‘We are ruled by the ignorant’: Curley makes his case for a voter literacy test

A bartender in Washington, D.C., has become a popular candidate for office, but The New York Times recently uncovered several red flags littered throughout his past.

Democratic nominee Graham Platner reportedly said he joined the Marines just to kill people, got drunk and received a Nazi tattoo, had numerous girlfriends accuse him of being abusive and demeaning, and was overall a “deeply flawed” person.

John Curley, host of “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio, likened Platner’s rise through the political ranks to that of many other politicians with troubled pasts but favorable policies to win votes.

“The hooligans are at it again. They are the ones making the bad choices that all of us will suffer when it comes to voting,” Curley said. “The argument is that it doesn’t matter if the person is a strong moral character. If the only thing that matters is that their positions on policies that best serve the public can be demonstrated. I’m sure you’re thinking of a bunch of people who have questionable morals who are presently serving in the House, Senate, and the White House. After all, we really can’t afford to have high standards.”

Testing voters could weed out the uninformed

Curley summarized how a sociologist named Jason Brennan characterizes voters in three categories: hobbits, hooligans, and vulcans.

A hobbit is the uninformed voter; a hooligan clings to opinions regardless of facts and is heavily biased; and the vulcan uses logic and analysis based on information to achieve the best outcome for the greatest number of citizens.

Curley found that the overall fix may lie with requiring a literacy test in order to vote, and laid out how people technically could lose their right to vote simply for being unintelligent.

“Brennan says an educated hobbit actually just turns into a hooligan. How about testing society, testing voters, and not letting them vote if they fail?” Curley asked. “States can take away your driver’s license, because that’s not a right, that’s a privilege, and voting is a privilege as well. According to the Constitution, there’s nothing in there that says it can’t be taken away; it can just not be taken from people based upon something like sex, race, or creed.

“We’ve tried the literacy test before. It was only given to black voters in the hopes that they would fail, but if they gave it to both white and black voters, then only the smart people would pass the test,” he continued. “There would have been a pretty good chance that the Jim Crow laws would have been abolished years before. What should be the role of government? It should be to inform the public as to what the outcome of the votes would mean. For now, democracy in the U.S. we are ruled by the ignorant, elected by the ignorant. Unfortunately, that is the case.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above

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