4 ms·

Some of these are very good, but quizzes are very undemocratic. I get why they may seem like a good idea, but they end up being a great tool for disenfranchise

Some of these are very good, but quizzes are very undemocratic. I get why they may seem like a good idea, but they end up being a great tool for disenfranchisement. For me, I would add that any law passed must have a relatively short sunset clause. This forces us to reconsider laws periodically to make sure they're still relevant.

lordnacho 4y ago
They're all undemocratic, it's not how it's done anywhere! Except maybe PR. The quiz thing is mostly exhaustion at the idea of people who don't bother to learn anything having a say. It's no different from having kids deciding what we should have for dinner. We can come up with a bunch of facts beforehand that everyone can read the answers to, and then it's up to people themselves to decide how much they really care.
- ksaun 4y ago
  (I had inferred that the "quiz" would be objective statements about the candidates' platforms and known past actions as well as facts about the country's current situation. So a gauge of how well the voter understands their choices in the election, not just knowledge of unrelated trivia. There are still issues with this, but it was an interesting idea to ponder.)
- backpackviolet 4y ago
  > The quiz thing is mostly exhaustion at the idea of people who don't bother to learn anything having a say. I hear you, I feel that frustration as well. Myself, I've come the long way around to deciding that, those people need to be included anyway. And a robust system of democracy should work even with their input. Maybe at the lowest level, all voters get a "I'm happy"/"I'm unhappy" button, and signals of greater interest unlock more options and details. But I think gatekeeping is fundamentally undemocratic, and if you are going to make it harder to vote you need a better reason than "they don't seem to care". We want more hands on the wheel, not fewer. If they don't seem to know or care, that's our problem, not theirs.
  - lordnacho 4y ago
    But this isn't gatekeeping. Everyone can vote, nobody is getting turned away at the polling station. We won't know who got marked down for not answering correctly "Who was our first president". It might be busy professionals who don't have time to study (look at the CFA exam). It might be underprivileged minorities, which is a legit concern. It might be that it's evenly spread out who bothers and who doesn't.
    - notahacker 4y ago
      It's most likely people who have a different belief system or cultural background to the test setters...
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    > I've come the long way around to deciding that, those people need to be included anyway. Isn't that the point? At least from my POV, it's completely meaningless unless literally everybody is included. So yes, I'd include children, the mentally-infirm, and definitely convicts. Think about how "universal"[0] enfranchisement came about: it has been a series of grants of influence/power, in layers, starting at the top. Barons demanded more say, and less arbitrary treatment, for themselves. They didn't get it, until they used force. Women were treated as we now treat terrorists, when they demanded a fair say. The whole purpose of electoral systems is to deter people from trying to actually take power. So not including what you call "these people"[1] is a serious mistake. [0] It's not universal, anywhere. Of course. [1] The phrase "these people" is often used when othering a group of people. For example, it seems to spring easily to the lips of some Conservative politicans in the UK, when discussing immigration. It's sort of a trigger phrase for me.
    - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
      > At least from my POV, it's completely meaningless unless literally everybody is included. So yes, I'd include children, the mentally-infirm, and definitely convicts. I'm generally okay with criteria that are truly evenly instituted, such as age limits. I'm also okay with denying genuine transients the right to vote. These can become problematic at points, so I believe in limiting the limits. But you don't have to include literally everyone. I would generally include convicts, and especially ex-felons, but I would never include anyone who has maliciously denied someone else the right to exercise the franchise (e.g. murderers, some kidnappers).
backpackviolet 4y ago
> I would add that any law passed must have a relatively short sunset clause. This forces us to reconsider laws periodically to make sure they're still relevant. I like this idea in theory, and I'd love to find a way to implement it. But I think we'd find ourselves in a situation where we either spend a ton of time rubber-stamping all the "good laws", or we end up not having laws for stuff people all agree on and don't waste time rubber-stamping because why bother with the effort if everyone abides by the law anyway ... until decades later we get another guy doing a bunch of destabilizing horseshit because it's not technically illegal.
- lordnacho 4y ago
  If not an automatic sunset, I would propose a different rule: for every law, we stipulate what statistical measures we thought would be improved by the law over some time period. Like "we think if kids are all fed at school, pass rates will increase 5%". Then check after 5 years to see if that happened, and we can decide what to do. At the moment every law has an imprecise expected outcome and we never go back to think about whether the intervention worked. I'm not saying use the stats mechanically to cancel the law if it fails, just that there ought to be a post-fact consideration of whether something worked.
  - candiddevmike 4y ago
    This is great. Have some kind of "definition of success" with laws that will be used in the future to gauge their effectiveness. If the law isn't having the desired outcome, it gets repealed. Truthfully, outcome based legislature would be quite a bit more readable too, as the outcome bit will spell out exactly the intention of the law.

