re: #284 researchok

No, I cited (via published news articles) the problems of people being coerced to vote, people possibly being coerced to vote, and the opinion of someone who noted some people who could not get the assistance they needed.

That’s nice.

Let’s do a quick summary of reality.

1. Most states have a law preventing the mentally incompetent from voting if and only if they’re judged incompetent to vote by a court.

1a. In some states, this is an automatic process from any declaration of mental incompetence, incapacity, or guardianship, in others, it’s a separate court case.

2. If someone has been adjudicated to be ineligible, they won’t be able to register to vote: their name will be matched against the ineligible voters list.

3. We have no standards for intelligence in voting, or in rationality in deciding how to vote or on what grounds to vote.

4. We prize the right to vote so highly that we recognize some people will need assistance in voting, and we allow that.

Ergo, those people who actually are registered to vote are declared competent voters, and whatever process by which they decide to vote is fine. If someone directly coerces them, changes their vote, etc, that’s a problem, but that is entirely different from the non-existent problem of taking people who ‘aren’t competent’ to vote. If they’re not competent, they can’t vote.