That would be a terrible idea. Midwits* are among the most egregious offenders with their stupid opinions. They tend to be conformists who are adept at fitting in with the current thing. Next are academics with high IQs but who have no idea how the world works. Unfortunately, IQ is not related to wisdom in a simple way. Some brilliant philosophers (e.g., John Rawls) would make terrible rulers. Rule by the very smart, yet clueless, is especially dangerous because they would be skilled at oppression.
*midwit: individuals of above average intelligence, yet not too far from average
That is what we are talking about. The 19th Amendment was a deliberate extension of the franchise to a group of people who were previously excluded. A reasonable empirical question to ask ourselves is – Is the world a better place after the franchise was expanded? This is a necessary question to address since there are proposals to extend the franchise further. For example, the UK is apparently considering expanding the franchise to 16 year-olds; New York wants to expand the franchise to non-citizens who are there illegally.
The world has changed a lot in many ways since the 19th Amendment was passed. Technology has moved forwards, for example, which complicates any analysis. Many people would probably conclude that the world is not a better place since the 19th Amendment – but correlation is not causation.
I would put that question in the positive rather than the negative – Who should be allowed to vote?
My predilection would be that the people who should be part of the franchise are those who are on the team and who have skin in the game.
Lots of room for discussion about how to implement those principles. Clearly, no-one should be automatically excluded simply because of gender or religion or ancestry. But what about age as a criterion, for example? Should a 16 year-old married mother be excluded from the franchise simply because she is young?
I don’t think we should exclude the very young OR the very old. Every stage of life has its own unique perspective, though transitory (because they’ll be moving on out of it.)
16 was the age of consent, the age at which people could make binding contracts, in many states until recent decades. I doubt 16 year olds know any less than 18 year olds do. I’m not particularly advocating the vote at 16, but, now you mention it, I don’t see why not.
Legislation is always a matter of drawing a line. Why 16 and not 14, or 12? It’s always arbitrary and as we say, there will be “hard cases” on either side next to the line. It has to be of a piece with the consensus about when people can be drafted, when they are free to marry and make other contracts, as I said.
One of the ways the world got worse was the 18th Amendment. But, I hear you cry, the 18th preceded the 19th! True, Grasshopper, but the Suffragettes and Prohibitionists greatly overlapped. If not for those women, there would never have been Prohibition. In the present case, the was causation.
One idea I’ve seen floating around is suffrage for married people, perhaps only if they have kids. Talk about skin in the game! As a bonus, it would encourage and reward fertility — critically needed in this moment.
It hasn’t escaped my notice that many European leaders are childless. That may explain their careless treatment of the future of their countries.
So much for 75 percent of state legislatures requirement being a super majority or difficult requirement. There needs to be a super majority to pass an amendment versus 50 percent plus 1 in 3/4 of states
We should be drawing the line based on the individual, not on any arbitrary characteristic such as age or gender.
In my ideal world, the 16 year-old married mother bringing up a baby in a stable committed non-taxpayer-supported relationship is definitely making a contribution to society and has skin in the game. She should be a voter!
On the other hand, a 50 year-old childless woman on a government payroll should not have the vote. If she quits her taxpayer-supported job and goes into productive industry, then she would get the vote. Leaves that and goes into some taxpayer-supported NGO, then she loses the vote again.
One of the most salient legal terms I’ve run across is Nick Szabo’s “argument surface” as analogous to the cybersecurity term “attack surface”. Basically the more vague and or complex the rules the greater the advantage granted enemies of civil society.
While in my ideal world the “line drawn” would be voluntary vulnerability to challenge to mutual hunt in nature enforced by execution, a compromise more compatible with civil society as we know it is sex…
But more important than mere argument surface is the socially imposed monogamy for which Christiandom is famous if not unique among civilizations. Elite men are the harbingers of civilization collapse (or degeneracy into the hive) when they are permitted to accumulate wombs. Nobody wants to face this fact.
But those vague , complex (and frequently contradictory) rules are bread & butter – not to say champagne & caviar – for our oversized charge-by-the-hour Big Law sector, a key part of the Political Class. The enemy is within the gates.
… and, to the extent only the wealthy like Donald Trump can withstand Lawfare (the rest of us you never hear from again and are to forget about as “the process is the punishment”) it is also a winning negative-sum warfare strategy against the rest of us…
…until it isn’t…
I think what they all count on is the flood of stress hormones unleashed on young men due to no access to justice except to commit virtual suicide in violence. The stress hormones then cause drop in testosterone*. Doubt me? You haven’t studied Primate Politics.
* It also causes disruption of glucose metabolism resulting in obesity and type 2 diabetes in animals. But if you go looking in “The Literature” you’ll find it saturated with chemical pollution of the environment as the only hypothesis worthy of consideration. I just can’t imagine WHY The Great And The Good would want to ignore social stressors on young men, nor that securing the economic position of the dominant with monopoly rents (including government minting of money for their managerial elites) would result in lower social stressors and be pursued like their lives depended on it.
