If You Needed to Pass an Exam to Vote

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.
  
  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.
  
  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".
  
  And 13 is unclear if it's strictly 'more than' or 'more than or equal'
  
  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.
  
  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 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
  
  You need to cross out enough zeros so that it makes a million. Pretty sure
  
  Cross 1, so it's 0
- 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%20Test%20LA.pdf
  This has the full thing and some explanation
- Prove you're literate by solving lateral thinking word puzzles.
- 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.....
- 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.
- @mkwt@lemmy.world @Blujayooo@lemmy.world
  TIL I'm possibly partially (if not entirely) illiterate.
  Starting with the first question, "Draw a line around 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.

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.
- 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
- Surely there are no examples in American history that voting eligibility exams were used to stop certain demographics from voting.

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?
  
  Me.
  
  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".
  
  Anyone who solves a millennium prize problem earns the right to vote.
  
  I think it should be a coin flip. Heads or tails. You lose whichever way it lands. That'll keep the riffraff out.
  
  AI.
  Fight me.
- While the idea of being required to pass a test to be eligible is bad for the reasons others have given, I do like the idea of having to take a test in order to run. No pass/fail, but the results are made public so we know who we're voting for. Make it a random compilation pulled from the state testing from each state, or something. With a large enough data set, we should be able to prevent people gaming the system.
- Queue Cletus declaring that Obama failed it but Trump passed

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

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.

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.

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?
  
  No it's not.
  
  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.

And the approved voters just happened to be from the 50 people who controlled the testing.

The exam:
Q. What is the secret password? A. Make America Great Again

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?

The founding fathers basically solved this issue through the electoral college, you’re not supposed to be voting for the president, you’re supposed to be voting for the people who will elect the president. But that’s all gone to shit, proving Hamilton’s warnings about populism extremely prescient.
- Even if it worked as intended, it just kicks the problem back a step

Ah yes, blamed the disenfranchised voters for not wanting to jump through another hoop. Its a big club, and, sorry, pal; even if you fill out the test, you ain't in it.

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.
- We kind of do that with ballot measures. Wel end up with a big fight over the text that gets put on the ballot. And people still leave the voting booth having completely crazy ideas about what some of them do.

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?

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.

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.

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.
- 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 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.
  
  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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!