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 outcomes nobody wants and nobody can explain.”

“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 requirement whatsoever.”

“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 ones most dependent on government to protect their interests.”

“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 the governed is not better governance — it is benevolent autocracy.”