Totally — if there’s compelling evidence that adjusting voting laws would save thousands of innocent lives a year, I’d be absolutely willing to consider that.
Voting absolutely judges life and death for thousands a year. Between abortion, suicide, war. Voting is at least as dangerous as a gun. Why should irresponsible alcoholics help run our economy? Why should unvetted people decide the guy that gets the atomic codes? We should make people pay for a background check and another couple hundred dollars for a voting license at the minimum.
Given the choice between giving a small child a loaded gun or a vote in the general election, which would you choose?
We can agree that the child shouldn’t have either I think, but which one is more dangerous?
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I see your logic (to the extent that you’re not just trying to argue against gun laws by extending similar logic to a different issue). That said, it’s important to consider the additional and indirect consequences of the laws you’re proposing.
Would preventing violent criminals and alcoholics from voting lead to a “better” legislation that saves lives? Maybe. Would it also destroy a subsection of society’s ability to represent themselves in the legislative process, thereby undermining the very idea of a free and equal democracy? Absolutely.
I guess its a matter of personal opinion whether or not that’s the same thing as stopping a mentally ill teenager or violent domestic abuser from buying a semiautomatic weapon and thousands of rounds of ammunition without any societal oversight.
Who could ultimately do more damage? A little kid with a gun or uneducated morons voting? You are looking way too short term.
To be fair, it has to be a kid with a gun or one moron voting. The little kid with a gun is the answer there.
Uneducated morons can only vote for one of two shitty options that basically do the same thing.
It is also subjective on who is uneducated (HS grad, college grad, post graduate?). I can tell you you wouldn’t like the results if only college grads and up could vote, because they on average vote democrat. Moron is actually fairly objective, and very few adults are morons.
Average IQ is 100. Standard deviation is 15. Moron requires 70 or under. That is at least two standard deviations to the left. IIRC, about 95% fall between 2 standard deviations. But that is two sided. This means that only about 2.5% of adults are morons. I kinda doubt we have a lot of people that fall in the bottom 2.5% of population that vote, and the ones who do are probably pretty equally voting for each party (the votes cancel).
That isn’t a real possibility. It also doesn’t factor in risks appropriately for the assessment. We were discussing voting and guns for adults. But absolutely, I believe idiots voting kills more people than guns do.
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Why are you concerned with a mentally ill teenager or violent domestic abuser’s ability to be represented but not their ability to defend themselves? You are in favor of having the mentally ill and violent represented in our government and don’t see that as a danger? If someone is evil enough to not allow them the means to defend themselves, why on earth should they get a say in running the country?
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That is silly. Idiots are so small of a part of the population. An idiot is someone with an IQ of 0-25. 25 is 5 standard deviations from the mean. This means that roughly one in 2 million people are idiots.
This means that there are about 165 total idiots in the USA. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if 0 idiots voted in the last election. I am assuming most are in 24/7 care, and don’t even know the candidates are or what country they are in.
Guns are certainly more dangerous than idiots voting. It isn’t even close.
I’d be okay with the results (not okay with the principle of it) of an only college educated and higher education voting rule. Although, most of the people who don’t want “idiots” voting wouldn’t like the results of this.
I can’t even take this seriously. I’d guess that something like 80% of voters are woefully uninformed on even basic civics and policy.
The effect of the government on the economy and hence suicidality alone is probably as big a problem as guns.
I’d rather counter an idiots vote with a vote of my own, than counter an idiots gun with a gun of my own. And so would everyone.
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That’s because humans always woefully underestimate the cost on longer time scales especially when compared to immediate costs.
People getting guns shoved in their faces and how the government are run are deeply intertwined. The worse government runs, the more people have to deal with that situation. You could chalk up most of the gun deaths in big left wing cities as much to voting and policy as to guns.
Lack of effort? You said something silly, I showed you why it was silly.
And that is subjective. How do you propose we go about fairly determining who is capable of voting and who is not?
That you took a silly sematic diatribe on a colloquial term? OK.
Well, that’s what I was doing from the beginning. What I was suggesting in this thread was to apply the same regulations on voting that we do on guns. If someone is too evil or mentally uncapable to be trusted with a gun, they shouldn’t be trusted with a vote.
That is fair.
We have more regulations on voting currently than buying a gun. You can’t go to a private voting center and vote with no information like you can go to a private gun owner and buy a gun with no information.
But we don’t charge a voter hundreds of dollars and make them go in for fingerprints and a background check. Nor do we make them pass a civics test.
Because these people make up such a small percentage of the population, the structure of our democratic process provides a layer of protection from any danger that you may be imagining.
A deranged 18 year old makes a “dangerous” vote for president? Ultimately inconsequential. The same 18 year old goes and buys a couple guns? You might end up with 20 dead kids in a school.
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The percentage of the population on alcohol or mind altering drugs is not small. Nor is it a reason against the idea. You are conceding that it would be a good thing to prevent these people from voting, so why not do it too? what reasoning do you have in favor of the violent or mentally ill getting to vote?
@DoubleDuce I think it would help the conversation to know where you stand on this issue. Do you believe that America is doing a good job of handling the issue of gun violence? Do you think there is any room for improvement?
I did not concede that it would be good to prevent them from voting. This is my reasoning:
If I wasn’t clear, I believe that undermining the very idea of a free and equal democracy is a bad thing, and that it outweighs any benefits from barring sections of our society from voting.