'Idiots' aren't allowed to vote in Kentucky...

[broadwayboi]

So I've been reading the Kentucky Constitution as to do some research against the marriage amendment voted upon a few years ago when I discovered this section:

Kentucky Constitution
Section 145
Persons entitled to vote.

Every citizen of the United States of the age of eighteen years who has resided in the state one year, and in the county six months, and the precinct in which he offers to vote sixty days next preceding the election, shall be a voter in said precinct and not elsewhere but the following persons are excepted and shall not have the right to vote.

1. Persons convicted in any court of competent jurisdiction of treason, or felony, or bribery in an election, or of such high misdemeanor as the General Assembly may declare shall operate as an exclusion from the right of suffrage, but persons hereby excluded may be restored to their civil rights by executive pardon.

2. Persons who, at the time of the election, are in confinement under the judgment of a court for some penal offense.

3. Idiots and insane persons.

Text as Ratified on: November 8, 1955.
History: 1955 amendment was proposed by 1954 Ky. Acts ch. 2, sec. 1; original version ratified August 3, 1891, and revised September 28, 1891.

http://www.lrc.ky.gov/Legresou/Constitu/145.htm

And the Oxford English Dictionary defines an idiot as

A person without learning; an ignorant, uneducated man; a simple man; a clown.

http://dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy.uky.edu/cgi/entry/50111277?query_type=word&queryword=idiot&first=1&max_to_show=10&sort_type=alpha&result_place=1&search_id=S1Rk-bXB6nf-4&hilite=50111277


Oh if only this were the case we'd have a much better society....

 

[JUB]

^ haha for real

 

[Lightsage]

Can you imagine?

If it could be enforced then the amount of voting individuals would drop even more and we might actually have a chance to get the right people into office.


Only in a perfect world...

 

[IceFier]

It still wouldn't matter because the right people for the job are usually NOT candidates for the position.

 

[KaraBulut]

Now if they could keep idiots from running for office...

 

[treanir]

You'd have to significantly lower the voting threshold if you want to enforce that...

 

[teadrinker]

From Wikipedia:

"In 19th and early 20th century medicine and psychology, an "idiot" was a person with a very severe mental retardation, or a very low IQ level, as a sufferer of cretinism, defining idiots as people whose IQ were below 20 (with a standard deviation of 16)."

I'm guessing this is the meaning of "idiot" as used in the Kentucky constitution.

-T.

 

[trawler69]

Shame idiots are allowed to become president!

 

[gsdx]

Apparently only 18-year-olds are allowed to vote, and even then under certain circumstances.

Wording is everything.

 

[jsd62]

What do you expect from the state that is home to the creation museum?