The idea is simple: In a modern world, there are a lot of people who simply fail at fostering democracy, but actively harm it when casting their vote. These forces need to be clamped down upon for the good of all and this planet in general.
What woule be reasons to deny the right to vote? Here are a few, but this list is not exhaustive.
- Is antivatx
- Denies clinate change (or is a “sceptic”)
- Is a religious funfamentalist
- Sees queer people as sick freaks
- Believes in some form of race or gender essentialism
- Shills for billionares or big tech
- Likes generative AI and LLMs and sees them as the future
All these mostly boil down to a denial of objective, measurable reality and general anti-empiricist perspectives, mixed with personal tendencies that are simply abhorrent to a flourishing, tolerant society.
Or, to be a bit more blunt: Why the fork does a right-wing dipshit with not enough IQ to boil water be even allwowed close to a ballot box, yet alone have their mental missfires discussed with any shed of serious tone, when all they deserve is laughter and mockery at best?
Disenfranchising people who vote for the destruction of the planet is morally correct and with the ammout of propaganda by the Epstein-Class being pumped into the every information space, we might need to do this sooner then later…
I did not overly consider a certain method of enforcement for this idea, just the “moral” aspect, since the means are pure logisitics in the end.
English is my second language, you can drink a shot for every error you come across.
I’ve often thought there should be some kind of civics test before voting, but it comes with a host of problems. For instance, a well meaning person who meets all your criteria might always test poorly because some people just don’t test well - so they get denied a vote.
The other big problem is that you can’t be sure that the people making the test aren’t corrupt themselves.
Personally, I look at your list and they’re all things I tend to agree with. But what happens when people don’t agree about the disqualification criteria?
Religious fundamentalism is particularly thorny. How do you separate a harmful viewpoint from a benign sense of spirituality? Where’s the specific point that someone has their rights stripped away because the testers don’t agree with their belief? Someone who follows the teachings of Christ is vastly different from someone whose dogma includes hatred and science denialism - and yet somehow they both could be christians active in their church.
Your stance on AI and Big Tech are also things I agree with. But I could also see a scenario where being against those things is what disqualifies people. For instance, a politician could make the argument that these are forces of innovation (ew) and that opposing them should have you disqualified. Either because it’s in the nation’s economic interest to do so, or because being against AI is an anti-science viewpoint.
Again, I’m against AI and most scientists probably agree. But that’s something that the masses typically don’t care about. When it comes time to vote on what gets included on your list I think it’s more likely that people will be taken in by the platform that promises tech, money, and power versus the platform that wants to take away their convenient hallucination machine.
People also can very easily do great harm with good intentions. Example, there were movements opposing nuclear power on environmental grounds. Generating electricity with coal, oil, and gas was seen as cleaner if you can believe that. As a result, many proposed nuclear power plants were never built, some were shut down, and the climate crisis moved steadily towards the boiling point.
If your list came out in, say, the 1970s then I wouldn’t be surprised if “supporting nuclear power” disqualified you from voting. After all, it’s a technology that brought us the most powerful weapons of war we’ve ever used on each other.
Anyway, all this to say: I think you’ve got a good list, and you recognize that many of our democracies are broken. But disqualifying people from voting has great potential to do harm - either through the corruption we can see in our governments today, or through misguided but otherwise noble intentions