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If voting needed an exam, they would use that exam to stop certain demographics from voting. And no, I’m not talking about the ignorant.
Surely there are no examples in American history that voting eligibility exams were used to stop certain demographics from voting.
They used to do this and it turned out exactly how you describe. I would probably also add it’d incentivize politicians to dismantle educational institutions serving certain demographics
What that actually looked like:
A perfectly designed test - ambiguous enough that anyone subjected to it can be failed.
I still don’t know what #11 is “supposed” to be.
Can anyone explain #1 to me? What are you supposed to circle? It says “the number or the letter”. There’s 1 number and the entire sentence is literally letters…
It’s like when the waiter asks “Soup or salad?” and you say “Yes”.
Circle? It clearly says draw a line around whatever you decided wrongly to indicate. Lines don’t curve and aren’t boxes, so good luck.
A
I think.
I read it as “1.” Which underlines the point, I think
Oh, yes. Reading it again you’re correct. I was looking for the number of letter on the sentence. When it clearly says of. Guess I don’t deserve to vote.
I think it’s supposed to say “Cross out the digit necessary”, so one digit, in which case cross out the 1 because there’s enough 0’s that crossing out one 0 isn’t enough.
It’s 10 that has me confused. Is it asking for the last letter of the first word that starts with ‘L’ in that sentence? It doesn’t actually specify.
I would assume each question is independent of the others, so probably a T for ‘last’
Yeah, in the most pedantic sense, the correct answer is “a”, for “Louisiana”
“Oh, you’re black? Sorry, it was first L word in this undisclosed dictionary that we use for these tests”
And 13 is unclear if it’s strictly ‘more than’ or ‘more than or equal’
That’s on purpose - white skin? it can be either one; otherwise both are wrong.
You actually weren’t subjected to literacy tests “if your grandfather was eligible to vote”, ie your grandfather was a white citizen.
It says “more than”
It does, but in common language that could go either way. Especially since it’s not the technical phrase “greater than”.
No, twenty still isn’t more than twenty.
What’s interesting about the literacy tests is how much they have in common with IQ tests!
For example, a friend of mine remembers his childhood testing. For part of it a child is handed a set of cards and told to put them in order.
They have pictures of a set of blocks being assembled into a structure and the sun moves in an arc in the background.
Following the order implied by the sun is, apparently, wrong.
You got enough answers but here’s how you deny someone the right to vote: the question really means you need to make the number 1000000 exact as that is the number “below” the question. Not fewer, physically below.
Oh good, now we have three completely different answers
Four. You need to make the number below (less than) one million, so cross out zeros until it’s 100,000.
”0000000” isn’t a properly formatted number.It’s a fun game finding the ways you can tell someone whatever they said is wrong.
You need to cross out enough zeros so that it makes a million. Pretty sure
Ah, but they can get you because a bunch of zeros isn’t “a number”.
You could cross out the first 1000000… leaving just the last zero, though.
I mean purely pedantic, I have no idea the original test writers… but based on how I read the words
The number (one singular number needs to be crossed out)
Below one million, IE number < 1,000,000
So my conclusion
10000000000 < 1,000,000There is more than one right answer, which means there’s always a wrong answer to disqualify the target of prejudice from voting.
You cross out all of the 0s after the 1 and first 5 0s, so that the number is 100,000
Or you cross out just the 1
Six zeroes, right? Five zeroes makes one hundred thousand. Six makes a million. Or am I missing something?
You need to make it under one million
This is an example of the gotcha this test did, you can read the question two different ways. Making the number below the question one million, or making the number itself below one million.
Oh, Jesus. I read “below” to mean it was referring to the number directly “below” the instructions. I didn’t even consider that it could be read another way. Fuck everything about that test.
Also worth pointing out, WHY the test is so bad… 1. obviously not even well educated people today can agree on the meaning of a good portion of the questions.
but the biggest thing is, not everyone had to take them… IE the key point intention was “if a parent or grandparent has ever voted, you can skip this test”. which is such a blatant giving away that they don’t care of an individuals knowledge, they aren’t actually worried if they can read, they were just keeping first generation voters from voting… at a time when in particular a specific subset of american’s were in position to be first generation voters.
(black people, particularly)
There are two more pages to this and it gets worse
https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/exhibits/aale/pdfs/Voter Test LA.pdf
This has the full thing and some explanation
This is like the kryptonite of autistic people… and black voters whenever they had this…
Um fuck you? Being autistic doesn’t mean we can’t circle a letter or understand a sentence. Hell, this shit is incredibly literal minded and is easy as hell for us. Maybe you’re the one with trouble…
You’re assuming that the grading system follows the “literal minded” definitions. On top of that, you better believe that they’ll make you do the test in a loud and overstimulating environment.
