This should be mandatory. Cannot have mouth breathers vote for far right because they don't like the colour of their neighbours' skin.

What that actually looked like:

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Prove you're literate by solving lateral thinking word puzzles.

is it realistic for them to be designed sanely tho, and remain so even if they were? Remember, the people making such a "you must pass test to vote" law would be the politicians people are voting for, so they would have a huge incentive to mess with the process in such a way as to make it easier for the demographics that tend to vote for them and harder for the ones that dont. Adding an additional time hurdle like a test also has effects regardless of the likelihood of passing it, for example, it makes retirees with more free time to even do the test be more likely to qualify than someone too tired after working long hours to bother.

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.

And 13 is unclear if it's strictly 'more than' or 'more than or equal'

I mean yeah for the US I really cannot see anything like this working. That country and their democracy is just too far fucked. But making it like a 5 question little quiz before the voting would not really affect much imo.

I do see where concern would come from.

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

It is 100% used as a weapon to disenfranchise voters.

I do however believe that it should be used on CANDIDATES.

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

If You Needed to Pass an Exam to Vote - Lemmy.World

Lemmy

(lemmy.world)

Check this out.

First question on the test:
"What is the most important American value?"

Perhaps the exam should have included a section on the history of civil rights and voting suppression in the United States.