A test before being given the vote.

Soldato
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Do you think people of voting age should have to sit a series of tests before being allowed to vote?

I am often staggered by the public's responses when asked political questions on the news. The lack of general knowledge or knowledge concerning world events I find quite disturbing.
 
A small part of me thinks we need an IQ test before voting.

However in reality that would be extremely unfair and undemocratic. If the population vote in an idiot, that is their decision to make. Even if they are uninformed and misled.
 
No, because that's not a democracy. I think we'd be better off with something other than FPTP (but that ship sailed a few years back), and I wish there was some sort of incentive for politicians to inject some intelligence into debates instead of essentially lieing all the time. But everyone should have the vote.

If you're going to limit the ability for people to vote based on intelligence then you might as well do away with the whole thing and give a technocracy a try, as long as you don't really see value in art.
 
Yeah, let's limit representation and democracy to the educated politically astute only. Long live the Class System.

But aren't we all supposedly better educated now? Surely with all the A+ or stars or whatever it is now there should be no excuse. In reality that's not the case. I sit on interview boards where the candidates have a string of paper qualifications but their lack of common sense has to be seen to be believed.
 
Do you think people of voting age should have to sit a series of tests before being allowed to vote?

I am often staggered by the public's responses when asked political questions on the news. The lack of general knowledge or knowledge concerning world events I find quite disturbing.

Anyone who owns an apple product should be banned
 
Do you think people of voting age should have to sit a series of tests before being allowed to vote?

I am often staggered by the public's responses when asked political questions on the news. The lack of general knowledge or knowledge concerning world events I find quite disturbing.

That's because average joe public are more interested in who has won Xfactor or some other celeb tripe that makes for television nowadays...
 
To be honest I have been present at a number of local votes, crime commissioner votes and most recently the EU votes and the amount of people who come and vote who have no actual clue what they are voting for is staggering, people were asking me on Thursday if it was a) a general election or b) local election, why turn up to vote if you don't have a clue what your voting for?
 
Actually, I wonder if making voters take some kind of short mandatory test and giving them their result before entering and allowing them to vote regardless of the outcome would increase the general public's willingness to educate themselves. Maybe making them aware of their ignorance would make them more inclined to fix it.
 
Incidentally I don't think people have been getting more stupid over time, there are just a lot more different methods that people can employ to show the world how thick they are around today compared to 50 years ago. That crazy man in the pub who has a strange view on Japanese people now has a Facebook account and is determined to use it, and has discovered the comments section of news websites.
 
Actually, I wonder if making voters take some kind of short mandatory test and giving them their result before entering and allowing them to vote regardless of the outcome would increase the general public's willingness to educate themselves. Maybe making them aware of their ignorance would make them more inclined to fix it.

goes both ways and is why UKIP are getting so many votes.

voting doesn't need to change, the big parties do
 
No, not least because the test would likely have some form of inherent bias or other type of influence from the people who created it (i.e. subconsciously shaping it to pass people who conceptualise things in the same sort of way, even if they don't necessarily hold the same viewpoint).

The day we start trying to deny votes on the basis of 'lack of knowledge' will be a worrying day indeed.
 
No, not least because the test would likely have some form of inherent bias or other type of influence from the people who created it (i.e. subconsciously shaping it to pass people who conceptualise things in the same sort of way, even if they don't necessarily hold the same viewpoint).

democracy is fine until they start voting for the other parties ;) and then suddenly everyone becomes racist, uneducated and uncultured and not deserving of a vote.

big 3 are all fake as ****
I remember when they were doing that a constituent came to see me this week, his name was XXXX
obviously it was all pr spin doctor BS, they all started doing it to seem in touch with the common man :D
It's no surprise people are disillusioned by them.

judging from today's interviews people like william hague still don't get it and never will
 
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There is a bit of me that thinks it would be a good idea. But then I realised what portion of the vote UKIP got and how potentially frightening your idea could be.

I think Voting should be compulsory, but I also think that if 'None of the Above' gets the majority of the vote then all those standing should be banned from politics and you start again with a new batch.
 
no you shouldn't exclude people from voting on that basis - dumb people have as much right to vote as smart people, poor people have as much right to vote as rich people etc..etc..

if you were going to make people sit through some sort of compulsory activity prior to voting then it shouldn't result in people being excluded - if the issue is people not being well informed enough then perhaps people watch a short clip presented by each of the candidates/parties in randomised order and then cast their votes - at least people would be aware of policies, manifestos etc... rather than just voting for party x because they always have

On the other hand any enforced activity could easily serve to reduce voter turnout and its pretty low for local and EU elections as it is
 
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