Lets suppose some country has set a fee to vote on it's presidential and parliamentary elections. Elections are held each 4 years. Let the fee be average monthly salary in that country.
How will it work out?
May it be called democratic?
What size the fee should be?
Purpose of such a measure is to filter out people who don't care. In my idea, they will still get ALL benefits of being an citizen. On the other hand, people who want to vote will dedicate more time to select who they vote for, because they want their vote to make a difference, so that government will increase wealth of the country.
Money collected with this fee will simply go to the states budget. They even may be returned to the citizen who payed the fee if country's GDP grows by X% during next 4/8/16 years. With a premium.
bump for all responsible citizens
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How fast this board is!
Come on. What do you think? I myself don't see any downsides in this idea except that it's almost impossible to implement because people think they can vote properly with little to no research.
Hmmmm its an idea. It would reduce voting to fanaticism and to who has the largest cult following. I think It should be a bit less than the months pay. Maybe 5% of annual income?
No, this is a bad idea. More rich people would vote, less poor people. This would then go in favor of rich people only.
>I myself don't see any downsides
Good for you that you can simply throw out a pile of money to vote on some faggot.
Ever thought that it's literally unaffordable for MOST of the population? Literally only the richest are voting.
Kick yourself in the face for being this fucking dumb, jesus christ.
Maybe. But in the case when fee is not a fixed amount of money it will be unfair that everyone makes the same impact while some are paying more for it.
Should people be able to cast multiple votes? Or even arbitrary amount of money, for which they will get proportional part of votes.
Bump
Many rich people are rich because they are more educated. Poor people will have one more incentive to become wealthy.
Sure, if fixed amount fee is set not everyone will be able to afford it. But if it will be any sum of money everyone will afford it. Just with different impact.
Also, you assume rich people will do harm to others, but it's not necessarily the truth. We can return voters their money if country indicators of well being rise by x%. So $rich$ people will vote the way to benefit themselves AND to meat prosperity increase goal to get their money back.
Poor people benefit, rich people benefit. And whoever takes more risk and puts in more mental resourses benefits more.
*meet
What a typo. I was afraid of thread drowning and didn't spell check well enough.
It would depend on the country, and exact fee. If you make a fixed number, it's going to empower the rich, if you instead use a percentage it could be a thing.
Nope, it just empowers the rich and would lead to a circlejerk between paying a puppet goverment and legislating in a way that benefits whoever paid you.
Check this out.
There is also a question who will set these "well being indicators". Here we can leave old universal voting system. Everyone knows he wants bigger income/good roads/quality_healthcare/etc. No need to put any effort in setting these goals. This way if rich vote with much more money than all poor and middle class people can AND reach only their goals, not goals of >50% of population they lose huge money they've put into votes.
Sure, now country has ended up with 4 years of failed government, but the ones most responsible for this also lost shitload of money. Was it worth it? Maybe not. This maybe is critical problem though. There has to be a way to ensure "attackers" can't suck out of the country more money than they pay for the opportunity.
We could also return their voting fees to people, when politician of their choice wasn't elected. But it has a downside -- it will make anonymity of votes harder to ensure.
We could add a formula to determine which politician will be elected.
Something like
election_score = (a*money_in_fees + b*total_voters)/(c*average_fee)
this may give poor more power
Many poor people wouldn't be able to vote.
Please read my other posts where I propose solution for this.
If there only was a way to edit OPost on Sup Forums. I broke it into small pieces to bump this thread over time and people are reading the first post only .
Still waiting for people to judge my latest additions to the idea.
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>How will it work out?
Would you have a system to stop wealthy people from offering to pay for poor people/homeless to inflate their numbers?
Clinton had an extra half a billion dollars and huge celebrity support and would probably have had the advantage in your system
First of all I would make it a crime.
Then, how will wealthy people stop poor/homeless from simply taking the money and not voting? We may even add option to "fake vote", so homeless can trick people who are trying to trick the system themselves.
>Poor people will have one more incentive to become wealthy.
Hold up
So you do also support heavy taxation of the rich, because if the rich gets less money, it will work as an incentive for them to work more?
This was shitty argument, I confess.
I meant it they way that to keep their welfare they will need to find a way to vote for it.