You don’t understand the test if you think it’s all literal and “about circling the letter.”
You would, in fact, get failed by the white eugenicists giving it to you the moment they figured out you were autistic.
One of the reasons they would know is that you think there are objectively correct answers to all of the questions and that most of them are not traps to allow a biased test giver to fail you and pass someone else that gave the same answer.
Instructions unclear. Drew circle instead of line.
The point is they are not literal in any sense. Most of these questions can be interpreted at least 2 or more ways. I can’t even wrap my head around what question 1 even wants. It’s like word salad if you really read it carefully and literally.
I did my best. Do I get to vote?
Nope. The answer to number ten is ‘a’.
Assuming you went with “last”, but that starts with ‘l’, not ‘L’. Each other question also specifies “one this line” where relevant, but not this one. The first word starting with ‘L’ is “Louisiana”.
The trick of the test is that it’s subjective to the person grading it. I could have also told you that the line drawing one (12) was wrong by just saying it’s not the correct way to do it. Or that 11 was wrong because you didn’t make the number below one million, it’s equal to one million. Or if you crossed off one more zero I’d say you could have gotten fewer by crossing off the 1 at the start. Or that a long string of zeros isn’t a properly formatted number.
Number 11 says, “cross out the number,” as in, only one number. Pretty sure you have to cross out “1” so that it’s just a bunch of zeros.
Deleted
Here’s a more straightforward test. Please share the RGB value from the site below that most closely matches your skin tone and I’ll let you know if you pass or fail.
Prove you’re literate by solving lateral thinking word puzzles.
@mkwt@lemmy.world @Blujayooo@lemmy.world
TIL I’m possibly partially (if not entirely) illiterate.
Starting with the first question, “Draw a line a_round_ the number or letter of this sentence.”, which can be ELI5’d as follows:
The main object is the number or letter of this sentence, which is the number or letter signaling the sentence, which is “1”, which is a number, so it’s the number of this sentence, “1”. This is fine.
The action being required is to “Draw a line around” the object, so, I must draw a line.
However, a line implies a straight line, while around implies a circle (which is round), so it must be a circle.
However, what’s around a circle isn’t called a line, it’s a circumference. And a circumference is made of infinitesimally small segments so small that they’re essentially an arc. And an arc is a segment insofar it effectively connects two points in a cartesian space with two dimensions or more… And a segment is essentially a finite range of a line, which is infinite…
The original question asks for a line, which is infinite. However, any physical object is finite insofar it has a limited, finite area, so a line couldn’t be drawn: what can be drawn is a segment whose length is less or equal to the largest diagonal of the said physical object, which is a rectangular paper, so drawing a line would be impossible, only segments comprising a circumference.
However, a physically-drawn segment can’t be infinitesimal insofar the thickness of the drawing tool would exceed the infinitesimality from an infinitesimal segment. It wouldn’t be a circumference, but a polygon with many sides.
So I must draw a polygon with enough sides to closely represent a circumference, composed by the smallest possible segments, which are finite lines.
However, the question asks for a line, and the English preposition a implies a single unit of something… but the said something can be a set (e.g. a flock, which implies many birds)… but line isn’t a set…
However, too many howevers.
So, if I decide to draw a circumference centered at the object (the number 1), as in circle the number, maybe it won’t be the line originally expected.
I could draw a box instead, which would technically be around it, and would be made of lines (four lines, to be exact). But, again, a line isn’t the same as lines, let alone four lines.
I could draw a single line, but it wouldn’t be around.
Maybe I could reinterpret the space. I could bend the paper and glue two opposing edges of it, so any segment would behave as a line, because the drawable space is now bent and both tips of the segment would meet seamlessly.
But the line wouldn’t be around the object, so the paper must be bent in a way that turns it into a cone whose tip is centered on the object, so a segment would become a line effectively around the object…
However, I got no glue.
/jk
The ambiguity was by design. It let the test proctor decide who did or did not pass with near impunity. This was used to legally deny voting rights to minorities.
@PaintedSnail@lemmy.world Yeah, I’m aware, my reply was an attempt to “Monty-Pythonize” the degree of absurdity from the questions 😆
Oh, well, carry on, then. Carry on.
the main function of the contemporary media: to convey the message that even if you’re clever enough to have figured out that it’s all a cynical power game, the rest of America is a ridiculous pack of sheep.
This is the trap.
-David Graeber, The Democracy Project
You mean most people know better?
How could society signal to themselves that they know?
