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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.
The problem there is the administration of the tests, not the tests themselves.
And that is a non-solvable problem.
We just need to make sure the voting machines are not racist. Solvable, if we’re starting from scratch.
The phrase “voting machine” is also a problem.
Only when accompanied by “paperless” or “closed source”
Nope. It’ll never work. Because when I walk into the voting booth, how do I KNOW FOR A VERIFIABLE FACT that this machine here in the booth with me is running the published software?
Computerized voting will always be a mistake.
The machine produces a physical paper record you can read, it doesn’t matter what software it’s running if you can verify your vote is accurate.
Computerized voting will always be a mistake.
disagrees in brazilian voting machine noises
you think the current racist rich people wouldn’t be racist and rich if we introduced an exam to the voting process?
I think the qualifying questions could be attached to the ballot and submitted anonymously.
Race should not be discernable … in theory.
Everyone affected by the policy decisions of the land should get to vote. No matter their race, literacy or political belief
Yes they should. But at the same time completely ignorant people should not. This is too big of a decision to leave up to disinterested and ill informed voters. I don’t care if you are left or right. blue or red.
If you don’t know the basics of how our government works you do not deserve to have a say. If you do not know the basics of what is happening in the country, then you do not deserve to vote.
ANYONE voting should be informed.
How we test for this? i have no idea. There can not be a simple education requirement or literacy test. There are plenty of uneducated people that are very up to date and informed on current politics. There are plenty of very educated people that don’t care about what’s going on and just vote by party.
But just because you have the right to an opinion does not mean your ignorant opinion is worth anything.
Yes they should. But at the same time completely ignorant people should not.
Jesus. You’re literally arguing for removing franchise from the majority of citizens. If they primarily reside in an area and will be affected by the policies, they should be able to vote on them, whether or not they’re ignorant.
The problem is that you can very, very quickly arrive at the conclusion that if someone just had enough knowledge, they’d vote like me, and strip the vote from everyone that doesn’t agree with you. Except that people can, and do, have different beliefs, even with the same knowledge.
I certainly trust The Party That’s In Charge At Any Given Time to subjectively come up with the criteria that objectively determines a voter’s ignorance level
A check to make sure they understand exactly what they are voting for seems sensible.
Aside from the existing deficit due to hundreds of years of systemic discrimination you mean?
The tests never explicitly directly measured race nor required the voters name. They can design the tests to discriminate all sorts of ways based on the content.
This is true. Whoever decides the questions and determines the correct answer holds a lot of power.
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Yeah it sounds fun unless you have any awareness of how this actually worked out when it was used in the past. Fully not okay.
You mean tests that were designed to ensure that only “the right people” were able to pass them. As well as a grandfather clause that exempted all of those right people (in modern times there would likely be a voter roll purge that would somehow lose most liberal voters while miraculously keeping all of the conservative ones).
Who determines the questions and answers? Now they are the ones determining who can vote and thus the people in control.
Still a better system than your electoral college.
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.
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.
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.
Troll
And I find it racist of you to assume that a minority is somehow incapable of passing an exam.
I’m begging you to please read this Wikipedia article. 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.
Other countries, notably Australia, as part of its White Australia policy, and South Africa adopted literacy tests either to exclude certain racialized groups from voting or to prevent them from immigrating to the country.
Video showing one of the actual tests from the Jim Crow era. https://youtu.be/6lor3sfk-BE
The white guy test: spell dog.
The black guy test: prove the Riemann Hypothesis.
See the problem yet?
No in the past black people here in America weren’t allowed to be educated or learn to read. When they gained voting rights none of them knew how to read well so the racist made a law saying you have to pass a reading test or some shit so they couldn’t vote.
You can’t just look at the current situation and make rules based on that you have to look at it wholeistically. Not being able to read doesn’t mean you are stupid. There are lots of reasons someone might fail a test but still be intelligent enough to vote and make a good informed choice.
When they gained voting rights none of them knew how to read well so the racist made a law saying you have to pass a reading test or some shit so they couldn’t vote.
Not correct. Literacy tests weren’t testing actual reading ability and comprehension; they were explicitly intended to deny the right to vote. White people would be passed because they had grandparents that had been permitted to vote, and literally got grandfathered in. Non-white people would be given tests written in, for instance, latin. So even if they could read, the odds were very poor that they’d be able to read the language the test was in. Or they would be given tests that had very ambiguous questions, and any way they answered could be considered ‘wrong’.
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.
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.
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.
Who writes the test?
Who determines the test is at a fifth grade level?
Who will proctor the test?
Where will the test be administered?
When will the test be administered?
Who decides what a passing grade is?
Who grades the test?
Who verifies the grade on the test?
At every step there is an easy way to disenfranchise whatever people you don’t like. For instance: simply make the test only available at noon on the Monday before election. Make it only able to be taken at town hall. Immediately, anyone who works an hourly job will no be effectively disqualified from voting because they can’t take the test.
Now make the exam only available in English. Anyone who cannot speak English is now disqualified.
