SHOULD ONLY INFORMED CITIZENS GET TO VOTE?
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The case for
Voters are systematically ignorant of basic political facts. Most cannot name their representative, identify the three branches of government, or describe their own party's policies. Collective decisions made on this basis are not the wisdom of crowds — they are aggregated ignorance, producing...
Posted by jconnor
Competence conditions already exist for consequential decisions: a driver's license to drive, a bar exam to practice law, a medical license to prescribe drugs. It is not obvious why government — the most consequential collective decision we make — should be the one domain with no competence...
Posted by jconnor
Giving more weight to informed votes need not mean removing rights from anyone. Weighted voting, citizens' assemblies, and deliberative mini-publics are epistocratic reforms that improve decision quality without disenfranchisement. The question is not whether to include everyone but how to weight...
Posted by jconnor
The case against
Every historical literacy test was a tool of racial and class oppression. The US's history of literacy requirements shows exactly who gets labeled 'uninformed': Black voters, immigrants, the poor. This proposal has a body count, and the populations most likely to fail any knowledge test are the...
Posted by jconnor
Democracy's point is not to produce optimal policy outputs but to ensure that everyone affected by power has a say in it. Legitimacy and competence are different values, and legitimacy is what democracy exists to provide. A technically optimal decision made by an expert class over the objection of...
Posted by jconnor
Who writes the test? Every epistocratic system hands extraordinary power to whoever defines 'political knowledge' — and that knowledge will inevitably be the knowledge of the class that writes it. The mechanism is an invitation to launder elite preferences as objective civic competence.
Posted by jconnor
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What is a strong argument for "Should Only Informed Citizens Get to Vote?"?
Voters are systematically ignorant of basic political facts. Most cannot name their representative, identify the three branches of government, or describe their own party's policies. Collective decisions made on this basis are not the wisdom of crowds — they are aggregated ignorance, producing... (Argued by jconnor on SuperDebate.)
What is a strong argument against "Should Only Informed Citizens Get to Vote?"?
Every historical literacy test was a tool of racial and class oppression. The US's history of literacy requirements shows exactly who gets labeled 'uninformed': Black voters, immigrants, the poor. This proposal has a body count, and the populations most likely to fail any knowledge test are the... (Argued by jconnor on SuperDebate.)
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