Ironically illiterate take
Maybe the author was aware of it being a bad idea but didn’t really emphasize that only an exclusive group would pick our leaders.
Judging from the rest of this author’s work, I highly doubt they thought about this any deeper than a puddle.
Okay buddy cryptofash rhetoric
whoosh
The exam:
Q. What is the secret password? A. Make America Great Again
This is a bad idea. You would just be creating another layer of gerrymandering.
I won’t call out of or the drawer for bad idea. The idea is fine. There’s just zero ways to ever implement it. It’s nice to dream though
Ehh… I think it’s fundamentally problematic. Why should only a subset of the adult population be allowed to vote on laws that affect everyone?
If there were a practical way to do it, a way to ensure that only those who were well informed on a topic could have a say in it wouldn’t be an issue. The only barrier to voting would be your desire to inform yourself.
Unfortunately there isn’t, because just about every word in the above sentences can be twisted by someone with illintent.
The concept isn’t fundamentally flawed, it’s just blocked by insurmountable obstacles.Thank you for getting what I was trying to say. Spot on, I don’t think the idea is wrong. It would be nice if there was a test to say “hey are you able to vote on these topics, have you researched, are you voting with your brain or with emotions?” - which is why I say the idea is fine. There isn’t though. There isn’t a single way to do that fairly or equitably.
Thank god the commenters immediately jumped down my throat to tell me what I already knew.
In most places, citizens below a certain age can’t vote, yet laws affect them as well. By extension, one could probably argue that some people “don’t know what’s best for them” and experts/educated people are better suited to make the laws.
(However, creating such a test would obviously be impossible in practice, and would result in a conflict of interest, leading to discrimination, as muusemuuse points out.)
You mean like how the house and senate are the ones who actually vote on the laws instead of direct democracy?
Uhh, no the idea is most certainly not “fine”
It’s only fine if you don’t think about it at all beyond the surface level presentation.
The concept that only the educated should vote is essentially the entire advantage of living in a republic. If the test was actually fairly made it would be fine, the real problem is it would be used to limit specific demographics from voting while not actually ensuring only the educated can vote
No it’s not.
Sure. Disenfranchise most people. That’s a suitable hack to a
checks notes
stable, legitimate, and responsive government.Even China would have more political legitimacy than such a system. It would collapse almost immediately.
If you ever want a good example of functionalist ideas leading to absolutely uncritical nonsense, here it is.
Not saying this is the correct route, but I do see the cultural decay, foreign influence, and complete lack of civic duty causing massive political failures in the US in real-time as we grow lazier, less interested, and more content. Any idea how we account for that in a reasonable fashion?
The problem is looking at it too functionally. You cannot fix it by “fixing” voting as if voting magically creates a functional government. It’s a method to derive consensus. You cannot look at a system that is failing to produce consensus and then fix it by directly removing anything that increases consensus. That’s insane.
You need to critically look at the entire system and identify what the problem is. In this case it’s largely the abstraction layers. People now interact with their government through filters even greater than the old Hearst days. Information flows from media filters to the population and from the population to government through social media filters. And both of those filters have their own agendas. Of course nobody believes the resulting government is responsive or legitimate. It’s not.
There are many potential solutions for civic engagement. But that largely means breaking down the very walls that powerful interests have created. There’s no easy solution to it. Certainly not “let’s make these stupid people unable to vote.” A solution is much more radical and takes understanding both what you want to achieve and how the current system is preventing it.
You don’t. People have always said that about basically every country. What is “cultural decay”? Define “civic duty”. Why is it a problem that people are content? Are we lazier? Are people on average more content now?
The key lesson is that you can’t force people to care about what you do. Inspire people and they’ll follow you, don’t and they’ll do something else. FDR increased a sense of civic duty by paying people to do civic works.
If I recall correctly, Aristotle proposed something like only the educated being able to vote. I think if everyone was guaranteed free access to both a high school and college education, along with all food and living costs covered for anyone studying, then I could see having at least any associates level degree being an okay barrier of entry to voting.
However, such a thing would need to be protected by some unremovable barriers. For instance, education would need to continue receiving appropriate funding, food and other living costs such as renting a room would need to be covered even as the cost for these things are variable. People with disabilities would need to receive proper accommodations.
A caveat I’ll add is that there would need to be more community colleges built and much more funding for pre-K thru 12th grade as well.
Nah, the exams wouldn’t be mandatory for everyone. You have a degree? Exempt. You graduated from one of the “certified” high schools (the ones in white neighborhoods but we don’t call it that wink wink)? Exempt. Passed NRA shooting license exam? Exempt.
There is a general rejection of such a test. Obviously voting in its current form doesn’t work. If everybody keeps being allowed to vote, what can be done to improve the quality of the outcome?