There are so many ways for literacy tests to go wrong, they’re pretty much only good for excluding people you don’t like from voting. Just let everyone vote and make it a mandatory holiday.
It’s almost like we’ve run this experiment before at massive scale in real world conditions, and that experiment yielded data.
You can design the exam to the purpose, and race isn’t even the only factor to worry about. Maybe they claim a voter needs to prove financial literacy with advanced questions about various investment options that aren’t relevant to the lower class.
This is what happened when the US did it before. https://lemmy.world/comment/18458771
And because of how fractured and fucked our political positions are, something like it would happen again. We need a lot more happening before even a proper and fair test could be made.
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
Surely there are no examples in American history that voting eligibility exams were used to stop certain demographics from voting.
Brazil had something like that in the early republic days, only literate people could vote. Needless to say, only the robber baron elites kept getting elected, also thanks to the significant amount of fraud that happened. “The election is won during the counting”
Good point, maybe the idea works better in theory than practice. Haha
What that actually looked like:
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.
I think it’s supposed to say “Cross out the digit necessary”, so one digit, in which case cross out the 1 because there’s enough 0’s that crossing out one 0 isn’t enough.
It’s 10 that has me confused. Is it asking for the last letter of the first word that starts with ‘L’ in that sentence? It doesn’t actually specify.
I would assume each question is independent of the others, so probably a T for ‘last’
That would be my guess too, but tbh that’s the only question I don’t feel confident about
Yeah, but the actual answer is how white are you?
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?
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”
Compared to rest of questions, the one doesn’t specify that the answer is contained in the sentence, By that logic, I’d say the first word is Louisiana.
That’s a perfect example of its ambiguousness; I read that as “the number below [this question]” and assumed I had to cross out enough zeros to make it 1,000,000.
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.
This was my first hold up. I think the correct answer is to print the test onto a substrate that can be molded into a sphere. Then you can draw a geodesic around the number.
I can help! So the first step is to be white, and then the second step is to do whatever you think seems right
A
I think.
I read it as “1.” Which underlines the point, I think
Oh, yes. Reading it again you’re correct. I was looking for the number of letter on the sentence. When it clearly says of. Guess I don’t deserve to vote.
And 13 is unclear if it’s strictly ‘more than’ or ‘more than or equal’
That’s on purpose - white skin? it can be either one; otherwise both are wrong.
You actually weren’t subjected to literacy tests “if your grandfather was eligible to vote”, ie your grandfather was a white citizen.
I would always assume not more than or equal unless it says so
It says “more than”
It does, but in common language that could go either way. Especially since it’s not the technical phrase “greater than”.
No, twenty still isn’t more than twenty.
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.
You got enough answers but here’s how you deny someone the right to vote: the question really means you need to make the number 1000000 exact as that is the number “below” the question. Not fewer, physically below.
Oh good, now we have three completely different answers
Four. You need to make the number below (less than) one million, so cross out zeros until it’s 100,000.
”0000000” isn’t a properly formatted number.It’s a fun game finding the ways you can tell someone whatever they said is wrong.
It’s not supposed to be anything. There is no correct answer. The ambiguity is the point.
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
Six zeroes, right? Five zeroes makes one hundred thousand. Six makes a million. Or am I missing something?
You need to make it under one million
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.
Oh, Jesus. I read “below” to mean it was referring to the number directly “below” the instructions. I didn’t even consider that it could be read another way. Fuck everything about that test.
Shit, you’re right. It has 2 gotchas at least just in that one question
You need to cross out enough zeros so that it makes a million. Pretty sure
I mean purely pedantic, I have no idea the original test writers… but based on how I read the words
The number (one singular number needs to be crossed out)
Below one million, IE number < 1,000,000
So my conclusion
10000000000 < 1,000,000There is more than one right answer, which means there’s always a wrong answer to disqualify the target of prejudice from voting.
Ah, but they can get you because a bunch of zeros isn’t “a number”.
You could cross out the first 1000000… leaving just the last zero, though.
Cross 1, so it’s 0
I’d second this interpretation… least based on my interpretation of “cross out THE NUMBER”.
0 is a number.
1 is a digit in the number below
0 is not one million
0 is below 1 million
Read my comment again.
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.
(black people, particularly)
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
Prove you’re literate by solving lateral thinking word puzzles.
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…
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.
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.
Instructions unclear. Drew circle instead of line.
The point is they are not literal in any sense. Most of these questions can be interpreted at least 2 or more ways. I can’t even wrap my head around what question 1 even wants. It’s like word salad if you really read it carefully and literally.
This test is clearly intended to be deceptive. For example, with Q1 should I circle the number ‘1’ or ‘a’? With Q4 how do you draw a line around something? 11 is clearly a trick question designed to put pressure on people.
I’m autistic and whilst I could confidently argue an answer for these questions, I’m pretty sure someone would disagree with the reasoning I use, and a single failure means I fail the test
I did my best. Do I get to vote?
Nope. The answer to number ten is ‘a’.
Assuming you went with “last”, but that starts with ‘l’, not ‘L’. Each other question also specifies “one this line” where relevant, but not this one. The first word starting with ‘L’ is “Louisiana”.