lordnacho 4y ago

They're all undemocratic, it's not how it's done anywhere! Except maybe PR. The quiz thing is mostly exhaustion at the idea of people who don't bother to learn anything having a say. It's no different from having kids deciding what we should have for dinner. We can come up with a bunch of facts beforehand that everyone can read the answers to, and then it's up to people themselves to decide how much they really care.

ksaun 4y ago
(I had inferred that the "quiz" would be objective statements about the candidates' platforms and known past actions as well as facts about the country's current situation. So a gauge of how well the voter understands their choices in the election, not just knowledge of unrelated trivia. There are still issues with this, but it was an interesting idea to ponder.)
backpackviolet 4y ago
> The quiz thing is mostly exhaustion at the idea of people who don't bother to learn anything having a say. I hear you, I feel that frustration as well. Myself, I've come the long way around to deciding that, those people need to be included anyway. And a robust system of democracy should work even with their input. Maybe at the lowest level, all voters get a "I'm happy"/"I'm unhappy" button, and signals of greater interest unlock more options and details. But I think gatekeeping is fundamentally undemocratic, and if you are going to make it harder to vote you need a better reason than "they don't seem to care". We want more hands on the wheel, not fewer. If they don't seem to know or care, that's our problem, not theirs.
- lordnacho 4y ago
  But this isn't gatekeeping. Everyone can vote, nobody is getting turned away at the polling station. We won't know who got marked down for not answering correctly "Who was our first president". It might be busy professionals who don't have time to study (look at the CFA exam). It might be underprivileged minorities, which is a legit concern. It might be that it's evenly spread out who bothers and who doesn't.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    It's most likely people who have a different belief system or cultural background to the test setters...
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  > I've come the long way around to deciding that, those people need to be included anyway. Isn't that the point? At least from my POV, it's completely meaningless unless literally everybody is included. So yes, I'd include children, the mentally-infirm, and definitely convicts. Think about how "universal"[0] enfranchisement came about: it has been a series of grants of influence/power, in layers, starting at the top. Barons demanded more say, and less arbitrary treatment, for themselves. They didn't get it, until they used force. Women were treated as we now treat terrorists, when they demanded a fair say. The whole purpose of electoral systems is to deter people from trying to actually take power. So not including what you call "these people"[1] is a serious mistake. [0] It's not universal, anywhere. Of course. [1] The phrase "these people" is often used when othering a group of people. For example, it seems to spring easily to the lips of some Conservative politicans in the UK, when discussing immigration. It's sort of a trigger phrase for me.
  - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
    > At least from my POV, it's completely meaningless unless literally everybody is included. So yes, I'd include children, the mentally-infirm, and definitely convicts. I'm generally okay with criteria that are truly evenly instituted, such as age limits. I'm also okay with denying genuine transients the right to vote. These can become problematic at points, so I believe in limiting the limits. But you don't have to include literally everyone. I would generally include convicts, and especially ex-felons, but I would never include anyone who has maliciously denied someone else the right to exercise the franchise (e.g. murderers, some kidnappers).

backpackviolet 4y ago

> I would add that any law passed must have a relatively short sunset clause. This forces us to reconsider laws periodically to make sure they're still relevant. I like this idea in theory, and I'd love to find a way to implement it. But I think we'd find ourselves in a situation where we either spend a ton of time rubber-stamping all the "good laws", or we end up not having laws for stuff people all agree on and don't waste time rubber-stamping because why bother with the effort if everyone abides by the law anyway ... until decades later we get another guy doing a bunch of destabilizing horseshit because it's not technically illegal.

lordnacho 4y ago
If not an automatic sunset, I would propose a different rule: for every law, we stipulate what statistical measures we thought would be improved by the law over some time period. Like "we think if kids are all fed at school, pass rates will increase 5%". Then check after 5 years to see if that happened, and we can decide what to do. At the moment every law has an imprecise expected outcome and we never go back to think about whether the intervention worked. I'm not saying use the stats mechanically to cancel the law if it fails, just that there ought to be a post-fact consideration of whether something worked.
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  This is great. Have some kind of "definition of success" with laws that will be used in the future to gauge their effectiveness. If the law isn't having the desired outcome, it gets repealed. Truthfully, outcome based legislature would be quite a bit more readable too, as the outcome bit will spell out exactly the intention of the law.