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:

1. multiple descriptions of each candidate, written by both vir and vis competitors. Also, voting histories in previous positions, alignment with various organizations, and maybe examples where the candidate admitted, in plain words, that ve was wrong.
2. a multi-sided description of, or a debate about, several policy issues.
3. econ 101 (midterm)
4. political science 101 (midterm)
5. the history of the jurisdiction to which the election applies.
6. critical thinking 101.

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?