Who's Voting?

I'm about as bored as it's possible to be with US presidential election coverage. No angle seems too trivial for the media to explore and the talking heads have gone into overdrive, repeatedly analyzing and re-analyzing every tiny little piece of poll data. One aspect of the election process has not received any attention however - we hear so much about the people trying to be elected but nothing about the people who will elect them.

Out of about 200 million citizens aged over 18 about 150 million are probably registered to vote and about 90% of these will actually vote. (Don't write in to correct my figures because I'm not paid to research crap like this and, lets be clear, I couldn't give a shit of you tell me that it's now 220 million; this is close enough.)

So who are all these people and why should they be allowed to participate in the election process? "What?" I hear you ask, "Are you suggesting that we disenfranchise a portion of the US voting population?" Actually, yes, I bloody well am. The Presidency of the United States is one of the most powerful positions in the world and it's bad enough that we only get to choose between a selection of Republicans and Democrats, beholden to their parties' ideologies, who have risen through the ranks by selling out and sucking arse; now the final decision rests in the hands of people who I wouldn't trust to pull down their pants before taking a crap.

Let's start with all the stupid people. These are the ones who the whiny liberals are always telling us we can't execute if they kill someone. They "can't be expected to know right from wrong" because their IQ is below 75. So If you're incapable of being trusted to decide whether or not to stab someone to death in a WalMart parking lot I fail to see why you should be trusted to participate in this apparently important election. So no-one with an IQ this low should be allowed to vote. I was tempted to extend this upwards and only allow the top 50% of the population by intelligence to vote, but unfortunately the IQ test is not a common sense test, and university campuses are full of wankers with supposedly above average intelligence who still can't think in straight lines. Ideally we'd give everyone a critical reasoning test; after all, if you can't make logical deductions then you can't process all the factors required to make such an important decision, can you?

Now, what about the kids? The legal drinking age is 21 but people are allowed to vote at 18. What's the deal here? You can't be trusted to decide how many beers to drink at the age of 18 but you can be relied upon for your opinion about the next president of the country? Bollocks. The voting age should be the drinking age, and based on what I've seen of the college-age population here I think 21 might still be too young.

Okay, that's thinned the herd a bit, so let's move on to taxes. Government, when it comes right down to it, is simply an exercise in taking and spending people's money. The money all comes in through taxes and the federal government gets it largely through income taxes (and corporate tax). Surely the corrollary of "No taxation without representation" is "No representation without taxation". After all, if you don't pay any taxes, why should you have a say in how the money is spent? It's a bit like getting a group of mates together and pooling money to buy beer. Not everyone puts in the same amount and you cover a couple of people who are short right now, but if they start telling you that you can't have Boddingtons because they'd rather have Bud Lite then you are within your rights to point out that if they want to buy Bud Lite then maybe they should bring some fucking money next time. So if you didn't pay any federal income tax in the last few years then thanks, but your opinion on the next president isn't really that important. (Don't start giving me stuff about gasoline taxes and all the other taxes; what we need is simplicity.)

This leaves old people. If you paid taxes all your life and then retired, maybe you earned the right to continue to vote, but only subject to a senility test. There would (rightly) be real pressure for old farts to take some driving test to prove that they can still function behind the wheel after the age of, say, seventy, is it weren't for the AARP. How about making sure they haven't started having regular conversations with a teapot before stamping their voter registration form?

And finally there's daytime TV. People who watch daytime TV should be prohibited from voting, ever. I don't mean people home sick, who flick through the channels until they find an old movie. I'm talking about anyone who intentionally turns on the TV to watch the likes of Judge Judy, Dr.Phil, Days Of Our Lives, Oprah, and all that other mindless shit. Your opinion doesn't count because you do not have a brain, and people without a brain should not be allowed to select the next president.

I don't expect that my ideas will get adopted, but then again it probably doesn't matter, since Congress is stuffed with people whose seat was bought by campaign contributions; you could elect a president on the basis of the votes of five year-olds on methamphetamine and nothing much would change. Which makes all the incessant TV speculation all the more annoying...


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison