Are universal suffrage and free elections good for everyone?

No. Democracy does not work for people below some level of intellect. In fact, no system of government works for them.

I think all countries should strive to have their citizens equal in rights – however they achieve that is irrelevant – democracy without identifying historical and current political patterns will never work if forced upon people.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir

Free elections should at least meet international standards, we cant have the Chinese government pretending to give fake democracy and universal suffrage to the people of Hong Kong. I think some government use excuses like local flavor or local cultural norms as a way to fix elections that do not really provide the minimum requirements for free and equal elections.

@airowDee Well, of course some governments do this – but these are the kinds of governments that won’t listen to any international standards, obviously – and no intelligent person that understands cultures would simply accept that democracy is now in place.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir

I agree, but many intelligent people do not know better because they live in a closed society and cannot obtain objective information, for example, government censorships, etc. Some intelligent people might also think that the not so intelligent people will never be educated or intelligent enough to cast a vote, this is a self serving argument, i think.

@airowDee Yes, all these people exist and don’t understand much of what’s really going on..

@bootonthroat This is true. But not intellect alone. The USA was born of very intelligent people, very brave people, and people of overwhelmingly Christian roots and theology.

It appears to help women in the long run. If women are able to vote, politicians suddenly have to worry about their needs.

I am of the opinion that any system, any system whatsoever, would work if not for the people in it.

@Nullo…exactly!!

I can’t say that I necessarily agree that all people should strive for Democracy. It is a certain political system that some westerners happen to like, and is not necessarily the one that the people in any given area may like. If a group wants to be Marxist, and they do it correctly (that is, without centralized power that inevitably leads to a Stalin), then all power to them, it’s their choice, and they should be free to exercise their will.

Now suffrage, in a more general term as simply the universal ability to have a say in the government, should be striven for. As in, the chosen government need not be democracy, but the people should still have a say in how it operates, by whatever vehicle that may be. The imagined Marxists above should all have the right to, say, call a town meeting and say “hey guys, x y and z aren’t going right, we should do something”.

So, long story short, Suffrage is great, but form of government is relative.

[EDIT] and by ‘correctly’ above, i mean in a way that doesn’t result in the removal of the right of suffrage, as I’ve defined it. If people want to have a Marxist state with a central government, that would be cool too, as long as that government doesn’t eventually result in taking away power from the people. Wouldn’t be any less ‘correct’

A government can only survive as long as the taxpayers select the leaders. When those who do not support the government financially (pay the bills), are allowed to “vote in” the decision makers, the governmental system is doomed.

@plethora Too bad you have to use the “born of” qualifier.
@Nullo Would you therefore be in favor of determining who does and doesn’t make up the population base of the United States? How should we improve the quality of who lives here?
@UScitizen You have the best answer. This goes to the root of why everyone should not be allowed to vote. The founding fathers realized this. We changed the rules and now we are on a downward trajectory.

@UScitizen – I disagree. The vote should also be given to those affected by the decisions. Not to do so would be similar to allowing masters to vote, but not the slaves. We can both guess how that would turn out. Rights are something that (ideally) should not be able to be bought with money.

@laureth How about cattle and sheep? Should the cattle get input on the global warming their farts create? Children are affected by the decisions. Should they be allowed to vote? Clearly you are NOT qualified to vote based on the outcome of the decision affecting you or simply because you are human. The bar needs to be higher.

@bootonthroat I am sorry, but I do not understand your question. I’m not terribly alert right now, you see.

Human nature is what interferes with the working of government, the more so because government is in place to check human nature. Democracy makes some allowance for that. My post intended to say that if not for human nature, any system would do.
Unfortunately, human nature is a persistent little wretch. I do not think that it is possible, certainly not for a secular institution, to thoroughly suppress it.

No, I do not think so. I think you ought to have to take a test to vote, just like you have to do to drive. Once you have proven that you possess a cursory grasp (at least) of your country’s history and government, then (and only then) can you vote.

@bootonthroat – Your argument about withholding the vote from rational, mature human beings based on the inability of children and sheep to make governmental decisions reminds me very much of the people who argue against two consenting adults of the same gender getting married because soon people will then want to marry children and sheep. What is it about “sane adult of legal age” that folks just don’t understand?

People who pay no taxes should not vote. Kind of like if you don’t clean up your mess at home, you get no food….no matter how sane you are. It’s a matter of carrying your share of the load. Half the working population pays NO income tax whatsoever.

@plethora: they pay sales taxes, property taxes, payroll taxes, capital gains taxes, and any other kind of tax. High-income people are not special.

My comment would apply to high income people too. Many of them pay no income taxes either.

