this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2025
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Anyone caught throwing trash on the ground should have their voting rights suspended till after the nearest election. If somebody is so lazy and has so little regard for their local community - does anyone seriously believe they care about the whole country?
While i agree in spirit, I feel like that would quickly devolve into cops detaining and beating minorities, just to force them to drop whatever's in their hand, so they can charge them with littering and disenfranchise them.
Sounds a little too far fetched to me. Also like a USA problem. Police in Europe, while definitely not perfect, is a lot more friendly and almost never exhibits the same behaviors as American police.
I don't mean to imply anything or to accuse anyone, but to me this sounds exactly like the kind of argument someone who throws trash around would make.
(Summoned from other comment)
I don't mean to imply anything, but what sort of person wants to take away people's right to vote? :-P
I wish I'd seen this before replying to the other comment. Now it'll be two parallel discussions.
Can't really disagree with anything here. You're perfectly right to question the ethics of such a policy. It's just an idea that popped up. I'm not saying I'd implement it immediately after becoming the prime minister. Simply something to think about, like we're doing right now.
To solve this debate, I think there are two main questions we need to answer first.
Personally, I'd say that:
Disagree, suspending voting rights in general leads to feedback. Like how felons can't vote, so we get more laws that turn their community into felons.
Littering should be punished with community service but your right to vote is not a privilege.
As I mentioned in another comment - this seems like an issue specific to the USA. This sort of trend is extremely rare in Europe. Plus, politicians generally encourage everyone to vote here, so it's not like this benefits them, unless they can effectively target a certain demographic - which, again, never happens.
Would you please provide a source to the claim that no demographic in your country is systematically disenfranchised? Many Americans claim this too.
I would be concerned that if you start doing the same things Americans do, you will get the same results.
I wrote that it's "extremely rare". The subsequent "never happens" was not meant literally, which I expected to be obvious to anyone reading the entire comment.
Of course, this happens everywhere around the world. I'm not arguing whether or not it happens here, but to what degree. And it is self evident that the degree to which minorities are discriminated in Europe is magnitudes lower than in the USA. Europeans may have invented racism, but Americans sure have since perfected the craft.
Perhaps you're right about my proposal being a potential source of serious issues. I can't say it's not at all possible. However, my main point here is not to apply American standards to the European Union. It's like saying that restrictions on ICE vehicles in Canada won't work, because the same policy wouldn't work in Eritrea.