Since the 80's it's been quite the opposite. Whether by design or happy coincidence (for populists) education has been gutted.

Major flaw with democracy, 50% of electorate has below average IQ.

Actually, 50% of electorate has below median IQ.

I don't like the Mode of your speech. I think you are Mean and this falls well below the Average expected on Hacker News.

Specifically for the IQ, isn't the average designed to be the median? It's a normal distribution after all.

Can't actually have a normal distribution that has a bound on one end...

There's no reason an IQ couldn't be negative. Granted, I don't think the IQ test is properly calibrated for this and I don't think real world data perfectly fits the bell curve as designed, so it's kind of moot point.

So back to only educated people or people owning property again; are we proposing education testing before casting a vote? Besides, it's not like smart people don't have biases.

That does not seem like an alternative most people -even educated or above median IQ would favor.

> are we proposing education testing before casting a vote?

I'm curious, have there been any known attempts to condition the right to vote on passing some kind of IQ, education, or rational thinking test? If so, how did they work out?

Thanks, that's some useful history to know. Any data points from other countries?

Not off the top of my head - IANAH :-P

So? Below average IQ doesn't mean that your opinions are valueless and shouldn't be taken into account.

We all have to live with one another, and to make a system of government work with peaceful transitions of power, everyone must feel as if they have a voice.

High IQ, high education, high wealth, and other social advantages can be leveraged into making side-channels in the political system (e.g. lobbying), or by shaping the discussion the general electorate sees (e.g. overton window) in order to direct it towards ones goals.

Democracies have all been implemented with specific factors to make them viable in today's society, not some idealised society.

I was being a little flip of course, IQ is generally accepted to be a Gaussian distribution which is symmetrical, the mean and average are at 50 percentile so it is a little bit of a math joke that of course then, 50% of the people in a large enough sample will be below the 50 percentile.

If you think certain group of people participating in democracy is a problem, you're advocating for something other than a democracy.

Should children vote?

Crazy thought: would it really be that bad?

If the votes end up being noise, it comes out in the wash. And we already have protections against compelling people to vote one way or another, so carrot-sticking children for votes would (continue to be) a serious crime.

It might even grow our children into a less apathetic public.

I agree, and not a crazy thought. The reasons for voting of the median adult in both parties -- described as charitably as possible -- are suboptimal. The fact that children might be slightly less informed doesn't excuse the disenfranchisement. If anything, children's relative lack of bias might offset their propensity to be less informed.

Our laws and attitude towards "age discrimination" in this country are bizarre and flagrantly hypocritical. The ADEA forbids age discrimination, but only for those 40 or older. This would be analogous to forbidding racial discrimination, but only against some one particular race. Kind of takes away the moral high ground.