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This election Florida is giving us more stupid gifts in our retarded Constitutional amendment process.
Ballot amendment 2 is to raise the minimum wage to $15 over an unreasonably short time and then automatically increase it against a suspect cost of living metric.
For a state based on tourism, service industries and fixed income retirees...
Not a good plan. It's a topic I've written on before.
Some history needs mentioned every time Florida's retarded amendment process comes up.
Florida's much altered constitution is barely older than I am, being ratified in 1968.
The Reconstruction constitution was scrapped because it was found to be politically impossible to get state senate apportionment to compliance with the Civil Rights Act.
Because of the state senate's refusal to make amendments to fix that in the old constitution, ballot amendments were added to bypass the state congress when necessary.
Like so many things, rather than being the rarely used last option used only in direst necessity, it's become the first choice at skipping over the congress and using the low information voter to do the bidding of the rich and persuasive.
The use of poll taxes and ballot tests to exclude blacks from voting got us the 24th Amendment.
It was an over correction. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
The 24th, though, doesn't actually ban a skills test to vote.
A ballot test, the SAME test for everyone, could at least rid us of the low information voters.
Since we've managed to ban Baby Jeebus from the courthouse lawn using a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to a Danbury church and incorporated into legal precedence, we should take another extra-Constitutional quote and treat it as an Amendment; "The cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate."
Hit them with the questions from the Citizenship test to get their voter ID.
Scrupulously make sure that everyone gets the same test regardless of features.
Print it in English so everyone is getting the same test. Foreign citizenship candidates take the oath in English, so I know this passes "discrimination" muster. Additionally, it gives incentive to the huddled masses to get a working knowledge of English. Knowing the realm's Common Tongue is never a disadvantage.
The asshole in me would have it printed in ancient Greek, a language virtually nobody speaks, just to apply an additional handicap to the uneducated and to make sure it's equally indecipherable to all.
Hit them with the questions from the Citizenship test to get their voter ID.
ReplyDeleteEvery time I hear someone on the left arguing to get rid of the electoral college or, like Barbara Feinstein did, saying California should have more senators than Wyoming because they have so many more people, I think a civics exam would be a good idea. They act like they don't understand that we were set up very carefully to balance the rights of the minority vs. the majority in ways that pure democracy doesn't give. Every gunnie has heard the old, "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner"
When elected officials say things that moronic I always wonder if they're really that stupid or if they just think everyone listening to them is so stupid they'll believe whatever the politician says.
The problem with a one time test to get registered to vote is they only have to show they know these things once. Cram for the test, regurgitate on the test, and then forget it. How about a test at the poll itself, where voters had to show evidence they understood what they were voting on? That seems like it would be reasonable. Except for the extra wait time at the polling place.
Well, to become a citizen you cram for the test and forget it and you get to be a citizen for life.
DeleteI was thinking the test be held at the elections office and that gets you your voting ID, spreading the testing out over two years between elections should keep the lines down.
Another irony of the two-wolves argument is the reason we had to have a new constitution in '68 was because the state senate was composed of a fixed number of senators per county and not a number of senators proportionate to the population.
The civil rights act demanded that things be reapportioned and the state congress kept stonewalling over the Rhode Island compromise being part of the state constitution.
I love your idea of AT LEAST passing a citizenship test before being given the privilege to vote. The only thing I would add is a sort of reversal on one of the reasons that we fought the Revolutionary War. They said "No taxation without representation". What about "No representation without taxation"? IOW, have some skin in the game. Unless you actually pay taxes, ya don't care how high they are in order to support the takers so you shouldn't get to vote yourself free shit. Period. Scarecrow418 out.
ReplyDeleteI swears I've posted my agreement that if you're not a tax-payer, you're not a voter.
DeleteAt the very least you cannot be a tax consumer outside some very narrow exceptions.
On welfare, no vote.