Voters are idiots

Dementia and the Voter: Research Raises Ethical, Constitutional Questions By Shankar Vedantam

Florida neurologist Marc Swerdloff was taken aback when one of his patients with advanced dementia voted in the 2000 presidential election. The man thought it was 1942 and Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. The patient's wife revealed that she had escorted her husband into the booth.

"I said 'Did he pick?' and she said 'No, I picked for him,'" Swerdloff said. "I felt bad. She essentially voted twice" in the Florida election, which gave George W. Bush a 537-vote victory and the White House...

Jennifer Mathis, a Washington lawyer at the Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, a disability rights group, said: "Our voting system does not require intelligent voting or informed voting. The Supreme Court has said the idea of informed voting is too susceptible to abuse."..

[Stephen McConnell, of the Alzheimer's Association, a nonprofit science and advocacy group], said a group of experts wrestled with the issue in August 2003 and agreed that patients even partly cognizant of the election should be allowed to vote...

Adam Butler of the Disability Rights Center in Little Rock said such talk holds people with disabilities to a higher standard than the rest of the population. No tests of mental competence are required to stand for office, and no law prevents "competent" voters from choosing candidates for questionable reasons: "People may vote because they like the way George W. Bush looks or because they like Heinz ketchup."

Well, we already know that voters are idiots.