Unpopular Opinion

Who decides what goes on that list? How do you ensure measurement/enforcement of these rules is accurate and fair? How do you prevent takeover of whatever body manages/enforces this list by people with bad intentions?

I would love it if people who disagreed with my fundamental beliefs weren't allowed to vote too, but I think it's the wrong level to attack the problem. You have to have a political debate and bring people on side instead. Otherwise, why do we have a democracy anyway?

Sure, you can earn your right to vote, just fill out this basic literacy test real quick:

Now, you might complain that some of those questions are ambiguous. Don't worry, it's intended to be like that. It's real simple: if you're white, the test-giver will interpret it to agree with the answer you gave and you'll get to vote. If you're black, the test-giver will interpret it against you and you'll be disenfranchised. Totally fair!

And yes, this was a real test, used in Louisiana in 1964. People were getting disenfranchised using this as an excuse within living memory.

Source: https://allthatsinteresting.com/voting-literacy-test

Starship Troopers shows why this is a shitty idea, and is only a fast track to fascist corruption.

Ive had to say this on two different threads in as many days.

You misunderstand power. Imagine the support for a facist military coup if the right wing couldn't vote.

As someome who is trans, yes these people are kind of my enemy (given declarations of violence), but there needs to be a way to rebuild trust within them so they aren't so pyschotic. That is, to engage in politics. Doesn't mean you should nice about any bigotries they have, and in fact point them out continously and condemn it.

The other option, is some level of violence. Not nice, and I would like you to consider the fact that facists love violence, so we aren't gonna win that way.

Edit: just fixed a sentence.

Creating a class of people with no political agency will result in civil war and revolution.

That's not only "unpopular" it's just so stupid you'd be on the blacklist yourself 😁

This is an idea often put forth without much thought. In the short term it sounds simple and straigtforward. But as soon as you are not in power, or there is a disagreement, the system is rife for corruption. This is not the way. Proper education and equal access to resources and education are the better way to solve this. Which is exactly why authoritarians attack and corrupt institutions and education systems and why authoritarians institute the same kind of voter supression mechanisms like you're advocating for.

That's called a dictatorship and there's very little reason to vote in a dictatorship.

I've often thought there should be some kind of civics test before voting, but it comes with a host of problems. For instance, a well meaning person who meets all your criteria might always test poorly because some people just don't test well - so they get denied a vote.

The other big problem is that you can't be sure that the people making the test aren't corrupt themselves.

Personally, I look at your list and they're all things I tend to agree with. But what happens when people don't agree about the disqualification criteria?

Religious fundamentalism is particularly thorny. How do you separate a harmful viewpoint from a benign sense of spirituality? Where's the specific point that someone has their rights stripped away because the testers don't agree with their belief? Someone who follows the teachings of Christ is vastly different from someone whose dogma includes hatred and science denialism - and yet somehow they both could be christians active in their church.

Your stance on AI and Big Tech are also things I agree with. But I could also see a scenario where being against those things is what disqualifies people. For instance, a politician could make the argument that these are forces of innovation (ew) and that opposing them should have you disqualified. Either because it's in the nation's economic interest to do so, or because being against AI is an anti-science viewpoint.

Again, I'm against AI and most scientists probably agree. But that's something that the masses typically don't care about. When it comes time to vote on what gets included on your list I think it's more likely that people will be taken in by the platform that promises tech, money, and power versus the platform that wants to take away their convenient hallucination machine.

People also can very easily do great harm with good intentions. Example, there were movements opposing nuclear power on environmental grounds. Generating electricity with coal, oil, and gas was seen as cleaner if you can believe that. As a result, many proposed nuclear power plants were never built, some were shut down, and the climate crisis moved steadily towards the boiling point.

If your list came out in, say, the 1970s then I wouldn't be surprised if "supporting nuclear power" disqualified you from voting. After all, it's a technology that brought us the most powerful weapons of war we've ever used on each other.

Anyway, all this to say: I think you've got a good list, and you recognize that many of our democracies are broken. But disqualifying people from voting has great potential to do harm - either through the corruption we can see in our governments today, or through misguided but otherwise noble intentions

You are failing to understand a fundamental principle of democracy.

Or, and I say this as an Australian where we have compulsory voting, do the exact opposite:

• Compulsory voting so everyone is forced to vote.
• Make it very easy to vote because of that.
• Support education of what voting means and why.
• Make it on a weekend so it's even easier.
• Early voting and mail-in voting to make it easier.
• Transferable vote and ranked choice voting.

This allows for multiple parties, weeds out/waters down the crazies and in general, the population get a more representative democracy. Mixed-member proportionality would be even better.

Your version leads to disenfranchisement, a second-class citizenry and oppression - which is exactly what the fascists and white nationalists want. Do you know literally anything about how hard it was for people to gain the right to vote over history?

The biggest takeaway from Trump is that any policy is a liability if it relies on the people in charge acting in everyone's best interests. If we have a way to deny rights to anyone, that method will (not can, will) be used by bad actors to deny rights to people they don't like. Any policy you can think of that will hurt people you don't like will also be used to hurt people you do like. This is classic "leopards ate my face" stuff.