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How Intelligent Should a Voter Be?

But what of political action? How much political acumen can we expect from the 22 per cent in the lowest range and from the 15 per cent in the next higher group? Without further evidence it is impossible to say. Concerning two vital factors we are still in the dark. It was pointed out above that a person's capacity for judgment, depending as it does partly upon experience, may continue to develop after the final mental level has been reached, much as an individual may increase in strength and muscular coordination after he has "got his growth." This is certainly true of superior persons and to a lesser degree of average persons. But if the mental growth be arrested at a very low level -- say at mental age seven or eight -- the intelligence factors necessary for the utilization of the materials of experience are lacking and no important development in judgment is possible. So far as the writer is aware no study has been made to determine the mental level essential to such progress in judgment with the passage of the years. As an estimate, a mental age level of at least ten years would seem essential, but we need more than guesses. While the problem is here stated untechnically, its precise formulation and experimental solution do not seem inherently difficult.

The second factor on which we need more information is only secondarily of psychological nature. How much intelligence does it take to be a voter? Must one be able to expound the Monroe Doctrine, understand the advantages of the Single Tax or master the intricacies of Schedule M in the tariff bill? Something like this seems to have been the assumption of Jeffersonian democracy; few people hold today to the doctrine of the "omnicompetent citizen" in its original purity. Yet to talk so blithely of political judgment without defining our terms is not very profitable. Certainly one cannot challenge the political capacity of persons at any given level of intelligence until this question is answered.

On the other hand, once we determine what type of problems a voter should show ability to solve as a minimum requirement for the ballot, the determination of the mental level necessary is comparatively simple. The time may well come when a voter's mental test will take the place of the so-called literacy tests now used in many states. It would be fairly easy to devise such a test which would be simple and uniform in its application, coach-proof, and mechanically and quickly graded. But until this is done, psychological test results, however numerous or certain, form an inadequate basis for calling democracy into question.