But, again, shitty argument, throw it out.
>Then, how will wealthy people stop poor/homeless from simply taking the money and not voting?
Its a good point when it comes to the homeless as for the poor in general I dont think it would be too difficult for them to find willing poor people (or just people who are shit with money) on their side if they did some basic checking/vetting - even checking social media posts from before this system was implemented.
Like, giving more money to people who are anyway going to vote for certain party or what? This means that more people are actually willing to vote for that party. Not that bad.
And we always can perform a simple check if the money came right before being used to vote. Using same agency that fights with money laundering and other financial crimes. They surely can detect if someone systematically or in great volume sends money to people who then vote with these funds. Less people are going to bother and risk their freedom using this loophole.
Just learn from our mistakes Ukraine.
Have a family voting system,
> Each family that has two parents one male and one female with child gets to vote.
>raise the voting age to 25
This way no woman can claim they cannot vote, therefore no feminists and you can still have a conservative government. You would also be eliminating a huge portion of non-taxpayers from voting which is also plus.
Stupid idea.
A basic test on the political issues whould be MUCH better, though I realize it's not going to happen.
>On the other hand, people who want to vote will dedicate more time to select who they vote for, because they want their vote to make a difference, so that government will increase wealth of the country.
Your ideas are terrible, and you're terrible at logic and understanding human nature.
Literally only the rich would vote in theory. In practice? Literally nobody would vote. In other words, it'd be a dictatorship. That is, until someone gets the bright idea to pay people to go vote. Then it'll be a pseudo-democracy (only people who are paid will vote, only people who will vote for "me" will be paid to vote) the first time around, and then a pure dictatorship from then on.
Also: opens the door for paying more for more votes. Which opens the door to having your country controlled by the Chinese or Saudi Arabia.
This isn't good enough. Say the political climate is such that marrying is no longer viable. Then this situation can never be fixed because only those that are married can vote.
The election runner with the deepest pockets buys the most voters. Well played friendo.
Could you please clarify more why it's a stupid idea?
Also, question how to rule a country has much more depth than can be tested in country-wide standardized test. This question has no clear answer yet as far as I know.
Ukraine has made it's choice back in 1991. It's incredibly hard to make changes to our constitution. Like any other in the world.
I don't think there should be such government incentive to have children. Quality over quantity. Gov should stop giving welfare to people who can't support their children. In everything not related to voting system I'm going to stick with libertarians.
In this system people aren't able to buy votes from others, because people who they payed for votes don't have obligation to fulfill their agreement, to vote at all. They can only be sure THEIR vote reaches destination. And nobody is stupid enough not to simply keep the money and vote what they want for instead. Same thing with China and Saudi Arabia. Citizens may take foreign money and still vote how they want.
Why are you saying nobody will vote? You get your money back if your candidate was not elected and in the case "well-being indicators" were reached. In the latter with a premium!(guess where it's going to be taken from)
Go be 6 years old somewhere else.
Unless you list your literal arguments it's you who can go somewhere else.
I'm trying to think through this idea with help of Sup Forums.
How about letting only taxpayers vote?
This would then go in favor of productive taxpaying people that are responsible with their personal finances and (((them))) only.
FTFY
If (((they))) are willing to pay millions (Billions) for (((their))) candidate's election, (((they))) would just pay the fees for shill votes.
Some type of a basic 9th grade level civics test to be issued a voter ID sounds like a better answer. Or even just being able to name your state's senators, your Representative, your Governer, 1 sitting Supreme Court Justice and the 3 branches of government at the polls for your ballot to be valid would probably do it. Pretty sure that's unconstitutional though.
It's undemocratic
Sage
what would stop the government of raising the fee so only the people they wanted would vote for them? You basically incentivise them to keep some people poor and some people rich moron
>Or even just being able to name your...
Non-stop ads with officials names incoming
Civics test is good intermediate solution but I'm not sure it's going to largely improve vote quality.
Every citizen pays taxes one or another. Maybe you meant people with positive (taxes_paid - public_funds_used), later ($).
This is also good moderate idea. But will it be fair to give everyone equal voting impact when they clearly contribute different ($)
You are the moron because you didn't read the thread and dare to post your opinion on what's written in here.
