Yeah it sounds fun unless you have any awareness of how this actually worked out when it was used in the past. Fully not okay.
You mean tests that were designed to ensure that only "the right people" were able to pass them. As well as a grandfather clause that exempted all of those right people (in modern times there would likely be a voter roll purge that would somehow lose most liberal voters while miraculously keeping all of the conservative ones).
Even if you assumed the test successfully filtered out an educated voterbase, it would take all but five seconds for X party to cheat their exams, kind of like the "grandfather law" which essentially bypassed jim crow era literacy tests for everyone who was white.
InB4 the Non-Voters just start doing the Wilmington Massacre repeatedly.
Check your history books about what happens when the majority of the population has no political voice. Things get ugly.
Ah yes, blamed the disenfranchised voters for not wanting to jump through another hoop. Its a big club, and, sorry, pal; even if you fill out the test, you ain't in it.
Heinlein gets shit on for this, but his "citizenship through service" idea always made sense to me. Yeah you have rights, can work a regular job, and have all the benefits we traditionally associate with "citizenship" by simply being a legal resident...but if you want to vote or hold office, you need to spend a few years contributing. Maybe that's military service, or maybe that's working as a teacher in a low-income area. Regardless, voting is a privilege that SHOULD be earned by contributing to the society you want to impact FIRST.
So... What's stopping the government in power from implementing systems that stop their political opponents holding those service positions?
Except the candidates would all be garbage anyways haha
Candidates being all garbage is exactly what you'd expect when they're just pawns for the people actually running the government (i.e. owners of big corporations).
Since they're shit, they're not popular and can't achieve much on their own. When they're not useful anymore they can be blamed and replaced by the next puppet.
Of course they're also shit, exactly because they're in the pocket of the very wealthy. In the US it seems even impossible to gain any significant position without their blessing.
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