This petition was submitted during the 2010-2015 parliament
Rejected petition Restrict the Right to Vote
More details
At the moment most adult citizens get to vote. The problem is that many of them have little to no understanding of the issues and more importantly little to no desire to understand the issues.
As a result, they may vote for a candidate because they've always voted for that party (although they don't actually know what their policies are). Or they like the candidate's hair cut. Or they misunderstood a sound bite they heard. Or their hairdresser told them too. And so on...
As a result we get governments who are more interested in populist sound bites than actually coming up with long term solutions.
I propose that every voter should have a short test as they go to vote - the pass mark could be tolerably low - and if they fail, they're not allowed to vote. A simple way to ensure that the people who are choosing the MP's actually have a basic understanding about what's going on.
This petition was rejected
Why was this petition rejected?
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