text: should we establish a minimum iq requirement to vote? or, should we administer a lithimus test to assure those involved in selecting our next leaders have at least a modicum of knowledge about critical issues and the people which they are about to decide between.  i know i will get the name calling mainly from those that i  refer to here.  that in itself however, will just serve to make my point abundantly clear  i only bring this up because of the profusion of answers i have read on here from people who clearly had no idea about even the subjects they chose to querey us on.  you know the ones, expressed in a form which you must decipher to understand.  in addition to not pocessing the ability to spell or structure a simple sentence coherently, i also refer to those lacking any significant understanding regarding every topic they pose or respond to.  remember folks, these people cancel out even the most knowledgeable voter who has spent numerous hours investing in becoming informed so as to make an educated decision. the problem of an i.q. test for voter-registration (aside from the obvious ones of expense, data-storage and retrieval, and the possibility of false results) is that of "i.q." to begin with; the entire concept of a standardized test for "intelligence" has been in question, since the late , great professor stephen jay gould of harvard, addressed some of the abuses i.q. tests had been put to in his, "the measurement of man." further more even if we accept the idea that intelligence is a measurable quality, which test should we use? the old stanford-binet test?  the slightly more contemporary (1976) wisc-iii test? or the newer, informal on-line test-yourself variety? and who would determine which test and the cut-off point for eligible voters? finally, why should we suppose that intelligence whether culturally-constructed or genetically derived would necessarily make a person choose the best candidate?  many "intelligent" people voter for hitler, others (such as jean paul sarte) supported stalin, long after his crimes had been revealed.  (not to mention the 60,000,000 americans who voted for george bush in the last election, despite all the evidence about iraq, the clear indications of his inability to handle the economy, and the fact that he can barely speak his native language - are all 60,000,000 of them idiots? although it might be nice to think so, it simply is not so.) why should we think that intellectual ability equals what plato called right opinion? rather than waste time and money trying to restrict the franchise (only about 50% of eligible voters exercise their franchise anyway,) why not use your own clear intelligence to help educate the electorate - not just on issues of the day, but on how to approach and analyze any issue.  i will only add that i write the above as an individual who has voted carefully in every election since i was 18, a holder of a professor's chair at a major international university, and as someone who tests out at 139 on the stanford-binet tests (shows you how old i am.)