Comment by makeitdouble
2 days ago
> we must distinguish between "good voter suppression", like banning votes from toddlers
Banning votes from toddlers is not as clear cut a point as you make it look like.
As a thought experiment: imagine an extreme society made 15% of childless adults, 5% of young parents and 80% of toddlers.
Would it make sense/be fair if the 15% of childless adults could pass laws that remove voting rights for life from anyone that piss their pants in public whatever their age ?
You could end up in a situation where 20 years later 90% of the adults of the country have no voting rights. Finding a way (setting the 5% of parents as representatives ?) to mitigate these kind of issues is generally important, which is why there's no cut and dry "good" voter suppression, only compromises.
Your preoccupations seem to be centered on protecting the system from demagoguery and outside influences, which is a valid POV, but that can't be the only angle nor the central focus. Even if 80% of the population was provably dumb, you'll still need a system that takes their voice into account to avoid the country getting overthrown or become a dictatorship.
> universally
Honestly I don't like that word, and it removes a lot of nuance that is utterly needed for politics and ruling systems. There is almost nothing universal, especially when it comes to "good" and "bad".
I really don't see how this thought experiment is helpful in understanding anything. It would never happen in real world. We have long and well established tradition to disenfranchise specific classes of people, and it is not controversial at all. None of this addresses my point, which is that if you extend the "voter suppression" label to cover things that are universally considered to be good and proper, like banning votes from toddlers, you only make the conversation more difficult.
> Even if 80% of the population was provably dumb, you'll still need a system that takes their voice into account to avoid the country getting overthrown or become a dictatorship.
I really don't see how it follows.
Fundamentally a democracy's promise is leaders represent people's voice, and in exchange people follow the leaders.
Breaking that promise (e.g. cutting off "dumb" people from the process) means they'll have to find non democratic ways to express themselves. If they're in overwhelming numbers the shortest path is a revolution, and if a gov can just weather a popular uprising, it's a dictatorship.
And if the people who are cut off from the process are in the weak minority, and the majority agrees that it's good and proper to cut them off, then there will neither be revolution, nor dictatorship. This is the case with the people we typically disenfranchise today: children, foreigners, criminals. I don't understand why you keep coming up with these completely irrelevant hypothetical scenarios.