Trump has said he has an IQ of 156, but will not take a test to test out his claim. Now it’s been updated, reportedly, that his IQ is really a (limited) bit little than less than “half” that high. That’s not unlike like having played out your deck of cards only until the whistled two minute warning, and the one at the end of the “half” not the end of the game, and trying to hit the sidelines, (read unregistered voters.)
Which concerning all things happening electorally these days, brings up this point: Should people have to have an IQ of a certain level to vote or be voted for? So we don’t dumb down the electoral process, although IQ granted is not the only measure of intelligence. But after all, such a requirement might create a one-party system. Ha, ha. Mandate the means to legislate. Don’t get me wrong, all types of people should have the right to vote, even if you’ve only been (legally) in the USA country for say a decade, and that’s Trump timing, the time he has been around the political scene.
— Of course we know the electoral college consists of our great-great-great-great grandparents or beyond, “voting” for such back in a day when I think they only had muskets for firearms, and they might not even take out a deer with a direct hit. Bambi would limp around for days without actually croaking like a frog, and you would not be able to harvest the meat because you lost track of her, so go hit up the Indians for turkey. My take on the origins of this country. —
But if you’re not scratching triple digits, IQ again invoked, maybe have the vote be weighed on a sliding scale? This would be a way to avoid the tyranny of the majority, as so many of us have seen what happens when there is a (mostly locally) committee of mere commoners overseeing a body of experts, plundering their more astute jurisdiction and throwing it asunder. The local parks committee may take a great (locally based) additive plan and throw it all to hell — term chosen these days — and maybe based on an agenda for vendetta that may include the personal, screw it, and I have seen this covering area town board meetings. (Or on the dangers of using what is strictly popular, bowing only to what you hear on radio during the populist drive-by popular tunes, not the intellectual value of what’s heard at say, 4 a.m. only.) It might be Megadeth and Holy Wars, in which the would-be pundits ID themselves as such, mockingly, as seeming know-it-alls and despite that travel to foreign lands to “ask the sheep about their beliefs.” I would change the word to quiz, and I think it may be such in some song versions.
Although this is all micro-Musk, in many ways. The quandary of weighing by committee who has what astuteness, and these days I’d at times take the immigrants as far as civics knowledge, would create a whole another bureaucracy, and that’s what the embattled Republicans hate, and beyond doubt the ensuing battle to fund it! (Although there is the border battle — minus beer — boldly brewing in bureaucracy that may be created, and we are not talking WI-MN — more liberal with their taxpayer checkbooks — although Iowa recently weighed in presidentially as far as polls.)
Don’t know the (major) difference between Andrew Johson and Harry Truman? Then ballot tossed out? At what point do you cut off the level of knowledge, including the presidential, if you turn someone away at the polls, possibly bringing more lawsuits by non-populist suits with their ties, much less assorted or orchestrated assaults.
Hell, some of the newfound voters who get only what they know from their personally chosen (like Fox versus CNN) social media and its disinformation don’t even know who Ronald Reagen is and what he stood for, (as is actually most of the populace.)
Would the local very Common Council have to decide how to score two-thirds against three-fourths, on a sliding vote scale? (I ‘ve always wondered about the slim difference, in again, popular rhetoric.) Bring that new bureaucracy to a higher — or lower — level.
Trump has claimed, often, that Harris has a very low IQ. One headline cites it as 110. But if you look at the story, and earlier in this story, that is the lower end of only 1,341-or-so people who thus “voted” and were asked to make a guess (party lines invoked?) Trump himself has been said to be at anywhere between 101 and 145. He guestimates, without offering any justification, that he ranks at 156.
To be presidential, you have to have at least some smarts, as how you respond to your handlers, and even ability to speak well off the cuff will only get you so far. Ulysses S. Grant and Andrew Jackson both are ranked at 110, and the numbers raise fairly quickly from there. So Trump’s claims especially seem unlikely.
I think the IQ of Harris is more like that of someone else by that surname, Steve, the lyricist and bassist of Iron Maiden, which a recent scientifically quantified study found to be one of the most intelligent bands of all, and metal was the most intelligent genre.
Methinks the electoral college was established by some university, (not college), profs who needed something new to study, so they created the topic. On the often questioned, continued validity of that college itself, mom says, “different time, different place.” (Of course we know the electoral college consists of our great-great-great-great grandparents or beyond, “voting” for such back in a day when I think they only had muskets for firearms, and they might not even take out a deer with a direct hit. Bambi would limp around for days without actually croaking like a frog, and you would not be able to harvest the meat because you lost track of her, so go hit up the Indians for turkey. My take on the origins of this country, where the powers-that-be simply and that word is chosen intentionally, were looking out for the common man — not women yet — in an attempt to even-out the power of big vs. little states. So we grant muster to the likes of California and Texas?) Or how about this, back to the basic knowledge of civics as a qualification for voting: How many people on the street, if you stopped them and I was encouraged not to as they might have a musket or more, could tell you the three branches of government? (Just for the record, info-providing-wise, executive (the extreme main one these days), legislative (weakening), and judicial (on the rise.) I’ll bet the vast majority of those officially declared qualified to cast a ballot could not answer correctly.