We all pay over 100 taxes that were not even on the books 50+ years ago, all of which are special “limited” taxes (not that they don’t cost us a fortune). Income taxes are a direct tax on our source of income and the only people who do not pay them are people who get special breaks from the federal govt (which you and I then pay on their behalf) The rich get the breaks too. Take the vote away from those who don’t pay taxes and you will have a the tax load spread out over all of us. Not only that, taxpayers who carry their share of the load have a mighty incentive to think more responsibly that those who don’t pay….that comment based on my many many years in business dealing with human nature.

Any tax is ultimately “a…tax on our source of income.” Sales taxes hit people more immediately than income taxes in many cases.

Very few high-income people pay no income taxes over the course of their lives. Sometimes they defer, and very few manage to escape paying any taxes through legal or illegal means. What is common amongst very high-income people is finding creative, legal ways to shield much income that should be taxable.

And there are circumstances where people are not legally obligated to pay income taxes. Why punish those people by taking away their votes? They did nothing wrong. This sounds like spiteful poor bashing.

@bolwerk See just above

Translation: “nah nah nah nah nah nah nah”

@laureth Do you therefore take back your statement “The vote should also be given to those affected by the decisions.”? Clearly children and sheep are valid counterexamples.

I do not take it back. However, I would also add the reasonable caveat, which I thought was an obvious given when we started discussing the matter, of “human beings of sound mind and legal age for voting in the jurisdiction where they reside.” Must I also rule out giving coffee tables, bales of hay, and garden gnomes the vote too, or can we proceed forth without delving further into the ridiculous?

@laureth I think you have not explained why it is OK to exclude some groups from your statement but not others. As soon as you explain it you will be forced to admit that not all people are fit voters. The list of voters who are not fit extends well into the adult and mentally competent range. For instance, adults who need food stamps are certainly unfit voters. They can’t even feed themselves yet you think they have what it takes to select our leaders.

You have yet to tell me why adults who receive food stamps, as a whole, are unfit voters. I have worked with some food stamp recipients who simply didn’t make enough at their jobs to afford both food and college, and thought that a temporary state of receiving food stamps was beneficial to their long-term future as an educated person. These people would go on to get college degrees, and are clearly smart enough to vote.

I also grew up in a food stamp recipient household. Having some extra nutrition is probably what gave me the edge in learning in school. I went on to attend college myself, and end what might have become a cycle of dependency. Food stamps aren’t just for lazy people like you think – it’s also for the helpless kids that depend on bad parents.

Food stamps are part of the farm bill every year. Do you know why? Because it’s a price support for farmers. In order to provide market demand for agricultural products, food stamps were invented. They were hailed by conservatives of the day as a market-based solution for the problems of both hunger and farm overproduction, a much better way than just giving the poor people the food directly. As such, food stamps benefit farmers.

I’ve seen a lot of your responses around here, and they strike me as utterly simplistic. It’s as though you took a quick, surface look at the problem and made a flash decision (i.e., “poor people are dumb and lazy”) without actually looking any deeper into the problem. Most of the time, situations are far more complex than are visible at a glance, and when you learn the “whats and whys and hows” of a complex equation, blanket statements seem much less valid.

However, you do have a small point. Some people are not worthy of having the vote, but I would nominate mostly the people that look only at the surface of a situation, and also those who make snap judgments without bothering to look at all of the data. To me, those people are much less deserving or able to select our leaders than those who take food stamps because they’re working their way through college.

Even saying that, I would still rather live in a system where you and I can both vote, than one where the party in power arbitrarily decides who gets to vote based upon their ideology. I would not want to live under your system any more than you would live well under mine, so let’s just give people of able mind and legal age the power to vote. ;)

@laureth

If you don’t have the money to go to college get a loan or save. Don’t go begging for a hand-out. Why should your peers who got a job as productive members of society and saved to go to college have their money stolen from their own college savings to subsidize you?

.. and do you think your portrait of the typical food stamp recipient as a college student is even remotely accurate? Who are we kidding here. Do you even believe this yourself?

@bootonthroat – What makes you think that my peers have not saved or have not gotten loans? College is expensive, loans are expensive, and saving takes forever. I am making my way through college without taking help from anyone (and while working a full time job), and as a result, am still degree-less at age 38. Perhaps I made poor life choices, not getting into debt or taking handouts, by the sound of it.

All kinds of people need help. Not just fat welfare queen moms with thirteen kids by thirteen fathers, all of whom are in prison. However, that’s the portrait that the Right likes to paint. Is it accurate some of the time? very much yes. Is it accurate all the time? Not by a long shot. Again, you are ignoring data to make your point, but the missed data compromises the integrity of your point.

