Should voting be a universal right for all adults?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Should voting be a universal right for all adults?". Your opponent's style: Devil's advocate

No. I don't believe in democracy overall, but epistemic democracy is the best form of it. Keeping the government decisions only for those who have some sort of knowledge on politics or what they are voting will be way better than making parties try to advocate for basic mindeds, basically being a demagogue, a tactic mostly used by socialist parties seen in history, but overall every party does so

You've just smuggled in the real problem without noticing: who decides who's "knowledgeable enough"? The gatekeepers always claim epistemic authority. Stalin's apparatchiks weren't ignorant, they were credentialed experts. Your "knowledge requirement" becomes the exact tool for suppressing dissent that you're claiming to prevent. If demagogues exploit masses, experts exploit legitimacy. Which is harder to recognize and resist? And crucially, if voting requires specialized knowledge, why should anyone obey laws decided by people they can't evaluate?

The best way I see is simply presenting an exam that proves they know what they are voting. For example, let's say you vote for the republican party, then you will be presented with questions like "what is its stance on LGBT rights?", "what economical changes will present?", "what is its diplomatic stance?", "what plans has for the world stage?", including some random questions about rival parties. If you fail an important amount of questions you don't get the vote, you have to wait for a week to study, and then try to apply again until you get it. You would have 3 months before elections to start making the test, if you fail it in that span of time maybe you don't even deserve to vote. Is neutral, there's no stance of the state on what is and isn't "literate", is just a general amount of questions related to the actual political state of the country, and those who know the most of politics have the right to vote

Your "neutral exam" is a fantasy. Who writes the questions? If they ask "What are the economic effects of tariffs?" a libertarian and a Keynesian fail each other. You've outsourced the gatekeeping to test designers with their own agendas. History buried this already, literacy tests in the American South were "neutral" too, just checking basic reading. The real trap: you're assuming political knowledge correlates with good judgment. It doesn't. An informed voter who votes for corruption is worse than an uninformed one who doesn't. Why does comprehension of platforms matter more than skin in the game?

You're making a wrong question on purpose, that's a brutal strawman. The question is not "do you support X or Y?", or "What effects does X have?", is simply "What is X party's stance on Y?". Asking about what does the party you want to vote supports and goes against is almost impossible to get biased, is not even a "will it work or not", is simply making sure you know what you're voting, a simple true and false

Even "true or false" demands interpretation. Is the Republican stance on LGBT rights "opposes same-sex marriage" or "supports traditional values"? Both factually describe the same position. You've just hidden the bias deeper. And here's the fatal flaw in your logic: you're assuming uninformed voting is worse than no voting. But a voter who doesn't know platforms but votes their interests (healthcare, jobs, safety) might beat an informed voter who votes ideology. Why should comprehension trump representation?

It has to be enoughly detailed so the tester knows what you're saying, similar as what is written in the electoral programs because the idea is that people actually read the fucking programs. "Supports traditional values" is really wide, from just opposing same-sex marriage to kill homosexuals, instead "opposes same-sex marriage" declares a clear attack towards homosexual marriage. Is like if the question is "what is X party's stance on economy" and I say "capitalist", like no shit, that term doesn't even exist academically, I have to say what are the party's proposals to change in the economy, declared in the electoral program

Fine, you've tightened the standard. Now answer this: who enforces the "detailed enough" threshold? The test designer decides what counts as sufficient specificity, what gets asked, what doesn't. That's still power over access. More brutal though, your system rewards those with time and resources to study platforms. Poor workers juggling multiple jobs fail your three-month window while affluent people breeze through. You've replaced crude disenfranchisement with elegant class warfare. Why should literacy correlate to voting rights when it correlates to wealth?

They simply see pair to pair the electoral program of the party in question with the answer. If I try to specify this even more then I would have to put a lot more of legal study on this that would make it eternal, so we can't specify on that. Even if you believe you have been denied unlegitimately, you can denounce it, the tester has to give you his personal information from the start and it will be in a room with you as you make the test. And if you keep putting layers and layers of "but they can manipulate it!" then question the SAME THING with normal democracy: What stops them from inflating numbers? From manipulating vote requisites? Whatever, you can't have a 100% guarantee that your system will be absolutely uncorruptible, so we can't discuss that, that's more of a job for internal affairs

You're dodging the core issue by pivoting to general corruption. That's weak. Your system has a specific vulnerability normal democracy doesn't: it creates a permanent underclass of people deemed "unqualified" to participate. A corrupt vote counter affects one election. A rigged test affects entire demographics permanently. And your personal oversight doesn't scale across millions of voters. Why should we trust testers more than ballot counters when both are human?

Okay, I haven't read that part honestly, so I will now answer it... It doesn't matter. The system has to be completely neutral, no matter if the person is rich or poor, if you're qualified you vote, if you aren't then you don't. If we start trying to make tests easier for the lowest class that would, not just be discrimination, but also kill the premise that only the ones who know about their country's politics can vote Also, what was that about ballot counters? Testers and ballot counters do different tasks, one qualifies the voter, the other counts the votes, I'm kinda lost on that

You just admitted the core problem: your "neutral" system hits poor people hardest because they lack study time, not because tests are easier for them. That's not discrimination in design, it's discrimination in outcome, which is worse because it's invisible. And you separated testers from counters to avoid my point, but both are single points of failure controlling access. Why defend a system that inevitably excludes working people while claiming neutrality?