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Jack comments on Open Thread: March 2010 - Less Wrong
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TLDR: "weighted republican meritocracy." Tries to discount the votes of people who don't know what the hell they're voting for by making them take a test and wighting the votes by the scores, but also adjusts for the fact that wealth and literacy are correlated.
Occasionally, I come up with retarded ideas. I invented two perpetual motion machines and one perpetual money machine when I was younger. Later, I learned the exact reason they wouldn't work, but at the time I thought I'll be a billionaire. I'm going through it again. The idea seems obviously good to me, but the fact that it didn't occur to much smarter people makes me wary.
Besides that, I also don't expect the idea to be implemented anywhere in this millennium, whether it's good or not.
Anyway, the idea. You have probably heard of people who think vaccines cause autism, or post on Rapture Ready forums, or that the Easter Bunny is real, and grumbled about letting these people vote. Stupid people voting was what the Electoral College was supposed to ameliorate (AFAICT), although I would be much obliged if someone explained how it's supposed to help.
I call my idea republican meritocracy. Under this system, before an election, the government would write a book consisting of:
Then, each citizen who wants to participate in the elections would read this book and take a test based on its contents. The score determines the influence you have on the election.
Admittedly, this will not eliminate all people with stupid ideas, but it might get rid of those who simply don't care, and reduce the influence of not-book-people.
A problem, though, is that literacy is correlated with wealth. Thus, a system that rewards literacy would also favor wealth. So my idea also includes classifying people into equal-sized brackets by wealth, calculating how much influence each one has due to the number of people in it who took the test and their average score, and adjusting the weight of each vote so that each bracket would have the same influence. Thus, although the opinions of deer stuck in headlights would be discounted, the poor, as a group, will still have a voice.
What do you think?
EDIT: ADDRESSED BY EDIT TO ABOVE
Well to begin with I don't think a person needs to know even close to that amount of information to be justified in their vote and, moreover, a person can know all of that information and still vote for stupid reasons. Say I am an uneducated black person living in the segregation era in a southern American state. All I know is one candidate supports passing a civil rights bill on my behalf and the other is a bitter racist. I vote for the non-racist. Given this justification for my vote why should my vote be reduced to almost nothing because I don't know anything else about the candidates, economics, political science etc.?
On the other hand, I could be capable of answering every question on that test correctly and still believe that the book is a lie and Barack Obama is really a secret Muslim. I can't tell you the number of people I've met who have taken Poli Sci, Econ (even four semsesters worth!), history and can recite candidate talking points verbatim who are still basically clueless about everything that matters.
"Well to begin with I don't think a person needs to know even close to that amount of information to be justified in their vote and, moreover, a person can know all of that information and still vote for stupid reasons."
So which is it?
"Given this justification for my vote why should my vote be reduced to almost nothing because I don't know anything else about the candidates, economics, political science etc.?"
Because the civil rights guy has pardoned a convicted slave trader who contributed to his gubernatorial campaign, and the "racist" is the victim of a smear campaign. Because the civil rights guy doesn't grok supply and demand. Because the racist supports giving veterans a pension as soon as they return, and the poor black guy is a decorated war hero.
Uh... both. That is my point. Your voting conditions are neither necessary nor sufficient.
Well the hypothetical was set in segregation era South, but maybe this wasn't obvious, but I was talking about someone running on a platform of Jim Crow (and there were a ton of southern politicians that did this). It seems highly plausible that segregationism is a deal-breaker for some voters and even if this is their only reason for voting they are justified in their vote. It doesn't seem the least bit implausible that this would trump knowledge of economics, veterans pensions or even the other candidate being racist (but not running on a racist platform). But my point is just that it is highly plausible a voter could be justified in their vote while not having anything approaching the kind of knowledge on that exam.
There are lots of singles issue voters- why for example should someone whose only issue is abortion have to know the candidates other positions AND economics AND history AND political science etc.???
Edit: And of course your test is going to especially difficult for certain sets of voters. You're hardly the first person to think of doing this. There used to be a literacy test for voting... surprise it was just a way of keeping black people out of the polls.
Also, the curriculum I gave is the least important part of my idea. I threw in whatever seemed like it would matter for the largest number of issues.
"Your voting conditions are neither necessary nor sufficient."
That's not my goal. I merely want to have an electorate that doesn't elect young-earthers to congress.
"Well the hypothetical was set in segregation era South, but maybe this wasn't obvious, but I was talking about someone running on a platform of Jim Crow (and there were a ton of southern politicians that did this). It seems highly plausible that segregationism is a deal-breaker for some voters and even if this is their only reason for voting they are justified in their vote."
I'm not sure why the examples I gave elicited this response. I gave reasons why even a single-issue voter would be well-advised to know whom ve's voting for. And besides, if an opinion is held only by people who don't understand history, that's a bad sign.
"Edit: And of course your test is going to especially difficult for certain sets of voters."
That's why I made the second modifier. And there could be things other than wealth factored in, if you like - race, sex, reading-related disabilities, being a naturalized citizen...
What your system actually does is make it less likely that unorganized people with fringe ideas will vote. If there's an organization promoting a fringe idea, it will offer election test coaching to sympathizers.
"What your system actually does is make it less likely that unorganized people with fringe ideas will vote."
Why's that?
On second thought, I didn't say what I meant. What I meant was that your approach will fail to discourage organized people with fringe ideas. They'll form training systems to beat your tests.
Unorganized people with fringe ideas will probably be less able to vote under your system.
It seems you edited your comment after I responded, which indeed makes it look like a non-sequitur.
I posted it incomplete by mistake.