Sunday, October 12, 2008

A New Way To Count Votes

The woman who told McCain at a town hall meeting this week, that she can't trust Obama because he's an Arab, made me question the concept of "one man, one vote".

If every vote must count, why not make the vote of a willfully ignorant, racist person count less?

This is not a partisan or ideological idea. It is one that rewards Americans who aren't racist and prejudiced against certain religions.

The right to vote brings with it a responsibility to be as well-informed as possible. For the Academy Awards, you can only vote for a film you have seen.

So in a Presidential election, the vote of a reasonably well-informed American who believes in the principle that all men are created equal, should count twice as much as an ignorant racist. This would help convince Republicans to stop using code words to appeal to racist voters in the South and elsewhere. If racists only get half a vote, no party in its right-wing mind would bother pandering to them.

My plan will not penalize anyone for their political views, no matter how extreme or repugnant. And no one should be completely disenfranchised. But if you think Obama is Arab, or that Iraq was responsible for 9/11, you are certifiably insane, which should simply make your vote count for less.

How do we handle the logistics of enforcing this?
We can start by picking them out of the audience at McCain town hall events.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good idea. It would make voting a lot easier for the rest of us, as it would cut down the queues at polling stations by about sixty percent.