Posted on 12/07/2020 1:24:45 PM PST by Onthebrink
After the 2016 presidential election, I wrote an exceptionally unpopular op-ed for The Washington Post headlined, “We must weed out ignorant Americans from the electorate.” In it, I noted that “never have so many people with so little knowledge made so many consequential decisions for the rest of us.”
My assumption has always been that the Post only accepted the piece because its editors believed I was aiming my criticism exclusively at the right-wing populists who had just voted for Donald Trump. If so, they were wrong. My skepticism extends to all sides.
And to all elections. Indeed, today, the problem is even more severe. More Americans voted in 2020 than ever before even though the winner, Joe Biden, was rarely impelled to answer a substantive question on policy or even to show himself in public.
2020 might have featured the most vacuous campaigns in American history. This is what “democracy” looks like when propelled by fearmongering, ignorance, and the “common impulse of passion,” as James Madison warned. I mean that all around.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailysignal.com ...
meh
No one is calling seriously for mandatory voting
Be more concerned when they are busy stopping the counting of certain votes
It has been awhile but I recall a few socialist Democrats advocating it a few years ago.
The same kind of Democrats that advocate teenagers voting and in Kalifornia advocate illegal aliens voting.
The Democrats theorize that the more uniformed voters that go to the polls the better chance that they will win more seats in government.
The fact that more than 10% of the electorate voted for Biden is iron clad proof of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of a segment of the US citizenry. Clearly no more than 30% cast such vacuous votes. Coupled with wholesale criminal election fraud we face the outrageous specter of a presidency whose corruption is treasonous.
We need fewer people voting, not more.
if democracy is about choice
sometimes not voting can be the choice
at the same time, one can leave races blank, or write in whatever they want
everyone should watch this vintage Dr Who episode
If they don’t pay taxes why should they be allowed to vote? They have no skin in the game.
The Dems demand mandatory voting; don’t worry, though, they will e happy to do the voting for you.
SO how do you know when a person didn’t vote and someone voted *for* them? That in the primary vehicle that enables fraud, especially in mail-in ballots.
Make election day a national holiday. Grant a tax credit for voting. Make casting a ballot in person mandatory. Make voter ID mandatory. Make ‘none of the above’ an option for every race. Options for those truly challenged by going to the polls in their own town are not complicated and the problems are not insurmountable, but it should be the exception.
If people are required to vote they will pay slightly more attention. Fraud will be dramatically reduced when there isn’t this huge buffer of nonvoters to cheat from. It is not authoritarian to require one civic duty from every citizen in return for the rights and liberties we (used to) enjoy. Maybe, just maybe, if we had required everyone to vote we wouldn’t be on the verge of losing our country.
"Now class, we have two choices for a book to read over Winter Break. Mark thinks we should read President Obama's book that just came out, and Mary wants us to read the one by Jesse Jackson
"Since they are both on the recommended list, we will just have a vote of the class and learn which one everybody will read over the break.
"Be prepared to discuss the highlights of the selected book when we return from Winter Break."
That's how it was done (except for the authors) when my kids were in grade school 30 years ago, and I was furious.
Public schools instill the dangerous idea of majority rule in kids at an early age. Coupled with the false claim that the Unites States is a democracy, is it any surprise when recent polls show a near majority of college students surveyed favor socialism over capitalism for our nation's economy
Teaching logic before high school is an idea whose time has passed. In 19th century public schools, rhetoric was one of the required subjects often taught in the intermediate grades along with algebra. There being no high-tech industries for kids to aspire to, law was about the surest way to make good money 150 years ago. Who needed law school when the basics were taught in 6th grade? (Did Honest Abe ever get a law degree?)
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