I wrote before that fee may have no lower and upper limit. Read these if you're indeed interested.
I get that you slavs are about a century behind actual civilization, but this idea already occurred to someone, was tried for awhile, and was eventually overturned because it was rightly determined to contradict the democratic value of universal suffrage. It's called a poll tax, and there's legal precedent to not allow it on most western republics.
Democracy isn't likely to regress, if you want undesirables to not have voting power you need a completely different system of government.
>no clarification
It's democratic at least because word 'democratic' itself is (demos + cratos), which translates from ancient Greek as 'people' + 'rule'.
You are placing a tax on one of the essential tenets of democracy, a tax on suffrage
Sage
I'm aware that Wikipedia is not the most reliable source, but this is from there:
'A poll tax, also known as head tax or capitation, is a tax levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual'
I am not proposing only fixed sum. I wrote about an option with arbitrary amount of money, and most of my posts describe features that system with arbitrary voting fee will have. Maybe I shouldn't call it a fee, it's more like investment or a bet, but these words may provoke unwanted associations.
Now about slavs. If not universal distribution of enterprise shares after fall of Soviet union and if not uneducated voters in 90s we wouldn't be such a shithole as we are now.Talking about Ukraine, some people here often vote for 20$ increase in pension or a bag of food, you know. They simply don't care. It's free goodies each 4 years, nothing more.
Socialists would go crazy. 99% chance of mass rioting. That being said, I'm not sure what kind of effect it would have. My intuition tells me that you would accelerate toward liberalism. I can't speak for all other countries, but in Australia we have a conservative working class. Liberals are generally wealthier. They're also the most political, since liberalism and socialism are inherently political as opposed to conservatism and capitalism which are inherently anti-political. A mass of loud liberals would storm the voting booths in the name of the oppressed workers who can't afford to vote.
In principle I oppose democracy. It's mob rule.
We can as well call it a payment to increase the weight of persons vote. 'Yes one can vote, but with really low impact on the outcome'.
You may say: 'Hey, they are taking my voting power from me!'. Isn't voting power being taken away by immigrants and natural population growth anyway?
Why is universal suffrage so valued by everyone? Universal suffrage benefits groups of voters whose population grows the most. Not the most virtuous or rich or powerful or good or [place_your_feature_here].
>A mass of loud liberals would storm the voting booths in the name of the oppressed workers who can't afford to vote.
B-but, everyone will afford to vote. The only ones to blame that they didn't attach more to their vote will be workers themselves. Treats or votes. Who will sacrifice anything in the name of people who didn't want to sacrifice anything for themselves? Especially when you see them driving new car, [insert your luxury here]
You really don't see a problem with this way of thinking don't you
I think that being on Welfare/EBT should exclude you from voting.
This removes the leeches who don't deserve to have their voice heard.
Even in the case of fixed fee in amount of average monthly salary once per 4 years it's only 2% of average persons income during this term. 2% is even better than tax raise by 2% because people can get compound interest on their untaxed 2% for 4 years.Not much, but still better.
Tell me about it.
b u m p
>Purpose of such a measure is to filter out people who don't care.
If that is the purpose, your idea of "fee = one month's salary" is too high. That would exclude pretty much everybody below a certain level of wealth, whether they cared or not.
I like RAH's solution -- national service earns full citizenship and the right to vote. If you care enough about the country to put yourself into a risky, burdensome or difficult situation working on it's behalf, you care enough about the body politic to be allowed a voice in running it. Those who do not earn the franchise enjoy the full rights and responsibility of enfranchised citizens, with the SOLE exception of the vote.
>A basic test on the political issues whould be MUCH better,
But in that case, the guy who writes the test determines who gets to vote. Test questions and the acceptable answers can be geared to filter out anybody who does not agree with the test makers' ideology and stands on issues.
And don;t say "a non partisan test" crafted by a "non partisan committee." There is no such animal in politics as a non partisan anything, you can go with "bi partisan" in US politics, but even there you need a way to break a tie and BOOM, we're partisan again.
I feel like just restricting the vote to men over 25 is enough for a strong democracy. You could restrict it to tax paying men as an extra measure.
>t's incredibly hard to make changes to our constitution. Like any other in the world.
