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.

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.

Who gets to design the test, though?

I would assume each question is independent of the others, so probably a T for 'last'

I'd second this interpretation... least based on my interpretation of "cross out THE NUMBER".

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.

It says "more than"

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.

You need to cross out enough zeros so that it makes a million. Pretty sure

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?

I never said tests should be like that.

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.

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.

What that actually looked like:

It does, but in common language that could go either way. Especially since it's not the technical phrase "greater than".

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.