Even the intellectually challenged have the right to vote, and have the right to vote based on whatever half-baked rationale they possess. There will be blacks voting for Obama because of his race, and if Clinton had won the nomination, she would have gotten quite a few women casting their ballots for her because of her gender and for no other reason. People voted for Bush in 2004 because of his bloviations about John Kerry's Vietnam record, and allegations about it which were utter hogwash. People also vote for candidates based on their looks. But because we are a democracy, we can vote for whomever we choose, for whatever reason we choose. And I don't think we should mess with that, even though sometimes I tear my hair out when I hear some of the nonsense that passes for political discourse. In a perfect world, everyone would be smart enough to vote based on their candidates' stand on important issues, but this is not a perfect world and never will be. I would rather vote with idiots than not be able to vote at all.

The one true test of intellegence in another person is how closely he agrees with you. So who gets to apply this measure and decide who is and is not smart enough to vote.

I post on HTWW and War room and I get an editors choice about 20% of the time. If I post the same opinion on Lifelike Pundits my sanity is questioned. So at what point do we draw any lines and say only those on this side get to vote?

I find myself consistantly disagreeing with most of the political positions of the conservative movement and they have been in the business of disenfranchising as many people as possible who might not agree with them for as long as I've been alive. The problem is not with most peoples native intellegence. Most people, given correct information, can make good choices. The problem is with a political system that allows blatant lies to be told by elected officials and public servants and a news media that doesn't call them on it.

I don't get it.

I registered to vote.

(There were kids out on the corner with the forms, made it easy.)

I handled the Primary ballot.

I'm gonna bring all my ID to the GE booth.

I don't think Americans vote dumb.

I think issues and candidacies are often misportrayed by Media, campaigns, campaigners, and candidates.

I think racism, classism, selfishness and rage sometimes masquerade as elective stupidity.

There's nothing much wrong with the electoral system itself.

The people who run it, the faulty machines, the legislative ID barriers seeking to suppress participation, and a culture of lies and illegality are the villains of the process.

Democracy can be thwarted if unprincipled interests conspire unchecked to subvert it.

But, that's why we keep having elections.

Uneducated, tricked, misled, isn't dumb. A correction is still possible.

IQ jury still out. Next verdict in November.

Who is too dumb to vote? The religious fanatic or the atheist who is blind to the benefits or organized religion to our society? The guy who voted for GW Bush twice or the 9/11 conspiracy nutcase? The Kansas farmer with a sixth grade education or a the Ivy League-educated who never had a real job?

I really don't know. I want them all to vote, which I understand will lead many to believe I am too dumb to vote.

Please don't use smart and educated and dumb and ignorant interchangeably. And Ignorant isn't the antonym to smart. Someone can be smart but ignorant. Someone can be educated and dumb.

Intelligence is enhanced when the mind is educated much as a runner's 100 yard dash time is enhanced with training. To continue with the analogy some runners will never be as fast as other runners no matter how much they train, just as some people will never be as smart as others no matter how much they are educated.

The single most telling thing about our president is his relatively high IQ (reportedly 131(?)) and his high degree of ignorance. It is actually probably hard for somewhat with as high an IQ as he seems to have to be as ignorant as he is.

This indicates some serious flaws in his character that make him unsuitable to be president as we are finding out. First, he isn't curious. Second, he seems to be incredibly lazy and undisciplined when it comes to working. These add up to a president easily controlled by his subordinates.

As Nicolo Machiavelli said in the Prince

And if there are some who think that a prince who conveys an impression of his wisdom is not so through his own ability, but through the good advisers that he has around him, beyond doubt they are deceived, because this is an axiom which never fails: that a prince who is not wise himself will never take good advice, unless by chance he has yielded his affairs entirely to one person who happens to be a very prudent man. In this case indeed he may be well governed, but it would not be for long, because such a governor would in a short time take away his state from him.

The decider indeed.

That education defeats terrorism and sectarian strife. Seems that part of that equation is wrong. Since clearly we're too dumb to be trusted with a form of governance like ours it's obvious to this robot that 'all those other people' must therefore be clueless when it comes to form of liberal representative form of governance too and that they will continue to carbomb one another to the last man standing. Maybe we should invite all of them over here to blow US up instead. I'd be for that.

Because you're precisely the kind of ignoramous who ought to be banned from voting for life.

Everything you've ever said here is proof of that.

Managed to lose in 2000 against a real live dunderhead. A guy who TOLD YOU he was fucking clueless. And they lost again in 2004 to the same dunderhead. I really don't need the Grumpuses of the world telling me that were it for me (and I voted dem in both of those elections) that we would all live on the Big Rock Candy Mountain with 200 channels of Green Powered PBS on the TV all day.

As always it's not what you morons condescend about everyone else. It's that everyone else can't be bothered to get up off their fat asses to vote at all. And why should they when the choices are so pathetic? You ran Clinton's VP intentionally the year after his goddamn impeachment in 2000, you ran Kerry the sleepiest dullest candidate ever, in 2004 and now as if that's not bad enough you decided to pick someone who you know is all flash but who will be divisive and might very well lose against a fossil who's even weaker than the dunderhead he wants to replace.

But "Those Other People" those voters, that's the problem. Uh huh.