a topic bound to be unpopular...

Weighted voting. That's right, having votes count more for some people than others. I was discussing this concept with a friend and we both agreed that it had at least some merit and was worth discussing further. I will admit upfront that there's probably no way to circumvent the flaws in this system, but it certainly sounds cool.

The idea is as follows: when our lovely citizens go to vote, before they actually get to vote, they take a quick political landscape test that asks questions like: Who in the president? The vice president? The secretary of state? Follow that up with some questions about what has gone on in the world recently, e.g. Were WMDs found in Iraq(though preferably a question less likely to be viewed as partisan)?

Anyone who gets all of these questions right increases the weight of their vote. Anyone who gets about half the questions right doesn't alter their vote weight. Anyone who gets them all wrong (I'm thinking older voters who still think Carter is in office) decreases the weight of their vote. The goal here is that politically aware voters who don't blindly follow the party line will have more say in the direction the country is taking than those partisan psychos who are probably frothing at the mouth at the very idea that their political enemies could have their votes count for the same weight as their own.

The most obvious problem with this idea is the question of who will make up these tests? Rampant cheating is to be expected as was evidenced in our most recent election, so how could that be prevented? And therein lies the problem; no matter what efforts were made, partisan psychos would find a way to corrupt this system. There just is no way to make sure that the people voting who should be heard will be heard through the clamor of people voting for all the wrong reasons. This is why this style of government is the worst is the world... aside from all the rest of them,