If You Needed to Pass an Exam to Vote
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Not even close. And I find it racist of you to assume that a minority is somehow incapable of passing an exam.
And I find it racist of you to assume that a minority is somehow incapable of passing an exam.
I'm begging you to please read this Wikipedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test
Between the 1850s and 1960s, literacy tests were used as an effective tool for disenfranchising African Americans in the Southern United States. Literacy tests were typically administered by white clerks who could pass or fail a person at their discretion based on race. Illiterate whites were often permitted to vote without taking these literacy tests because of grandfather clauses written into legislation.
Other countries, notably Australia, as part of its White Australia policy, and South Africa adopted literacy tests either to exclude certain racialized groups from voting or to prevent them from immigrating to the country.
Video showing one of the actual tests from the Jim Crow era. https://youtu.be/6lor3sfk-BE
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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.
It's not supposed to be anything. There is no correct answer. The ambiguity is the point.
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I did my best. Do I get to vote?
You do not get to vote. You drew a curve for question 12 when the instructions specified a line.
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The problem is barriers to entry. There are certain things like voting that should have bare minimum entry requirements. (Proof of ID, lack of felony charges) Because once you put in any requirement (like education level etc.) those requirements can be manipulated by bad actors. We already have low voter turnout in the US as it is, and people already try to challenge that in bad faith (looking at all the "stolen election" bs in 2021).
Putting requirements like education is just begging people to manipulate it and skew results (harder tests in some areas, obtuse questions, general "elitist" focused motivations)
The point is voting needs to be accessible to everyone, even if some of those people are "not smart enough" then we need to focus on educating those people, not stopping them from voting because of some arbitrary "good enough" line.
wrote last edited by [email protected]There are certain things like voting that should have bare minimum entry requirements. (Proof of ID, lack of felony charges)
IMO, felony charges are another tool of deliberate voter disenfranchisement, since the US justice system is clearly racist and has a shit ton of convictions compared to the EU (most countries, really - the US prison population per capita is one of the highest in the world). Lack of felony charges should probably be a requirement for being elected, but at this point they might start trying to use it for this, too.
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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.
rgba(46, 251, 217, 0.72)
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Still a better system than your electoral college.
This is what happened when the US did it before.
https://lemmy.world/comment/18458771And because of how fractured and fucked our political positions are, something like it would happen again. We need a lot more happening before even a proper and fair test could be made.
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Fuck no. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test
Between the 1850s and 1960s, literacy tests were used as an effective tool for disenfranchising African Americans in the Southern United States. Literacy tests were typically administered by white clerks who could pass or fail a person at their discretion based on race. Illiterate whites were often permitted to vote without taking these literacy tests because of grandfather clauses written into legislation.
The problem there is the administration of the tests, not the tests themselves.
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“Educated” does not equal intelligent, and it certainly does not imply broad intelligence. You can train a relatively stupid human being to do all kinds of stuff and if you’ve ever worked with people with degrees you know what little value they carry.
I went to college and have white collar career and my family is largely university educated. I worked with structural engineers at my last job and half them were just barely able to do their jobs with the worst ones being the senior people. Elsewhere in the world there have been anti-vax doctors and nurses, psychotic therapists, and theologians who have read the bible who still do all the horrible things they definitely know are bullshit. I bet nearly half the people here on Lemmy know a software developer or three who shouldn’t ever touch a computer. People with degrees are more likely to be more intelligent but, especially while living in a world where they’re basically expected, that’s really just not a guarantee.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Even people who are actually smart buy into fascism, though. It's not just a question of dumb vs intelligent, but of ethics.
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Yup. Same in the States.
People are fundamentally selfish; sometimes, that selfishness extends to their family, and rarely, to their immediate community. But rarely will people vote for something that has a direct negative impact on their own interests but which benefits the majority. Smart, educated, dumb, ignorant; the tendency is toward selfishness.
Education and intelligence influences empathy, and can impart greater long-term thinking, but it doesn't guarantee it. As stupid as we may believe Bezos and Musk to be, they're clearly educated, and act selfishly, like the majority of the 1%.
