as one of the first 50 names in the phone book. Time for a couple of constitutional amendments!
Big government will only ask the Right Questions.