Make it more accessible and provide better candidates.
Accessible things like:
- nearly anything other than first past the post
- Mandated Paid time off to vote.
- Vote by mail(universal absentee ballot).
- Strict adherence to vote outcomes (Congress cannot ignore at state nor national level).
- full-stop limits on campaign spending
- reform campaign donation regulation
- limit campaign advertising to small window near election (e.g. 3 months prior)
Better candidates like:
- Anyone left of “defacing property is equivalent to or worse than assault on a person”
- One that has a platform people are excited to vote for
I promise you there’s plenty of highly educated idiots, such a test would only limit the voting base to elite idiots.
An education system that doesn’t aim to turn the population into diligent cattle.
It is 100% used as a weapon to disenfranchise voters.
I do however believe that it should be used on CANDIDATES.
Who gets to design the test, though?
That is the one fear, especially considering… a now controlling amount of politicians can’t accept basic facts… so we’d see questions like “is climate change real”, “how old is the earth”.
Me.
You have my vote, but only if you pass MY OWN candidate tester test.
Cue Cletus declaring that Obama failed it but Trump passed
I wonder if it would change anything if instead of a quiz you just like handed people a printout of like a summary of how government works from Wikipedia. Like, maybe convert some people who think the president makes laws.
It would probably still be corrupted by conservatives, sadly.
If I’ve learned anything in the last 6 months it’s that the president makes laws.
Heinlein gets shit on for this, but his “citizenship through service” idea always made sense to me. Yeah you have rights, can work a regular job, and have all the benefits we traditionally associate with “citizenship” by simply being a legal resident…but if you want to vote or hold office, you need to spend a few years contributing. Maybe that’s military service, or maybe that’s working as a teacher in a low-income area. Regardless, voting is a privilege that SHOULD be earned by contributing to the society you want to impact FIRST.
Yeah. That just ends in the poor not having the ability to vote because they can’t make time for that contribution.
Reminder that when you pay money toward the government in taxes you are working to support it in proxy.
The way I imagined it, you would get a wage for your service and service would be customizable to account for any disability, including severe intellectual-disability.
It’s a beautiful thought but at this point in time it would be used as a tool to exclude more than anything. So long as it is a voluntary service there would be a system in place to suppress certain groups.
No I agree it absolutely would NOT work any time near this generation. It’s not happening in our lifetimes, and if it does…that’s probably bad. But conceptually, it is feasible…assuming like 50 other variables we are currently missing.
Iirc, in the book, the point was that it was hazardous service - there was a real risk of loss of life or limb, which they underlined at every opportunity (remember the recruiter’s obviously prosthetic hand? He had one that blended in much better!) Otherwise, like dick_fineman said, customized to your abilities and you’re provided for. The idea was to filter out the self-serving sort.
But yeah, the problem becomes who gets to assign which duty - it becomes very easy to assign some people more hazardous positions depending on how “correct” their thinking is. Or more subtle things, like cultural fit, or education level.
So… What’s stopping the government in power from implementing systems that stop their political opponents holding those service positions?
Yeah it’s one of those ideas that work great if it’s the way we had always done things for several generations…but it’s not gonna work if we try to start it when anyone alive now is still…well…alive.
I also thought it a good idea at one point. I’ve since been convinced otherwise.
BUT, I do think we need some way for intolerant people to be stripped of the political power of the vote. I just can’t figure out a way it could possibly be implemented without being weaponized against the marginalized. It may be better to implement it and attempt “constant vigilance” – it seems like there are already necessary system that can be so weaponized that still do more good than harm.
The only way to do it would be to fundamentally change the structure of the system so that power is distributed horizontally instead of top-down. This way, no singular individual can consolidate power over others. Essentially, we need an entirely new government and economics (as capitalism is inherently hierarchical and exploitative), a total redistribution of wealth and power of authority.
Humans in 2025 are…well, mostly horrible. So if we’re working with this stock, it’s never going to work. It’s more of an idea that works really well AFTER the morons die from COVID/etc. because they refused to wear a mask unless that mask let them brutalize brown folks. Long-term, I think it’s in idea we shouldn’t bin (as a species). But it absolutely won’t work TODAY.
This is probably in part a meritocracy, though how the government defines ‘merit’ is probably quite subjective.
Humans are all too human. A purely statistical vote such as proportional representation is most likely the most scientific method regardless of what government is elected. If a civilisation must fall through its own vices and fallacy (oh hey, we’ve been there before!), then let’s allow the collective consciousness of our fellow human beings work it out.
Ever…so…fucking…slowly.
