Have voters choose areas of expertise from a menu; they will then be allowed to vote only on issues in those areas.
This seems like it’d either be easily gameable or very intrusive, and complex to set up in the latter case.
Award more votes to voters who: complete a government-authorized test on the subject area, score well on standardized tests created by the Dept. of Education
Have a short factual test at the polls. Voting weight will be proportional to number of correct answers.
These suggestions seem rather subject to bias, to me, in a way that’s not immediately obvious. Different factions consider different facts about an issue important, and if whoever is making a particular test is a member of or even particularly aware of the interests of a particular faction, they could weight the test to make it easier for members of that faction to pass it. This would not necessarily be obvious to people who don’t know much about the issue.
For example, consider abortion. I expect pro-lifers to be much more likely to know how many abortions have been performed in recent years, and whether that number is trending up or down; it’s a useful benchmark for them in determining if their activism is working. Pro-choicers are unlikely to care about that number, since they see the choice to have an abortion as a personal one, but might care more about rape statistics or the number of children waiting to be adopted or some other fact that a pro-lifer would probably consider irrelevant.
Require literacy tests. I am aware that literacy tests were historically used to deny voting to blacks. Times have changed. If someone in America can’t read today, they shouldn’t blame racial discrimination.
This is discriminatory against people with disabilities, particularly dyslexia, which does still sometimes go undiagnosed, and may be more often undiagnosed or untreated in minorities and poor people. (That is the case for some similar learning disabilities, but I don’t know about dyslexia in particular.)
This seems like it’d either be easily gameable or very intrusive, and complex to set up in the latter case.
These suggestions seem rather subject to bias, to me, in a way that’s not immediately obvious. Different factions consider different facts about an issue important, and if whoever is making a particular test is a member of or even particularly aware of the interests of a particular faction, they could weight the test to make it easier for members of that faction to pass it. This would not necessarily be obvious to people who don’t know much about the issue.
For example, consider abortion. I expect pro-lifers to be much more likely to know how many abortions have been performed in recent years, and whether that number is trending up or down; it’s a useful benchmark for them in determining if their activism is working. Pro-choicers are unlikely to care about that number, since they see the choice to have an abortion as a personal one, but might care more about rape statistics or the number of children waiting to be adopted or some other fact that a pro-lifer would probably consider irrelevant.
This is discriminatory against people with disabilities, particularly dyslexia, which does still sometimes go undiagnosed, and may be more often undiagnosed or untreated in minorities and poor people. (That is the case for some similar learning disabilities, but I don’t know about dyslexia in particular.)