[tivodan1116]

Quote by: Morgan_Freeman Exactly, voting should be difficult. It is a privilege, not a right. If it were a right, we would let illegal immigrants vote.

No. There are plenty of rights that citizens enjoy that illegal immigrants do not.

I think the more taxes you pay, the more control you should have over the the government, yes. That makes perfect sense to me.

Why would you want to replicate the relationship between the government and the governed of feudal-age Europe? (Wherein the lords with most money could call on the king, and the serfs could not)

So aside from that asinine portion of your argument, how about the fact that there is more to good government than taking money in and sending money out? You seem to feel that people who do not pay taxes should not have a say in government. You throw around words like tyranny without realizing that you are advocating it yourself. What happens if the rich voters in your government decide to vote for only representatives who agree to make the following law: "Anyone who does not pay taxes should be summarily shot and their meager property divided among the rich." Since the people who aren't paying taxes can't vote, they have no way to stop such laws from being made.

Your mistake is in thinking that government is only a monetary relationship. As a libertarian, you should realize that there is more to it than that.

If you think everyone should have equal political influence, then make taxes equal. That simple.

Ok, so do that. What does that have to do with voting?

That sounds very nice and high-minded. But politics is serious business. I don't want any old know-nothing jackass voting my liberties away.

Ohh, I see. You want the rich to vote away your liberties instead. You want Bill Gates to take his 40 billion votes to your few thousand and say everyone has to buy Windows Vista within the first week it's out. Good luck there.

Fix the the disease, I agree. And in the meantime, ill-informed people should not be voting.

Guess what: Voter turnout is less than 50%. The ill-informed people aren't voting right now, they're staying home...
Because someone disagrees with you does not make them ill-informed (talk about elitist). Just because the politicians with your views don't carry the day doesn't mean it's all stupid people randomly whacking levers.
Believe me, as a rare libertarian in a very liberal yet very intelligent setting (a NY law school), I can understand that because someone disagrees with me it does not make them stupid.

How about the basic civics exam that foreigners have to take to become a citizen? Why don't native-born Americans have to take that?

For what? Again, if you don't think most people voting could pass such an exam, fix the problem, not the symptom.

I disagree wholeheartedly. Democracy is, at the very very best, a necessary evil.

It's not necessary. You could take your militia and overthrow the government and install a dictatorship, like Khadafi, or Pol Pot, or any other one-person rule. Yeah that democracy... THAT's the evil government.

People should only be voting if they know what the hell they are doing. Screw these platitudes like, "Get involved! Vote!"

This implies that you think there are uninformed people voting.

Intentions are worthless in politics. Results are all that matters. You should be judging the policy on its own merits.

The Supreme Court has disagreed with you many times and quite frequently looks at the intentions of a law - when applying strict scrutiny for example. But I guess you think they're ill-informed, right?

Yes, as per the 14th Amendment, which I think should be repealed. It is completely contrary to the spirit of the original constitution.

Ensuring basic rights to all citizens is against the spirit of the Constitution? That's rich. I don't suppose you have anything to back that up? Like maybe a Ben Franklin quote where he says that states should be allowed to deny someone the right to a jury trial? Sure.

This "right" to voting is NOT analagous to such rights as freedom of speech. My freedom to speak is merely dependent on other people not stopping me from speaking. Voting, however, is the means by which we exercise control over other people. Coercion is not a right.

How do you preserve the things that you consider rights, like freedom of speech, without the right to vote? Example - your group of college-educated rich people passes an Amendment that overturns the 1st Amendment, and they write a new one which only gives college-educated homeowners the right to free speech. Do the poor and uneducated not have a right to free speech? And if they do, how do they preserve it?
Your argument is so short-sighted it doesn't even pass the laugh test.

The idea of the federal government mandating how local elections are run is most certainly against the spirit of the constitution.

LOL... just keep throwing these things out with no proof or support, maybe someone who doesn't deserve to vote will believe you.

Quote by: RickSp The results of the poll tax and literacty tests was to prevent minorities from voting. Can you present any facts to support this claim?

Encyclopedia Brittanica: Poll Tax
Yeah that Encyclopedia Britannica, what do they know?

It would be elitist if I wasn't a libertarian, maybe. You know full well I distrust government in all its forms, including mob rule.

Denying certain groups the right to vote is mob rule - the mob is the people who can vote. Giving everyone exactly one vote is the antithesis of mob rule, because everyone has equal say.