The term “idiot” is certainly not nice language. On Election Day, Iowans decided whether to make a language change in the Iowa constitution’s laws on those unqualified to vote from “idiot or insane person” to “a person adjudged mentally incompetent to vote.” And I voted no.

Not because I think I’m funny or wanted to be difficult. I know most people voted yes and the bill passed because the terms “idiot” and “insane person” are politically incorrect. Yes, the language should be changed. But the proposed new language is even worse, as it opens loopholes that the old terms, insensitive as they have been, left closed.

“A person adjudged mentally incompetent” is very vague and leaves the law a broad range of interpretation. The word “adjudged” means someone will be deciding who is and who is not competent to vote. The new language mentions nothing of the criteria that will be used to make this decision, or who will be making it. The word would suggest some kind of process, or court proceeding. However, the procedure could be whoever is in charge deciding you or your friend or your grandmother is “mentally incompetent” for any number of reasons not necessarily associated with mental illness.

To give a historical example, anyone who wasn’t white was thought incompetent to vote until 1870. For women, it took 50 more years.

Before 1920 women were thought to be too morally elevated to engage in the dirty business of voting, according to Alexandar Keyssar in his book “The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States.” Make your own interpretations, but that sounds like a nice way of saying women’s poor brains wouldn’t be cut out for those kinds of decisions.

If you’re a white male, don’t feel at ease. Those aren’t the only two groups that could be targeted. It just depends on the person who is “adjudging” and his or her agenda and ideas on who is mentally incompetent to vote.

It sounds like something that wouldn’t happen in modern-day America. But loose language like the new law opens the door and leaves it wide open for anyone ambitious enough to take advantage of it.

Without qualifiers and limits on the language, someone mentally incompetent could be anyone. It could be me, because I’m blonde and we all know about blondes’ mental capacities. What if I ditz out at the polls? It could be you, because you go to a state college instead of Harvard.

I exaggerate, but you get the point.

Before we mark down “yes” so quickly in the name of political correctness, we should consider the implications of the new law as well as those of the old one. We may get ourselves in trouble by trying to be nice.

— Bailey Lewis is a senior in English from Indianola