Quote:
|
Originally Posted by OpieCunningham
There is potential for abuse in anything. We have abuse at massive scales today - without any testing procedures. Assuredly there would be some degree of abuse with a testing procedure. But the benefits would outweigh the abuse because there would be no completely unknowledgeable people affecting the course of the nation.
|
I'm more concerned of what the completely knowledgable people would do with such a system....talk about rife for abuse. The history of poll tests has been one of intentional disenfranchisment of minorities or other groups. You say that we already have massive fraud in our elections so why reintroduce such an easily abuseable "protection" as a poll test?
Quote:
There is more danger of abuse in a drivers test. If you bribe the test provider to pass, you are circumventing the methods society uses to judge worthiness to operate a vehicle. As such, you could potentially cause the death of innocent people due to a lack of knowledge of proper driving regulations. Voting abuse of this nature would simply cause one ignorant vote being cast. In both cases, the percentages of scale are too small to offer any significant negative impact.
As for SCOTUS aspects, it's obvious this whole thing would require a Constitutional Amendment.
|
Voting abuse via poll tests could produce lots and lots of cases of wrongful disenfranchisment...this has been it's most common usage throughout our history.
The idea of amending the constitution to okay a poll test makes me a little queasy...see my above statements.