I just filled out my absentee ballot here in New Jersey and there was this:
STATE PUBLIC QUESTION No. 4
Constitutional Amendment Concerning the
Right to Vote for Certain Persons
Shall the amendment of Article II, Section I, paragraph 6 of the Constitution, agreed to by the Legislature, revising the current constitutional language concerning denial of the right to vote by deleting the phrase “idiot or insane person” and providing instead that a “person who has been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting” shall not enjoy the right of suffrage, by adopted?
So it is now the law in New Jersey that idiots and insane people can’t vote. Why fix what’s not broken?
This is fantastic! That’s for a smile this afternoon.
Stupid QOTD…
My BFF Jeff Jarvis:So it is now the law in New Jersey that idiots and insane people can’t vote. Why fix what’s not broken?How did he end up in the voting booth, then?…
It was a better law when the polling place workers could just apply it as they felt.
The way we keep voting ourselves into tax oblivion here, maybe they’re afraid that amendment will be more widely applied as currently written? Thus throwing them out of their jobs?
Hey Jeff, check out this link re. your last post on investigative journalism. Not much going on here, so think this is probably a hoax.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ailocf7Ia3Y
They had to change it. You’d have to be an idiot or insane to pay the home prices and property taxes in New Jersey. There wouldn’t be any voters left.
Great. If they could just extend that so that the insane couldn’t be elected, then we’d see some changes…
Words have meaning. Idiot and Insane have a purpose in our language, as does the word ‘retarded’. It is a shame when the ‘politically correct’ ninnies try to modify effective use of language simply because those described do not find the terms agreeable. While ‘idiot’ is used to insult people, it is not a wholly malicious word. The words describe the world around us. If you cannot accept words, you need to learn what they actually mean and determine if the word actually does apply. Displeasure in life is often less an expression of a opinion, but rather a reflection of one’s own ignorance. Surely a true idiot would take offense to an appropriate label.