Arguably the educated and intelligent are more likely to profit from fascism (to an extent), anyway - they're going to do the oppressing, while most workers are going to be on the 'being oppressed' side.
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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.
That kind of sounds like we won't need it anymore if we're developed enough to be able to implement it well.
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Then don't do that.
Give everyone, and I mean everyone, a standard fifth grade test. It would not surprise me one bit if the highest failure rate of such a test comes from the large swath of redneck nitwits there exist over in America.
Who writes the test?
Who determines the test is at a fifth grade level?
Who will proctor the test?
Where will the test be administered?
When will the test be administered?
Who decides what a passing grade is?
Who grades the test?
Who verifies the grade on the test?
At every step there is an easy way to disenfranchise whatever people you don’t like. For instance: simply make the test only available at noon on the Monday before election. Make it only able to be taken at town hall. Immediately, anyone who works an hourly job will no be effectively disqualified from voting because they can’t take the test.
Now make the exam only available in English. Anyone who cannot speak English is now disqualified.
There are so many ways for literacy tests to go wrong, they’re pretty much only good for excluding people you don’t like from voting. Just let everyone vote and make it a mandatory holiday.
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InB4 the Non-Voters just start doing the Wilmington Massacre repeatedly.
Check your history books about what happens when the majority of the population has no political voice. Things get ugly.
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The problem there is the administration of the tests, not the tests themselves.
you think the current racist rich people wouldn't be racist and rich if we introduced an exam to the voting process?
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you think the current racist rich people wouldn't be racist and rich if we introduced an exam to the voting process?
I think the qualifying questions could be attached to the ballot and submitted anonymously.
Race should not be discernable ... in theory.
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There are certain things like voting that should have bare minimum entry requirements. (Proof of ID, lack of felony charges)
IMO, felony charges are another tool of deliberate voter disenfranchisement, since the US justice system is clearly racist and has a shit ton of convictions compared to the EU (most countries, really - the US prison population per capita is one of the highest in the world). Lack of felony charges should probably be a requirement for being elected, but at this point they might start trying to use it for this, too.
I agree. I would actually like to see a 100% voter turnout from within prisons. Not only should we not strip that right, but it should be available for citizens while incarcerated as well. Seems easy to do.
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Except the candidates would all be garbage anyways haha
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Not even close. And I find it racist of you to assume that a minority is somehow incapable of passing an exam.
No in the past black people here in America weren't allowed to be educated or learn to read. When they gained voting rights none of them knew how to read well so the racist made a law saying you have to pass a reading test or some shit so they couldn't vote.
You can't just look at the current situation and make rules based on that you have to look at it wholeistically. Not being able to read doesn't mean you are stupid. There are lots of reasons someone might fail a test but still be intelligent enough to vote and make a good informed choice.
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I think the qualifying questions could be attached to the ballot and submitted anonymously.
Race should not be discernable ... in theory.
Aside from the existing deficit due to hundreds of years of systemic discrimination you mean?
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Who writes the test?
Who determines the test is at a fifth grade level?
Who will proctor the test?
Where will the test be administered?
When will the test be administered?
Who decides what a passing grade is?
Who grades the test?
Who verifies the grade on the test?
At every step there is an easy way to disenfranchise whatever people you don’t like. For instance: simply make the test only available at noon on the Monday before election. Make it only able to be taken at town hall. Immediately, anyone who works an hourly job will no be effectively disqualified from voting because they can’t take the test.
Now make the exam only available in English. Anyone who cannot speak English is now disqualified.
There are so many ways for literacy tests to go wrong, they’re pretty much only good for excluding people you don’t like from voting. Just let everyone vote and make it a mandatory holiday.
It's almost like we've run this experiment before at massive scale in real world conditions, and that experiment yielded data.
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I think the qualifying questions could be attached to the ballot and submitted anonymously.
Race should not be discernable ... in theory.
The tests never explicitly directly measured race nor required the voters name. They can design the tests to discriminate all sorts of ways based on the content.
