Mad Hater

The President of the Tea Party thinks only the landed gentry should vote.

"The Founding Fathers originally said, they put certain restrictions on who gets the right to vote. It wasn't you were just a citizen and you got to vote. Some of the restrictions, you know, you obviously would not think about today. But one of those was you had to be a property owner. And that makes a lot of sense, because if you're a property owner you actually have a vested stake in the community. If you're not a property owner, you know, I'm sorry but property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owners."- Judson Phillips

I think my favorite part of this quote is the nonchalance with which he addresses the voting rights of say...African Americans and Women, like "some we wouldn't think of today, but really whatever."

Interpreting The Constitution this way is the same as interpreting The Bible to justify homophobia. As long as we're taking the cafeteria approach, it seems obvious to me that we should lean toward the spirit of a document (compassion, equality, etc) and not the antiquated bigotries of a particular time. But hey, that's me. What do I know? I'm a woman.

Besides Women and African Americans some other groups that would not be able to vote under this "strict interpretation"...college students, anyone who rents their apartment, many people in the armed forces, people who live in a home owned by their spouse, senior citizens in nursing homes...

Granted, this plan would out work well for Judson Phillips and his cohorts. So I propose this: we put his plan to a vote, but first my plan to require an intelligence test before registering. Obviously, this is not something which I would actually advocate, but neither would Mr. Phillips, for very different reasons.