Not everybody should be allowed to vote

Election fever is starting to grip the nation as it does round about this time, every 5 years. This is when that bunch of pretty uninspiring and overfed chair-breakers suddenly remember who made their obesity possible.

As is the case around this time, there’s a lot of debate about who should be allowed to vote. Some people feel that prisoners, for instance, should be excluded from voting. After all, they argue, why should prisoners have a say in who runs the country? I personally think it’s a ridiculous debate. I don’t know why we’re even discussing prisoners’ rights to vote but this is what it is, a democracy.

The strength of the democratic system of governance is also its worst weakness. You see, democracy relies on the collective wisdom of every member of a society in choosing the best representatives to govern society. And therein lays the problem — the inherent lack of wisdom in some sectors of the electorate. Let me elaborate.

Card-carrying members of political parties –- this is the flock of sheep that swallows an entire basket of half-baked, contradictory ideologies whole. That means their minds are pretty much made up on all the issues and no amount of intelligent, well thought-out arguments are going to sway them. There’s a phrase for such people –- impregnable fortresses of ideological cement brains. I think the only way democracy works is if the electorate is swayed by arguments. DA members will never, by definition, be swayed by anything Julius Malema has to say. Even if Malema stated a universal truth along the lines of “wood comes from trees according to the woodwork textbook”.

Does anybody really want leaders chosen by this bunch?

Individuals willing to stand for political office –- what kind of twisted individual would want to be a “servant of the people” unless they were lying through their teeth. I view anyone who willingly stands for public office with a great deal of suspicion. I don’t think their motives are pure. I certainly don’t think they should decide the future of my country. Until the day we grab unsuspecting, reluctant hobos off the streets and slap funny, giant necklaces around their necks and call them “mayor” I won’t trust these losers.

No vote for politicians, I say.

People who voted pre-1994 -– if this sounds like a sneaky way of excluding white people, get help you defensive racist. I mean all those who ever voted in any pre-94 election. That includes anybody who ever voted in the tricameral parliament days. Ag you know what I mean. If you ever put your cross next to Amichand Rajbansi’s mugshot or Rev Allan Hendricks’s or Oupa Joshua Gqozo’s or Kaiser Matanzima’s and so on please do us all a favour and sit this one out. So you see, white people, stop being so vain and think this rant is about you.

Allowing participants of that discriminatory system to vote makes no sense. We’re still busy trying to clean up the mess they endorsed. Allowing them to vote is a lot like asking the guy who shot you to bark instructions during your surgery. It makes no sense.

Orlando Pirates supporters — we want a winning nation. Why allow people who steadfastly support a bunch of losers for years? The last time Pirates won an official trophy Bin Laden had only released one DVD and his beard was still black.

Losers must lose the franchise.

Senior citizens — let’s face it, old people are just whack. Allowing old people to vote is a lot like being the CEO of a company and asking the opinion of an employee who is serving his 30-day notice on how to run the company.

I personally love old people. And I think they have invaluable wisdom we can tap into but most old people are cranky. They might give you President Patricia de Lille just to mess with your ears for 5 years. Patricia has a particularly shrill voice. And where will we be then? I say deny anyone over 70 the vote.

As you can see I have, in one fell swoop, managed to exclude about 19 million voters off the voters’ roll. That leaves a few hundred of us, the deserving few, to make this important decision. (“We few! We happy few!”). If I had to be honest, I’d probably scrap the vote altogether and leave the governance of the country to the smartest, most knowledgeable people in every field of governance.

That’s correct, I’m all for a form of oligarchy, that doesn’t involve the wisdom of the guy I saw pissing against the wind this morning and wondering where the spray was coming from.