Contrarian Opinion: Voters Vs. Non-Voters
It’s an untrue truism that democracy only works if everyone votes. It would work better if fewer people voted. The ignorant shouldn’t have power over others.
Voting isn’t a right. It’s a privilege. Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right, but freedom to have the majority opinion, no matter how stupid, take away your fundamental human rights is not.
Just look at how well it has worked where majority religious or ideological opinion has imposed censorship. Look at some of the political leaders that have been put in office by majority opinion, an opinion that has often been ruthlessly manipulated by people with money and power. (The ignorant masses are easily manipulated by expensive propaganda.) This explains the immoral jerks that so often get elected in self-congratulatory, but dysfunctional, democracies like the U. S. of A.
Thomas Jefferson famously said, "The cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate." Without that cornerstone, you simply have a dictatorship of the masses.
The solution obviously isn’t a ‘literacy’ test, such as was used to prevent blacks from voting not that long ago. Any such tests are just another tool of the powerful to keep their hold on power, and any criteria for being allowed to vote are easily manipulated to that end. It’s happening in Canada now with the proposed, so-called “Fair Elections Act”, which should more aptly be named the “Unfair Elections Act”.
The solution is an educated electorate, but that’s not easily accomplished. Those in power have the power to keep the ignorant masses ignorant. This is why censorship is a top priority for them, and why freedom of expression is a most fundamental human right, not a privilege.
