They used to do that in the US during the Jim Crow era. It went predictably.

It's not working. We have relatively equal education in Germany, and we have plenty of intelligent, educated people voting far right.

testing whether the testee understands their nation, its values, and the democratic principles it is founded on

It seems like you only want people with certain "values" to be able to vote. What even are a nation's "values" anyway? Most of the time I hear that it's just vague nationalist propaganda about how our nation and our people are wonderful. I will admit that's a bit of a specific nitpick though.

As for "the structure of government and the content of the constitution", I honestly don't think the details of how laws are passed or how many seats are in congress, etc, matter much when it comes to deciding which policies you support and which party you'll vote for.

By their very nature, laws like this exclude people who are less educated and have less free time and/or motivation to study for your test. These are almost always going to be also the most disadvantaged and poorly treated people in society.

Aww, my suffrage.

Who determines the questions and answers? Now they are the ones determining who can vote and thus the people in control.

Are they very educated then?

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%.

Still a better system than your electoral college.

And question 12, looks like the intent was below circle 3, but they put below circle 2. So is it a typo, or another intentionally ambiguous question where you can fail whoever you want?

Yes holy shit Jesus fuck yes I know this. Read again the second part where I said that there's no way to do this in reality.

“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.

No. Its just another tool used to be racist and reduce minority votes.

We dont have to guess or assume. It already happened and thats what it was for.

Its not a better system. If you want to pretend though... you can at most say its the same.

Not even close. And I find it racist of you to assume that a minority is somehow incapable of passing an exam.

Extremely close, because it's happened before.

Literacy tests at the polls were used as a tool to keep black people from voting, often by handing them different, harder tests.

You obviously don't know the history of voting tests. In the US, tests were designed to be virtually impossible for anyone to pass, but white voters didn't have to take them, because the rule was you didn't have to take the test if your grandparents could vote. They were implemented in a racist way.

You want to trust the government to design and implement tests, that sort of thing is what it could easily lead to, whether you want it or not.

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.

Yes I'm well aware of Jim Crowe laws. Before you can enact something fair you're first going to burn down everything you have currently.

The systems you have right now are a dead end, and there is no way to manage or change that system from the outside. So first it must be destroyed.

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.

No, it's more saying that media outlets convince people that they (the viewer) are the ones in the right, they are the ones in the know, and everyone else is dumb essentially.

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.