What do you think of increasing the voting age?

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So you think that godless, hedonists and all sorts of sexual perverts should enjoy the full electoral rights, while godly, honest and hard-working citizens can be deprived of them, that it's outrageous..

resuming my old thread:) Because i don't want create new one about the same subject

Being 'godly' doesn't guarantee one is also "honest and hard-working".
Being 'godless' doesn't in any way suggest one is a "hedonist[s] [or] sexual pervert[s]".
Both are foolish, outrageous assumptions.

I disagree with Weiss_Yohji though, we don't ban the mentally ill from voting, why would be ban people for a shared delusion if we accept those with more personal/individualized delusions?

I would favour expanding suffrage (lowering the age to 16, for example), I'm not likely to ever support reducing suffrage.

To the contrary, I think voting should be compulsory.

If you'd like to do that, you best make sure 'None of the above' is an option on the ballot.

I think that raising the voting age, for example, for a 21 year old, it's a bad idea. Because there will always be a Bolshevik who wants earn the political capital.

For instance Julius Caesar came to power, because the Roman patricians (the rich) would limit the voting rights of Roman Plebeians (the poor), the trouble is that the army of the Roman Republic (legions) was dominated by the plebeians, then Caesar caused the civil war, and the rest we already know.

No, not unless we also change the rules so that a candidate MUST take 51% of the vote to win.

If we do that, alright.

That wasn't about voting rights. That was about ECONOMICS, pure and simple.

I think they should lower the voting age to 13 or 14 in the US since a lot of times, younger people do not have enough say in what goes on in their lives. Schools, for instance, in states like this one, which is in the US, are often neglected because kids cannot vote so the politicians do what they can to ignore the schools where kids spend something like 75% of their time. Adults in this state do not consider kids to be a priority and many of them are thought of as second class citizens. If it's a place where kids go, it isn't as important as a place where I go is the unspoken but not unnoticed creed. Since there is a law that says they must attend school, they should get more say in how much money goes for their educational needs.

I'd like NO MINIMUM age....

BUT... all voters should have to pass a test every four years to retain their voting privileges for that term. If they can't answer basic multiple choice questions about the candidates of that term, they haven't done their research and shouldn't be voting.

Last edited by Syd on 04 Jan 2015, 5:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think that decreasing the voting age to underage kids would be like enabling people who happen to be parents to vote twice or more.

There's really no credible evidence for widespread voter fraud.

If the right keeps spreading this lie they're apt to get much more than they bargain for.

If elections are perceived to be fraudulent and rigged, what's to stop people from resorting to violence to affect political change?

People think there's no way we could ever have another civil war in this country, but just keep on marginalizing people economically and undermining confidence in the political system and see what happens.

When people have nothing to lose in the current order and no way to peacefully change it, they don't mind blowing it up.

I'm not sure where I stand on that, although I feel at least somewhat supportive of the notion.

At the very least, if None Of The Above gets 50% +1, we hold another election with entirely new candidates (at least for the parties large enough to do so).

I don't really care if the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)* (as an example) runs the same candidate again as there's so few Maoists that they may only have one suitable candidate in some ridings.

*Note that the Communist Party of Canada is Marxist, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) is Maoist.

Economic?

That's kind of like saying 'letting women vote is like enabling married men to vote twice'.

While it may be true in some cases, an uninformed child (or spouse) may vote the same as their parents (or spouse) does due to not really being familiar with the candidates and their positions, we don't ask people to justify their vote. Plenty of people vote based on stupid/ignorant/trivial things (I like his/her name/hair/appearance/voice, we went to school together, the other guy looks funny, ect) and we don't deny them their vote.

Anyways, what says teenage rebellion more than 'screw you mom, I voted for someone who's gonna raise taxes and spend it on school, so I can get a good job and someday tell you "I don't need you, I got my own house"'.

Okay, maybe teenagers don't show that much foresight when they tell their parents off...

Yes the real conflict was over issues like land reform, the state corn dole, etc. The populares wanted to break up the giant Latifundia (slave worked plantations) and give the land back to the common folks as small farms. They also wanted to start an official state run grain distribution to the urban plebs to help break the patron system...

The optimates didn't just try to suppress voting to stop this, they actually started killing Tribunes over these issues! That was really the beginning of the end for the Republic.

(Also, while every Roman citizen has a vote, those votes were wieghted according to wealth. The richer you were, the 'heavier' your vote was... i.e. it counted more than a poor man's vote. So, the rich really didn't need to 'suppress' votes all that much.)

Then they went from killing Tribunes to having full-on Civil Wars. First, Sulla (optimate) vs Marius (populares) and then Pompey/Senate (optimates) vs Caesar (populares).

The optimates/populares conflict was completely driven by economics. The optimates wanted to keep all the land and wealth and the true populares wanted to redistribute that wealth and land...

Of course, cynics would say that Caesar didn't really give a damn about the plebs and only use populares politics as a path to power. Be that as it may, I think the Gracchi--Gaius and Tiberius--were sincere reformers. They really did care about the wealth inequality and tried to restore the traditional Roman middle class via land reform, etc. You could call them the world's first progressives!

Unfortunately, the rich folks weren't having it, and killed them.

Interfering with a Tribune of the Plebs (much less killing them) was one of the most serious crimes there was in the old Republic--amounted to high treason. But, all it took was money to change all that, and make people forget the law.

Sorry, I'm a bit obsessed with Roman politics/constitutional matters...