Restrict voting rights

m2catter · Mar 15, 2017

truthvigilante said: ↑

This isn't having a dig at members here and tend to think that everyone on the whole has the same goals, but where it differs is on how we get there. Of course there are issues that clash violently but at least there is a hell of a lot of discussion and debating despite there being little agreement on various issues.

I tend to think that our country is in danger of going down the gurglar if people vote blindly and purely based on emotion. Well maybe there are a couple who get a bit emotional on here about some topics and fail to see reality because emotions set in before the brain has an opportunity to reason. For some once emotions set in the brain doesn't have the capacity to settle into any system of reasoning. Basically no resilience due to lack of certain capacities. In saying that, it is not saying that the individual doesn't have a capacity to think but rather struggles with harnessing their emotions.....lol. Yeah, okay we can all tend to fall in this trap but some more than others
Hey look, not everyone who has had little education from an educational institute be deemed uneducated. I personally know of a number of farmers who had less than a form 3 education and are quite successful business people with a pretty well rounded view of their world and have raised intellectual children. Yeah, maybe a little bit on the "I did it" side of things though!

I suppose there are a few questions that can be initially asked like: Should all people be allowed to vote? If not, should people who are deemed to have had a certain level of education be allowed to vote? Say if someone who can demonstrate at least a Year 12 level of education or something that shows a level of capacity to think.

The government has a USI system of logging completed nationally recognised training of all individuals in Australia and can possibly be used for eligibility purposes.

Does this sound extreme?

If you are going to help make decisions for our nations you need to demonstrate that you have a capacity to think. No I don't care what side of politics they decide to sit on but do care that you can make an informed decision, which essentially impacts on everyone.

Keen to know thoughts! Please hammer me with your disgust if you like lol. It's just a thought at this stage.
Click to expand...

It is a democracy after all, and whether you vote brain dictated of emotionally bankrupt, it is what it is.....
Education is the best medicine, but hey some in this country believe that all teachers are lefties, so even the educational argument will fall on deaf ears.....
Oh dear...
Good subject so....
Cheers

LeftRightLeft · Mar 16, 2017

bigfella said: ↑

OK, I really strongly disagree with your entire premise. Top to bottom. I think it is both misguided and potentially dangerous. Restricted franchises are a marker of unequal and unfair societies. I also see them as fundamentally undermining democracy. What follows isn't 'having a go', but a measure of my feelings on the subject.

I realise that you mean well, but this whole discussion smacks of the worst sort of elitism. The universal franchise was fought for over generations. To throw it away because some of us think our education makes us so much better than others that they should be excluded from our democracy is short sighted and more than a bit arrogant.

I say this as someone who has 3 Tertiary qualifications and was accepted for a PhD. I think my opinions are well founded & thought out, but I don't think that means others should lose their right to vote because they think something different.

First, why assume people are going to sit down and make a decision that straight forward? The reasons people might not reach a certain level of education are various. My Dad had to go out and work at age 14, but he was more astute than most people on this board. Neither of his parents got past year 10, but one of them fought for his nation & the other was active in the ALP for longer than most people here have been alive. My other grandfather was no better educated, but he ran one of the best known businesses in his country town for almost 60 years. So, four 'uneducated' people whose opinions I would have any day.

Having decided to disenfranchise a class of people you then run the risk of creating social division and exclusion. People may not find themselves in this situation because they want to be or because they have carefully thought it out, but having got there it may be difficult to get out. It may also be easy to feel resentful. I don't see any upside to creating such people. None at all.

As for 'responsibilities', people pay taxes, they are bound by laws and they are compelled to vote. Nobody gets a 'free ride' in this society, so implying that somehow people you have decided are 'stupid' (and that is what this is about) are skating is really a bit arrogant.

I've already dealt with most of this. It is fundamentally misguided. I simply don't buy the assumed link between education & civic worth. In fact, I don't see the link between any such arbitrary standard and civic worth. Other than some limited & temporary exclusions - such as imprisonment - I don't see how anyone can decide that any other mentally competent Australian is unworthy of a say in who governs them.

If you want to improve democratic processes the answer is not to exclude people from democracy. The answer is to increase participation, not decrease it. How about Citizen Juries, where ordinary people are given the opportunity to impact public policy? How about giving people paid time off their jobs to participate in some sort of political/democratic activity? How about some lateral thinking about getting more of us involved rather than deciding that the problem is that people some of us deem 'stupid' have the same say as the rest of us.

I want all of those things, but do you not see the contradiction here? You want governments who think broadly about the interests of society, but you want to achieve this by excluding some of those who would benefit most from those policies. I'm not sure you have thought this through very carefully. Most people who want to restrict the franchise want to do so precisely because people who want those things might actually vote for them. I want the poorest in our society to have a say in these things. I want them to have a way to influence these decisions. I think that excluding them will make those goals less likely, not more.

One of the things I like most about our political system is that everyone votes. Political parties don't have the ability to selectively disenfranchise classes of people as has happened & is happening again in the US. I think we should be finding ways to broaden that participation as much as we can, not narrow it to a self appointed 'clever' class.
Click to expand...

This is an expansion of my "Silly idea in so many ways" comment.

Well said, "I couldn't have put it better"

truthvigilante · Mar 16, 2017

bigfella said: ↑

OK, I really strongly disagree with your entire premise. Top to bottom. I think it is both misguided and potentially dangerous. Restricted franchises are a marker of unequal and unfair societies. I also see them as fundamentally undermining democracy. What follows isn't 'having a go', but a measure of my feelings on the subject.

