How to Make it Harder to Vote

The progressive site The Nation has an editorial, "How to Make it Easier for 50 Million Americans to Vote". After 8 years of the most vacuous president in American history, and facing an election between a fascist and a crooked progressive, I think the problem is just the opposite: We have let far too many people vote.

Look at it this way: If everyone voted, that means close to half of the people will be making their voting choice with less than average intelligence. Is that any way to run a democracy?

Actually, yes, that is exactly how a democracy is run. In the immortal words of that great criminal...err, Attorney General Eric Holder, "The ability to vote is a right — it is not a privilege...The right to vote is not only the cornerstone of our system of government — it is the lifeblood of our democracy."

Unfortunately, Holder gets it wrong. There is no right to vote in the Constitution. In addition, the Founding Fathers were trying to make a republic, NOT a democracy. We turned it into a democracy.

How do we fix this mess?

First, we overturn the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. Return some power to the states, where it belongs. Allowing voters to select senators was a bad idea. It turned our government into a democracy.

Second, we need more roadblocks to voting, not less. More importantly, we need smart roadblocks. Putting bureaucracy in the way is not a solution. I propose we require one extensive history test of all prospective voters. Why history? So at least our voters will be smart enough to learn from history's mistakes. There will be two stages to this testing system: You have to pass an American and world history test (we don't want to make the same mistakes as other countries have in the past), and then you have to pass a state level history test.

Third, we need an independent group in charge of the history testing. No political appointees! We aren't going to have the same problems as the Federal Reserve. The "history board" will be responsible for appointing their own replacements. Plus, they will be funded by the U.S. government, with their funding automatically increasing by the rate of inflation. The government can increase it more, but they can never decrease it.

There are two big positives to come from this:

1. No more mass advertising pushes during election years.
2. Politicians won't have to kill themselves spending all their time funding a campaign. There will be a limited number of voters, which should be easy to find. Also, 15 second sound bites won't help too much with these voters.

This is a win-win plan for all of us, especially history teachers.