There are valid arguments on both sides of this debate. We could discuss the moral and financial aspects all day, and not come to a conclusion. It comes down to which kind of society we’d rather live in – one where there’s help if you need it, and one where there is not. I would rather live in a civilized world where there is some kind of cushion for hard times, even if I never use it. If you disagree, and think that the least government is the best government, etc., there are places like Somalia that might suit you better. Please notice that it’s the third world where your sort of policies are most often embraced, while industrialized nations with a greater sense of well-being and happiness seem to choose to hold up some kind of safety net.

One interesting thing to note, however, is that the states with the most food stamp recipients largely seem to be the “red states” who are the loudest about eschewing such help and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, and those “liberal elite blue states” are largely the ones doing the subsidizing. Link Why do you think this is? Or do you perhaps think that the largely-red Food Stamp States ought to give up their vote and let the ones paying their bills have the say? ;)

@laureth
I attempted to view the link but it appears to require I accept a licensing agreement to view the contents. Although I am interested in the link I am not prepared to review and sign a legally binding licensing agreement to do so.
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“What makes you think that my peers have not saved or have not gotten loans?” <== “I have worked with some food stamp recipients who simply didn’t make enough at their jobs to afford both food and college”

Saving doesn’t take forever. The problem is that many people simply spend their income instead of saving it. If you got a job at $10/hr with time and a half over 40 hours and worked 80 hours per week for a single year that would be $52,000. If you spent $500 on base expenses per month that would leave you with $46,000. I believe you can save for school in many ways tax free. I suspect you could save 35K or more per year.

But you won’t!

People think they need:
a cell phone
a car
new clothes
their OWN apartment
vacations
a tv w/ cable
smokes
nights out

If you are in work-saving mode you don’t need those things. It appears people are no more willing to give those things up than the hohos which is why they cannot save or lose weight “no matter what”.

Somalia doesn’t suite me nor have I advocated it. For instance, Somalia is Muslim. Muslim states generally do not thrive. People did pack up and go someplace to be free of the overbearing government and that place was America!

I have never owned a cell phone.
I haven’t bought new clothes in ages.
If I work 80/h week, I can’t really do well taking classes can I?
Try finding someone willing to pay 40/h/week OT, too.
I have a cheap-arse used POS car.
I have no TV and no Cable
I don’t smoke
I don’t really go out – maybe one cheap ($10) dinner a week
...and my half of the mortgage payment alone (not including things like food and utilities) is still more than $500.

No I don’t drink lattes out or do any of the other things that “save $100 a week easy!!” articles tell you to avoid.

And no, I don’t buy hohos.

Your savings plan there shows just how deeply you live in a world of your own imagination. Are you very young? Have you seen much of the world?

@laureth
If half your mortgage payment is over $500 then your mortgage payment is > $12,000/yr which means either you have bad credit or your house costs > $300,000.00. You can’t buy a $300,000.00 house and then cry poor.

“Your savings plan there shows just how deeply you live in a world of your own imagination. ” <== your $300,000.00 house shows you don’t have a savings plan.

Here is a fully furnished 1 br condo for < 20K
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/25-Harwood-B-Unit-25_Deerfield-Beach_FL_33442_1113306905

Here is a 2 bed 1 bath in Waco TX for < 15K
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/25-Harwood-B-Unit-25_Deerfield-Beach_FL_33442_1113306905

If you put it on your credit card at 8% and paid full asking price your monthly payment would only be $100. A room mate would probably pay all the utilities.

The house’s appraised value as of last December was $70k. Balance outstanding is $58k. And oops, my bad, the payment does include utilities – but please, your number doesn’t take into consideration things like property taxes, mortgage insurance, loan interest, etc.

Also, I live nowhere near Deerfield Beach, Florida, or even Waco Texas, and neither do most people. Thank you for posting numbers about what’s in your area, but they do me no good.

@laureth

Why doesn’t my number take into account mortgage insurance? Simple, it is not required if you do not have a mortgage. In my example the house was placed on a credit card. There is NO MORTGAGE.

Why do you think my number doesn’t take into consideration interest? It most certainly does. I listed the payment to the credit card company at 8% which is reasonable for someone with good credit. If you don’t have good credit who do you have to blame?

Property taxes were not included. How much could they be on a 15–20K house? Even at very high property tax rates the answer is very little. Please also remember that a house increases in value on average 1% per year or more which most likely offsets the property tax costs.

Where do you live (if you want)? If you cannot save where you live because the cost of living is high then you selected the wrong place to live.

A regular mortgage on 58K is about $200/mo or $100/mo for your half. The $1000/500 number you have provided does not sync with this amount even if utilities, etc are taken into account.

@laureth
Mortgage calculator says as low as $214/mo w/4 points and excellent credit. If you wanted other options, had bad credit, didn’t have money down, etc then of course it could be more.