The most scientific method would be one that doesn’t rely on a singular entity to represent the majority. It is impossible to adequately represent the interests of all within a community through one singular political entity who has full authority to dictate law, especially in a stratified society of differing classes with diametrically oppositional interests. Due to the implicit biases of the individual holding power of authority, they will always choose what is in their best interests of their respective class, which intrinsically will be to the detriment of the oppositional class.
Instead, power of authority must be distributed horizontally, all parties of interest retain autonomy, representing themselves through a multi-tiered, federated structure where any political agreements come about through consensus of those involved.
This should be mandatory. Cannot have mouth breathers vote for far right because they don’t like the colour of their neighbours’ skin.
This was basically the first Jim Crow law to stop black people from voting. I would love a more informed voting pool but this would 100% immediately be used to disenfranchise specific groups.
Just make the questions difficult for specific groups to know on average, or fill it full of trick questions with bad faith answers.
Perhaps the exam should have included a section on the history of civil rights and voting suppression in the United States.
Ah, yes: if you acknowledge it existed, you fail and can’t vote.
That’s what you had in mind, right? 'Cause that’s what would happen.
No, what I had in mind was an ironic response to someone who didn’t know his history, which would have told him why the whole idea of a “voting exam” was a bad one.
Yeah obviously this could happen but I think a good idea would be every couple years or each election you do the test about the currently held election. Like something about policies and what the people are campaigning for. If you don’t know what the hell is going on in politics at least a little you don’t deserve the vote. Maybe dven make the bar to pass like 30%. Just don’t let people vote if the only reason they came to vote is because someone said they will make it so less brown people are around
https://lemmy.world/comment/18452766
Check this out.
Yeah I have seen what one of those tests look like before
And you still think a test like that, applied to all, would be a good idea?
I never said tests should be like that.
Voting zones shouldn’t be gerrymandered, but they are. Any system that relies solely on humans not acting immorally in their self interest is naive in its conception and doomed to fail. Literacy tests are another example.
The trouble is that barriers to voting will always be manipulated by the people in charge to exclude specific people. In the case of the USA, they are used by far right mouth breathers to exclude their neighbors on the basis of the color of their skin.
We see it with ID laws already, but imagine if the Republicans could write exam questions to select who is patriotic enough to vote. They would include questions like “Name the Confederate hero who selflessly defended his state from Northern aggression” or “Which Nascar team has the fastest pit time?” or “Under penalty of perjury, write down the names of all the illegal immigrants you know of residing in your community.”
That’s why literacy tests for voting were ruled unconstitutional.
The trouble is that barriers to voting will always be manipulated by the people in charge to exclude specific people.
That’s just a statement and not necessarily true just because you say so.
Anyway, such a test would obviously not be about Nascar or illegal immigrants, but rather the structure of the government and the content of the constitution, testing whether the testee understands their nation, its values, and the democratic principles it is founded on. I don’t buy the pseudo killer argument that the test would eventually and automatically be corrupted. Keep it on the subject matter, and as long as the constitution doesn’t change, the test doesn’t change meaningfully. Everything outside these topics is irrelevant to the test.
This isn’t a hypothetical. We had literacy tests in the USA and they were designed to discriminate against minorities and newly freed slaves. And we have current politicians in power passing ID requirements with the explicit intention of preventing minorities, immigrants, and people of lower socioeconomic status from voting.
My examples were hyperbolic, but the underlying phenomenon already happens every single day. How many districts are gereymandered? How many polling places have been closed to limit voting in specific areas? Disenfranchisement is already part of the battle, and we the people are not winning it at the moment.
First question on the test: “What is the most important American value?”
Oh! Oh! I know this one!
Telling someone else they’re doing freedom wrong!
In the US anyway, its historically been those very people that have tried things like education requirements or tests for a person to be allowed to vote, specifically to create an excuse to deny anyone that wasnt white.
Yes I did watch a vid about those tests lately. The issue there was that whites did not have to take them. If everyone has to take tests and they are designed sanely that should not be an issue.
is it realistic for them to be designed sanely tho, and remain so even if they were? Remember, the people making such a “you must pass test to vote” law would be the politicians people are voting for, so they would have a huge incentive to mess with the process in such a way as to make it easier for the demographics that tend to vote for them and harder for the ones that dont. Adding an additional time hurdle like a test also has effects regardless of the likelihood of passing it, for example, it makes retirees with more free time to even do the test be more likely to qualify than someone too tired after working long hours to bother.
I mean yeah for the US I really cannot see anything like this working. That country and their democracy is just too far fucked. But making it like a 5 question little quiz before the voting would not really affect much imo.
I do see where concern would come from.
