Let me set aside my antipathy towards democracy for a bit and consider the question of who should be permitted to vote. Should everyone be allowed to vote or should the vote be denied to some groups of people? For example, should these groups be allowed to vote:

  • Government employees, including military personnel

  • People who receive money from government programs such as Social Security, Medicare and other welfare programs

  • People who cannot pass a literacy test

Why shouldn’t government employees be allowed to vote? I think the answer is straightforward. They and their jobs are dependent upon taxation, or "spreading the wealth around", as our leader might say. That is, this group is dependent upon taking your money by threat of force and would always vote for candidates who favored taxation and the existence or expansion of government. These people are a special interest; i.e., themselves.

What about people who receive money from government programs? Same argument as above. They will always vote for those who will give them your money.

The literacy test requirement is a tougher criterion. First, there’s the silly charge by people like Rachel Maddow that testing for literacy is racist. She makes this charge because literacy tests in the South used to be used to keep blacks from voting. So, therefore, according to Maddowian logic, literacy testing of all  the potential voters would be racist. Figure that one out if you can. But, yes, there are problems with literacy testing. Some of them are: who would write the test, what should it contain, who would judge success or failure, and what happens to people who almost pass. Probably, it should be like an eye test; the one where you read letters that get smaller as you go down the chart. In the literacy test, reading a short, non-technical paragraph (in English, I think) would be sufficient. But what about the blind (who don’t use braille) and people who simply can’t or don’t read for their own special reasons? Not necessarily an easily solved problem set.

Some people think that only property owners should be allowed to vote or that you should get a number of votes depending on how wealthy you are; i.e., the richer you are the more votes you get. I dismiss both of these criteria now, because the law has gotten so far out of control that legislatures pass "laws" and the voters pass referenda that regulate personal behavior such as smoking. It would not be fair to have only property owners voting to take away your rights.

In my real view, all of the above is crap-and-nonsense because I believe that majoritarian democracy is fatally flawed in many respects, particularly where it comes to dealing with individual liberties. Also, this is a blog post and not a scholarly exercise concerning voting or democracy, obviously. I happened to watch Rachel Maddow (this was the 2nd or 3rd time; I almost never watch cable TV news programs) and I got annoyed by her total pro-progressive, pro-Obama point of view. Hence this post. I’ll stop now.