On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 23:16:38 +0000, Roger Mills
wrote:

On 17/01/2021 20:49, Chris Green wrote:
Roger Mills wrote:
On 17/01/2021 07:45, David P wrote:
Neuroscientists now claim that the human brain is not
fully developed until age 25-30. We should therefore
raise the voting age to that level. Military service is
different: obedience is valued over thoughtfulness.
With elections, the reverse, thoughtfulness rather than
obedience, should yield better outcomes.


How about a test of competence to vote rather than universal suffrage?
Some people may pass it at age 10 - others never.

How do you test?


The test would need to determine whether the person had a basic
understanding of the issues on which political parties usually campaign.

Quite. We are forcing 'foreigners' to understand (and live by?) 'our
way' via the Life in the UK' test to gain British Citizenship so why
not to be allowed to vote?

so why not
It will obviously never happen, but would be good if it could be made to
work -

You could do a pretty basic one at the polling station, multi
question, multiple choice, a randomly selected set (adaptive testing)
and if you pass you vote. Even if you learn all the answers to the
questions (like signs and stopping distances in the Highway Code) you
may well still be 'better informed' than before.

Feck, you have to take all sorts of tests to do all sorts of things
that are far less important than choosing the fact of the entire
population!

along with needing a licence to procreate.

;-)

So the EU vote test could start:

Q1. Do you know what might change and therefore impact you if we leave
the EU?

Q2. Do you believe all the things you have been told about the EU to
be fact?

Q3. Do you believe all the promises that have been made re the
benefits of us leaving the EU to be fact?

Q4. Do you care about concepts (like Sovereignty) than facts (how
having Sovereignty may or may not make a positive difference to us)?

etc

Cheers, T i m