We've amended ours 27 times. Even acknowledging the first ten were "gimmes," 17 amendments in 200+ years is not "incredibly hard," but it does take some effort and a broad consensus.
There is a VERY high failure rate for amendments put in the hopper by a congressman or senator -- but that is to be expected, as most are not seriously intended to pass, but are grandstanding so they can say "I proposed a Constitutional Amendment to fix Problem X!" in their campaign literature. No effort is actually made to gather support for these "proposed amendments."
>because people who they payed for votes don't have obligation to fulfill their agreement, to
"Dear person I am about to bribe:
My man here will take you down to the precinct to vote. Go vote. When we check the voter rolls later, if it shows you voted, you get the money."
People who don't care already don't vote dumbass. What you meant to write is "purpose of such a measure is to filter out poor people"
>Every citizen pays taxes one or another.
I understood that to mean "income taxes" which here, not everybody pays.
>You are placing a tax on one of the essential tenets of democracy, a tax on suffrage
Quibble: You are not taxing a tenet, you are taxing an action.
Devil's advocate portion of this post:
I have a fundamental right under the constitution to keep and bear arms -- I still have to pay for my ammo. There is a sales tax when I buy it.
A month's salary to vote. That won't weed out stupid people just poor people. It's an awful idea.
>inb4 but poor people are stupid. I live in Texas with tons of oil millionaires and I can personally attest to the fact that it isn't true.
People will just buy votes
>soros won't hide his antics
This is wrong in every single way possible.
Would discourage many people from voting and only the somewhat rich would vote.
It'd create a supercapitalist state that is ruled by the rich and would slowly turn into tyrrany.
Oh wait, I just described Ukraine in its current state xd
>People who don't care already don't vote dumbass.
Many people vote who do not care enough to inform themselves about issues and candidates.
WHere I live, state judges are on the ballot. They are forbidden to do any real campaigning, and cannot affiliate with a party -- about all they can do is put their name and "for judge" on some yard signs.
So almost all of us go to the polls with zero knowledge of who any of them are.
Me, I leave blank the ones where I know nothing, and only vote for the few judicial candidates that I know anything about. But judicial candidates get millions of votes -- most from people who have no idea about who they are voting for.
There are reasons to vote other than "I care enough about the election to have an informed opinion." At the basic level, we're taught it is something you have to do unless you don't want to be a Good Citizen, creating a pressure to walk in the polling place and pull some levers whether you know or care about the candidates.
Rich Texas oil millionaires being stupid does not refute the argument that poor people are stupid.
I think it would be better to only allow married couples to vote.
This. A fee for voting is a good way to give the Jews even more power.
The number one obstacle to business isn't intelligence it's motivation. Anyone motivated / dedicated / hardworking an become wealthy. I may actually support this for the president, but for the people's branch of govt (congress), universal suffrage should be the norm.
Still I'm not comfortable with a capitalist super class representing the whole population (even though they sorta already do).
Gotta love Hoppean Libertarians.
I do think voting should be charged a fee.
>Fatsos would not vote (they prefer to spend in bacon & beer)
>Women would not vote (they prefer to spend in shoes & chocolate)
>Niggas would not vote (they prefer to spend in watermenlons & Mountain Jew)
>Illegal aliens would probably not vote for similar reasons
>Only true civic gentleman would vote
>Dramatically raise costs of electorate manipulation
>Would help paying the election costs
>No need for too high a fee, just some neetbux would be enough
>"Free is cheap", but democracy isn't free, asshole
Excellent choice, OP.
Here's a better idea: pay people to NOT vote. Anyone that shows up to vote is given a choice:
>vote
>not vote, and receive a $100 thank you check for sparing everyone your idiocy
Anyone that can be bought off for so little has no business voting in the first place. Imagine how much better things would run if the opinions of underclass scum were filtered out of politics in this way.
It would make things worse. There's such a thing as a paradox of voting: it doesn't matter how important the election is, for a population large enough voting eventually stops paying off. The chances of your vote changing something are too low to overcome the cost, even if that cost is just a walk. Now, if that cost is skipping a day of skilled work and then you add a fee to that, people who aren't full-time politicians might stop voting altogether.
>leaf
In my state (VA) the governor is giving felons voting rights to make sure his party wins.