Voting being withheld based on race, sex or age is not ok in my opinion because it is arbitrary.
Economic standing on the other hand may or may not be ok with me.
Okay lets put it this way. Is it the 40% or whatever number of people who dont pay taxes, fault that the US tax system is hopeless and allows so many people not to pay even a symbolic tax? Does that also mean that the multi billionaire that avoids paying taxes also cant vote? And what if the state has sales tax? What then? If the requirement is "has to pay taxes" then he or she is!. Or do you want the rule to be based on yearly earnings? Everyone under say 20k a year cant vote? That would cut out most young people in college, and effectively raise the voting age to what.. 22+?
Fact is, discrimination based on race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, age or economic standard, is just that.. discrimination.
That wasn't one of the principals our nation was founded on.
No, those principles included slavery, the buying and selling of women and child labour. But you as a nation has evolved away from that like most 21st century societies. Using the "principles of our nation at its founding" argument is not not only brain dead but hopeless and highly subjective since that would mean you support slavery, support not giving women the vote and so on.
I'm not happy with the quality of voters we have. They make their voting choices based on complete foolishness.
Welcome to democracy. Yes voters vote for strange things, they elected GWB twice for god sake. That is why having a free as possible media is important in the democratic process, because that is where a majority of people get their information and form their opinions from. So if anything, if you want better informed voters who dont do "stupid things", free your media from the corporate and partisan shackles that have been formed over the last decade plus.
I never understood why it was bad to limit voting because someone can't read.
I mean if you can't read and your an adult how the hell are you supposed to understand what government is supposed to do.
Government is not about what you want it to do but what it is supposed to do.
Again we are back to the elitist pre mid to late 20th century ideal of society. It was wrong then, and still is wrong. The argument to deny the black population and women the vote, was that they did not have the intellectual capacity to understand the political process. The argument to deny poor people the vote was again, because they were too dumb because they were poor. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now. It is nothing but a power grab by a minority...
As for the way the south prevented the black population in some areas from registering to vote and voting. Sure many blacks could not read, but that was because they were denied the same educational choices as the white population or at best the same quality education. But even if the black person could read, the standard the voting board set for said black person to get the right to vote was far far far higher than a similar white person. Where a white person was required to spell the word Cat or Dog, the black person had to spell emancipation or other very long and semi complicated words (relatively speaking of course). And that was the problem with having such a requirement in a time where racism was ripe and flourishing in certain areas of society.