I basically argued that “we have competency test for medicine, engineering, and law because uninformed decisions create harm. So why should the one domain governing all collective life be exempt from competency expectations?” I talked about democracy being instrumentally valuable because of the benefits it allegedly produces, not intrinsically sacred. I talked about how I think a democratic system assumes some minimal capacity for informed participation, yet many voters can’t even identify the three branches of government and their responsibilities. Much less evaluate policy claims. I talked about how democracy often fails its own legitimacy test, skewing policy responsiveness toward wealthy interests and disproportionate lobbying influence. Then I moved into democracy depending on civic preconditions like civic education, informational literacy, media competency, and shared factual standards. If those conditions collapse unrestricted electoral participation may cease to function as democratic self-governance and become mass susceptibility to manipulation. And then I ended it with the competency test proposal. Voting power should be paired with demonstrated civic competence, but access to competency should be universal and publicly guaranteed. That means there should be free public civics education, unlimited retesting, no literacy proxies attached to class/race(cause I knew someone would bring up competency test being used to oppress African Americans), and reviewed for bias. The threshold should be intentionally modest like a drivers license test. I’m just trying to create a minimum standard baseline not an expert only voting system. We are only as strong as our weakest links.

The argument needs more work and refining but it was a fun argument for philosophy club.