If You Needed to Pass an Exam to Vote
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This is a bad idea. You would just be creating another layer of gerrymandering.
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Ironically illiterate take
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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.
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.
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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.
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
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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.
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It is 100% used as a weapon to disenfranchise voters.
I do however believe that it should be used on CANDIDATES.
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.
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Shit, you're right. It has 2 gotchas at least just in that one question
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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.
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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"
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This is a bad idea. You would just be creating another layer of gerrymandering.
wrote last edited by [email protected]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
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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".
A
I think.
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What that actually looked like:
This is like the kryptonite of autistic people... and black voters whenever they had this...
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It is 100% used as a weapon to disenfranchise voters.
I do however believe that it should be used on CANDIDATES.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Cue Cletus declaring that Obama failed it but Trump passed
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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
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This post did not contain any content.wrote last edited by [email protected]
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]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.
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The exam:
Q. What is the secret password? A. Make America Great Again