I realise that you mean well, but this whole discussion smacks of the worst sort of elitism. The universal franchise was fought for over generations. To throw it away because some of us think our education makes us so much better than others that they should be excluded from our democracy is short sighted and more than a bit arrogant.

I say this as someone who has 3 Tertiary qualifications and was accepted for a PhD. I think my opinions are well founded & thought out, but I don't think that means others should lose their right to vote because they think something different.

First, why assume people are going to sit down and make a decision that straight forward? The reasons people might not reach a certain level of education are various. My Dad had to go out and work at age 14, but he was more astute than most people on this board. Neither of his parents got past year 10, but one of them fought for his nation & the other was active in the ALP for longer than most people here have been alive. My other grandfather was no better educated, but he ran one of the best known businesses in his country town for almost 60 years. So, four 'uneducated' people whose opinions I would have any day.

Having decided to disenfranchise a class of people you then run the risk of creating social division and exclusion. People may not find themselves in this situation because they want to be or because they have carefully thought it out, but having got there it may be difficult to get out. It may also be easy to feel resentful. I don't see any upside to creating such people. None at all.

As for 'responsibilities', people pay taxes, they are bound by laws and they are compelled to vote. Nobody gets a 'free ride' in this society, so implying that somehow people you have decided are 'stupid' (and that is what this is about) are skating is really a bit arrogant.

I've already dealt with most of this. It is fundamentally misguided. I simply don't buy the assumed link between education & civic worth. In fact, I don't see the link between any such arbitrary standard and civic worth. Other than some limited & temporary exclusions - such as imprisonment - I don't see how anyone can decide that any other mentally competent Australian is unworthy of a say in who governs them.

If you want to improve democratic processes the answer is not to exclude people from democracy. The answer is to increase participation, not decrease it. How about Citizen Juries, where ordinary people are given the opportunity to impact public policy? How about giving people paid time off their jobs to participate in some sort of political/democratic activity? How about some lateral thinking about getting more of us involved rather than deciding that the problem is that people some of us deem 'stupid' have the same say as the rest of us.

I want all of those things, but do you not see the contradiction here? You want governments who think broadly about the interests of society, but you want to achieve this by excluding some of those who would benefit most from those policies. I'm not sure you have thought this through very carefully. Most people who want to restrict the franchise want to do so precisely because people who want those things might actually vote for them. I want the poorest in our society to have a say in these things. I want them to have a way to influence these decisions. I think that excluding them will make those goals less likely, not more.

One of the things I like most about our political system is that everyone votes. Political parties don't have the ability to selectively disenfranchise classes of people as has happened & is happening again in the US. I think we should be finding ways to broaden that participation as much as we can, not narrow it to a self appointed 'clever' class.
Click to expand...

Knew it would be a controversial topic and foresaw some very vehement responses.

Yeah I take on most of your points, which I stand for but that doesn't mean I don't want to seek out possibilities that ensure stability in government in changing times. Just in the last few years we've seen government aim to either dumb us down through educational access such as, deregulating the tertiary sector and extending the reach of lower and bottom middle class access to this level of education via astronomical costs. TAFE courses were cost accessible just a couple of years ago and now through commercial pricing are 10 times those costs and even up to 20 times. Why have these changes snuck through so stealthily and without massive opposition. Why I believe they have snuck through is because people have been much more focussed on the fearfully emotive issues such as boat people.

How does this relate to restricting votes based on educational levels? The very people who need to access this are driven by whatever the front page of tabloid says. It it says, we are doomed because Muslims are going to take over because they're all bad people with murderous intentions they are likely to believe it. Of course not all non-institutionally educated people are unreasoning or unintuitive, and course educated people can fall for it but my experience is that it is far more unlikely. Indivually I believe we have a responsibility to our society.

Does this mean that people are completely restricted? No, not at all. Of course there are many variables that could be worked around.
People of various races and religions were restricted from voting in many countries historically, but was there anything that they could do differently to ensure they could vote? Well no. You just couldn't change your racial status or bleach your skin to make you eligible. Could have changed your religious allegiance! So what I'm suggesting is accessible through process of action. No not all people will have access to education but these are areas that could be addressed or circumvented through other considerations.

No, it's not saying that people are too stupid, it is suggesting that we collectively have a serious responsibility to make much more informed decisions about our future collectively.

Look, it won't change people having a leftist or conservative leaning, it just means that we can be that little bit more confident that our nation makes informed decisions and not caught up in the ephemeral issues that take us away from the big picture.

You have 70-80,000 NSW senior students graduating each year. In Victoria it is a similar number based on population. All up there are "potentially" close to 500,000 new voters. Despite this there are students who drop out before completing Year 12 but some are required to undertake some form of alternate training based on compulsory school age of 17 or full time work of any type at another stage, which doesn't require formal training.

The youth unemployment rate is quite high and growing and is quite significant in the north Coast of NSW and the Gold Coast. This situation is similar and worse in other parts of the country.

So, we are entrusting people who have no idea about the political process or have little life experience to help make decisions for our future.

Yes, increasing our participation in the democratic process is paramount but firstly we need our people to be active and informed members of society. We'll be motivated towards making a difference on long term issues and not ephemeral issues that take our eyes off the prize.

In conclusion, I've only pondered this in last couple of weeks so it is devils advocate stuff I'm writing. I've heard people talking about proposal, which sparked my interest in finding out what others thought on this forum. Great initial response by the way BigFella!

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Restrict voting rights

m2catter Well-Known Member

LeftRightLeft Well-Known Member

truthvigilante Well-Known Member Past Donor

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m2catter Well-Known Member

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truthvigilante Well-Known Member Past Donor

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