Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, in his famous novel Starship Troopers,envisioned a society where voters, too, had to demonstrate their patriotism before being allowed to vote. In his fictional society, the right to vote came only after some kind of dangerous public service — in the military, as a volunteer in dangerous medical experiments, or in other ways that demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice personally for the common good. The thought was that such voters would be more careful, and less selfish, in their voting.

That seems to be at the core of Ramaswamy’s proposal for letting people with military or first responder service vote sooner. Military service is a sort of “expensive signaling” of one’s willingness to serve the nation even at high personal cost. Such people are, on average, likely to be more public spirited.

The part of Ramaswamy’s proposal that I’m least enthusiastic about is the citizenship test.

[All of these *sound* good in theory, but would be unworkable in practice. We can barely restrict voting to the current prerequisites as it is. How would we enforce a military-service age exception at the polling stations when states balk at requiring a simple state ID now? The necessary constitutional amendments would fail miserably in the current political environment, especially since the net effect would be to sideline a key Democrat constituency. — Ed]