The more I hear people wanting to test for voter qualifications, the more I worry that fascism is inches away.

We need to flip the script. Make voting mandatory: when you hit 18, you register to vote and pay a fine for failing to register and/or vote. Australia does this.

In return you have to want not to vote. "None of the above" costs money. If you don't like the candidates, write yourself in.

Restricting who can vote more than judges who should be a citizen: it makes the judge more powerful. It's a tool to wield more power.

We should probably bring back mandatory national service while we're at it. A nation needs a shared experience of its goals -- not just military ones, either. We don't need to make up wars to give everyone a shared experience. We have enough under-educated children, enough stuff to fix. Heck, it could simply be a process of "Bob knows how to build computers and Jane knows how to drive trucks. Jane will teach mornings and Bob will teach afternoons. Next week, Sam teaches cooking from scratch and everyone works at the soup kitchen each evening -- they need to fix the boiler there, too."