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Re:People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new stud... by magduf on Thursday January 10, 2019 @10:37AM (#18874563)
I'm not sure this is fair to all people over 65. It sounds like maybe your relatives are much like mine, and I agree, my relatives shouldn't be voting either.

If we're going to put up a discriminatory barrier to voting, I think it'd be more effective if it was education-based. People with no education make poor voting choices, as we've seen in recent elections.

Re:People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new stud... by kaffeemitsahne on Thursday January 10, 2019 @10:47AM (#18874657)
It's quite frightening to see how popular this education barrier to voting idea is. Another one I've heard is that everyone should make a test before being allowed to vote.
Re:People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new stud... by howard941 on Thursday January 10, 2019 @11:29AM (#18875074)
I'm inclined to support educational qualifications for elections supervisors and poll workers, not voters, and while we're there, forcing open source/open inspection ballot counting systems. Isn't it long past time to deal with the ineptitude problem and corrupt canvassing at the source?
Re:People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new stud... by deadmetheny on Thursday January 10, 2019 @12:44PM (#18875999)
Let's just go all the way and narrow it down to landowners. If we're removing suffrage those idiot olds, why stop when we can get rid of it for those pesky poors too?
Re:People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new stud... by jgroszko on Thursday January 10, 2019 @11:25AM (#18875017)
So under-represented or disadvantaged communities that don't have the resources to meet the education standards don't get to vote? Education requirements can very easily become a proxy for race/class.
Re:People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new stud... by tivert on Thursday January 10, 2019 @02:53PM (#18877412)
> So under-represented or disadvantaged communities that don't have the resources to meet the education standards don't get to vote? Education requirements can very easily become a proxy for race/class.

Easily become a proxy for race/class? They already were used to disenfranchise people:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test#Voting

> From the 1890s to the 1960s, many state governments in the United States administered literacy tests to prospective voters purportedly to test their literacy in order to vote. In practice, these tests were intended to disenfranchise racial minorities. Southern state legislatures employed literacy tests as part of the voter registration process starting in the late 19th century. Literacy tests, along with poll taxes, residency and property restrictions and extra-legal activities (violence, intimidation)[2] were all used to deny suffrage to African Americans.

Re:People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new stud... by apocalypstyx on Thursday January 10, 2019 @12:32PM (#18875843)
I know people with masters and doctorate level of education in medical and chemistry and other highly technical fields who believe in UFOs, creationism (the 10,000 year old Earth variety), among other things (I even once met a physicist who thought everything about quantum mechanics was bunk and classical mechanics could explain everything). And I'm by no means alone in that. So that may be anecdotal experience, but enough anecdotal experiences among enough people... So I don't think education means what you think it means. That is, it really is about an ideological test, the assumption by certain people being that education, for one reason or another, is selecting specific traits or inculcating certain traits that happen to be the same traits that any given person in such a position, such as yourself, think are somehow common among that group and that should somehow bestow a privilege greater than they do. It all comes down to that better decisions are the decision I agree with, whoever the I in any given instance is.
Re:People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new stud... by magduf on Friday January 11, 2019 @10:30AM (#18884143)
>I know people with masters and doctorate level of education in medical and chemistry and other highly technical fields who believe in UFOs, creationism (the 10,000 year old Earth variety), among other things

There should be a registry of doctors who are creationists or believe other nonsense (I'll give the UFOs a pass depending on just how fervent their belief in them is; I mean, can you prove we haven't been visited? The evidence isn't very good but you can't prove a negative. If they believe they've been abducted, however, that's a whole different level. Of course, I also can't disprove their claim but I'd rather err on the side of caution and assume they have mental problems and find another doctor.).

I don't want a doctor giving me medical advice when they don't even believe in basic science.

>It all comes down to that better decisions are the decision I agree with, whoever the I in any given instance is.

Perhaps, but I think it should be obvious by now that people who decided to vote for Trump have had an extremely detrimental effect on the nation's economy and well-being.

Re:People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new stud... by NeedMoreTea on Thursday January 10, 2019 @03:11PM (#18877597)
Great, then we can rule out the people with the wrong sort of education as they make poor voting choices, and the people from the wrong sort of colleges, and the wrong sort of courses...

People can be hugely educated and aware on some topics whilst being ignorant, blinkered and bigoted on others. You and me included. Plenty of highly educated people voted for the choice you didn't. Even in those recent "surprise" elections, be that Trump, Brexit or the more recent Brazilian election.

If you want to balance the ageing of society and the electorate, open up voting to the young by way of balance. Which may bring the added advantage of not yet being inculcated in the binary certainty of party tribes.

Re:People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new stud... by magduf on Friday January 11, 2019 @10:33AM (#18884169)
>If you want to balance the ageing of society and the electorate, open up voting to the young by way of balance.

As I pointed out in another post here, I personally do NOT think the problem is age, despite the thrust of this article. As I said before, the alt-right is not full of geriatric people, it's full of men in their 20s-40s, mostly men with poor education.

As a man in that age group myself, I hate to say it, but I think the country would actually be better off if only women (of all ages), and men over the age of 60 could vote.