Voting requires citizenship. But citizenship itself should require more than just existing.
If we look back to Greek and Roman democracy, it was true that every citizen got a vote. But the people who were citizens was much more stringent.
The basic idea of the ars liberalis or Liberal Arts translates literally as “The work of freedom”. Exercising your right to partake in a democracy required that a person be knowledgable about history, civics, rhetoric, politics, philosophy. Without that knowledge, you were not allowed a vote in how things are run.
Essentially, you had to know what you were voting on.
Unfortunately, that meant that in essence only the rich landowners could be citizens because they were the only ones with the time and money to get educated while the underclasses were too busy working to suvive.
But in the modern age, where public schooling is a thing, we should be able to figure out a way to make such a thing work. Nowadays, the only thing keeping people ignorant is choice. And if you make the choice to be ignorant, you should forfeit your right to have a say in the governing of your nation.
the problem is that any metric to exclude voters will be manipulated by politicians to exclude demographics. unless you can come up with a simpler concept than “every citizen over 18 can vote” people will move the goal posts: eg, if you require education, do private schools count? what happens if your school loses accreditation after you graduate? what if you’re home schooled? what if your parents didn’t let you goto school?
Maybe somewhat like a mandatory exam that you have to take at 18 (+/-) would help. It would, however, exclude a chunk of disabled people.
As a side note, I’d argue if you have lived in a country for 5 years and have no intentions of leaving (i.e. you have a job, your kids are in school) you should be able to vote for the country you are residing in.
And vice versa, if you move away, you keep your voting privileges for 5 years, no more. I still cannot believe that voting based on citizenship is a thing in the 21st century tbh.
Voting requires citizenship. But citizenship itself should require more than just existing.
If we look back to Greek and Roman democracy, it was true that every citizen got a vote. But the people who were citizens was much more stringent.
The basic idea of the ars liberalis or Liberal Arts translates literally as “The work of freedom”. Exercising your right to partake in a democracy required that a person be knowledgable about history, civics, rhetoric, politics, philosophy. Without that knowledge, you were not allowed a vote in how things are run.
Essentially, you had to know what you were voting on.
Unfortunately, that meant that in essence only the rich landowners could be citizens because they were the only ones with the time and money to get educated while the underclasses were too busy working to suvive.
But in the modern age, where public schooling is a thing, we should be able to figure out a way to make such a thing work. Nowadays, the only thing keeping people ignorant is choice. And if you make the choice to be ignorant, you should forfeit your right to have a say in the governing of your nation.
the problem is that any metric to exclude voters will be manipulated by politicians to exclude demographics. unless you can come up with a simpler concept than “every citizen over 18 can vote” people will move the goal posts: eg, if you require education, do private schools count? what happens if your school loses accreditation after you graduate? what if you’re home schooled? what if your parents didn’t let you goto school?
Maybe somewhat like a mandatory exam that you have to take at 18 (+/-) would help. It would, however, exclude a chunk of disabled people.
As a side note, I’d argue if you have lived in a country for 5 years and have no intentions of leaving (i.e. you have a job, your kids are in school) you should be able to vote for the country you are residing in.
And vice versa, if you move away, you keep your voting privileges for 5 years, no more. I still cannot believe that voting based on citizenship is a thing in the 21st century tbh.