If You Needed to Pass an Exam to Vote
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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
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]It's a beautiful thought but at this point in time it would be used as a tool to exclude more than anything. So long as it is a voluntary service there would be a system in place to suppress certain groups.
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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.
Surely there are no examples in American history that voting eligibility exams were used to stop certain demographics from voting.
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the main function of the contemporary media: to convey the message that even if you’re clever enough to have figured out that it’s all a cynical power game, the rest of America is a ridiculous pack of sheep.
This is the trap.
-David Graeber, The Democracy Project
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This is like the kryptonite of autistic people... and black voters whenever they had this...
Um fuck you? Being autistic doesn't mean we can't circle a letter or understand a sentence. Hell, this shit is incredibly literal minded and is easy as hell for us. Maybe you're the one with trouble.....
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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.
I also thought it a good idea at one point. I've since been convinced otherwise.
BUT, I do think we need some way for intolerant people to be stripped of the political power of the vote. I just can't figure out a way it could possibly be implemented without being weaponized against the marginalized. It may be better to implement it and attempt "constant vigilance" -- it seems like there are already necessary system that can be so weaponized that still do more good than harm.
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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.
Okay buddy cryptofash rhetoric
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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
No it's not.
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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
Ehh... I think it's fundamentally problematic. Why should only a subset of the adult population be allowed to vote on laws that affect everyone?
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Um fuck you? Being autistic doesn't mean we can't circle a letter or understand a sentence. Hell, this shit is incredibly literal minded and is easy as hell for us. Maybe you're the one with trouble.....
You're assuming that the grading system follows the "literal minded" definitions. On top of that, you better believe that they'll make you do the test in a loud and overstimulating environment.
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Um fuck you? Being autistic doesn't mean we can't circle a letter or understand a sentence. Hell, this shit is incredibly literal minded and is easy as hell for us. Maybe you're the one with trouble.....
wrote last edited by [email protected]You don't understand the test if you think it's all literal and "about circling the letter."
You would, in fact, get failed by the white eugenicists giving it to you the moment they figured out you were autistic.
One of the reasons they would know is that you think there are objectively correct answers to all of the questions and that most of them are not traps to allow a biased test giver to fail you and pass someone else that gave the same answer.
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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.
So... What's stopping the government in power from implementing systems that stop their political opponents holding those service positions?
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Um fuck you? Being autistic doesn't mean we can't circle a letter or understand a sentence. Hell, this shit is incredibly literal minded and is easy as hell for us. Maybe you're the one with trouble.....
Instructions unclear. Drew circle instead of line.
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Ehh... I think it's fundamentally problematic. Why should only a subset of the adult population be allowed to vote on laws that affect everyone?
In most places, citizens below a certain age can't vote, yet laws affect them as well. By extension, one could probably argue that some people "don't know what's best for them" and experts/educated people are better suited to make the laws.
(However, creating such a test would obviously be impossible in practice, and would result in a conflict of interest, leading to discrimination, as muusemuuse points out.)
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It's a beautiful thought but at this point in time it would be used as a tool to exclude more than anything. So long as it is a voluntary service there would be a system in place to suppress certain groups.
No I agree it absolutely would NOT work any time near this generation. It's not happening in our lifetimes, and if it does...that's probably bad. But conceptually, it is feasible...assuming like 50 other variables we are currently missing.
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So... What's stopping the government in power from implementing systems that stop their political opponents holding those service positions?
Yeah it's one of those ideas that work great if it's the way we had always done things for several generations...but it's not gonna work if we try to start it when anyone alive now is still...well...alive.
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I also thought it a good idea at one point. I've since been convinced otherwise.
BUT, I do think we need some way for intolerant people to be stripped of the political power of the vote. I just can't figure out a way it could possibly be implemented without being weaponized against the marginalized. It may be better to implement it and attempt "constant vigilance" -- it seems like there are already necessary system that can be so weaponized that still do more good than harm.
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.
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What that actually looked like:
I did my best. Do I get to vote?