The trick of the test is that it’s subjective to the person grading it. I could have also told you that the line drawing one (12) was wrong by just saying it’s not the correct way to do it. Or that 11 was wrong because you didn’t make the number below one million, it’s equal to one million. Or if you crossed off one more zero I’d say you could have gotten fewer by crossing off the 1 at the start. Or that a long string of zeros isn’t a properly formatted number.
Aww, my suffrage. :(
Here’s a more straightforward test. Please share the RGB value from the site below that most closely matches your skin tone and I’ll let you know if you pass or fail.
Number 11 says, “cross out the number,” as in, only one number. Pretty sure you have to cross out “1” so that it’s just a bunch of zeros.
You do not get to vote. You drew a curve for question 12 when the instructions specified a line.
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@mkwt@lemmy.world @Blujayooo@lemmy.world
TIL I’m possibly partially (if not entirely) illiterate.
Starting with the first question, “Draw a line a_round_ the number or letter of this sentence.”, which can be ELI5’d as follows:
The main object is the number or letter of this sentence, which is the number or letter signaling the sentence, which is “1”, which is a number, so it’s the number of this sentence, “1”. This is fine.
The action being required is to “Draw a line around” the object, so, I must draw a line.
However, a line implies a straight line, while around implies a circle (which is round), so it must be a circle.
However, what’s around a circle isn’t called a line, it’s a circumference. And a circumference is made of infinitesimally small segments so small that they’re essentially an arc. And an arc is a segment insofar it effectively connects two points in a cartesian space with two dimensions or more… And a segment is essentially a finite range of a line, which is infinite…
The original question asks for a line, which is infinite. However, any physical object is finite insofar it has a limited, finite area, so a line couldn’t be drawn: what can be drawn is a segment whose length is less or equal to the largest diagonal of the said physical object, which is a rectangular paper, so drawing a line would be impossible, only segments comprising a circumference.
However, a physically-drawn segment can’t be infinitesimal insofar the thickness of the drawing tool would exceed the infinitesimality from an infinitesimal segment. It wouldn’t be a circumference, but a polygon with many sides.
So I must draw a polygon with enough sides to closely represent a circumference, composed by the smallest possible segments, which are finite lines.
However, the question asks for a line, and the English preposition a implies a single unit of something… but the said something can be a set (e.g. a flock, which implies many birds)… but line isn’t a set…
However, too many howevers.
So, if I decide to draw a circumference centered at the object (the number 1), as in circle the number, maybe it won’t be the line originally expected.
I could draw a box instead, which would technically be around it, and would be made of lines (four lines, to be exact). But, again, a line isn’t the same as lines, let alone four lines.
I could draw a single line, but it wouldn’t be around.
Maybe I could reinterpret the space. I could bend the paper and glue two opposing edges of it, so any segment would behave as a line, because the drawable space is now bent and both tips of the segment would meet seamlessly.
But the line wouldn’t be around the object, so the paper must be bent in a way that turns it into a cone whose tip is centered on the object, so a segment would become a line effectively around the object…
However, I got no glue.
/jk
The ambiguity was by design. It let the test proctor decide who did or did not pass with near impunity. This was used to legally deny voting rights to minorities.
@PaintedSnail@lemmy.world Yeah, I’m aware, my reply was an attempt to “Monty-Pythonize” the degree of absurdity from the questions 😆
Oh, well, carry on, then. Carry on.
They used to do that in the US during the Jim Crow era. It went predictably.
Even if you assumed the test successfully filtered out an educated voterbase, it would take all but five seconds for X party to cheat their exams, kind of like the “grandfather law” which essentially bypassed jim crow era literacy tests for everyone who was white.
Even if you assumed the test successfully filtered out an educated voterbase
“Educated” is already doing some heavy lifting. What education are you demanding voters possess?
Because I’ve had an earful about “Marxist Professors corrupting our youth!” for my entire life. I doubt conservatives would consider any kind of liberal exam a legitimate test of voting aptitude.
Meanwhile, there’s enough jingoism and nationalism in our education system already, such that I could see an exam question “Which religious extremist sect was responsible for 9/11? Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists” or “Is an individual with XY chromosomes a man or a woman?” that’s a bit… loaded? Especially when administered right before a national election.
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.
Judging from the rest of this author’s work, I highly doubt they thought about this any deeper than a puddle.
Okay buddy cryptofash rhetoric
You sure do love calling people fascist, you’ve done it multiple times today.
Just people like you, for some reason.
This is a bit reminiscent of Trump’s “everything I don’t like is fake news” routine.
whoosh
Said the guy who just said “Maybe the author created pro-fascist propaganda he doesn’t actually agree with on accident.”
To further clear things up, I’m referring to your personal and extensive posting history of fascist or fascist-leanimg rhetoric.
Not that I doubt you consider yourself an enlightened centrist.
Lol, I bet you’re some kind of Tankie or a Trump supporter.
Fascinating leap of logic. Anarchist btw.
Didn’t deny it, I notice. Weird how your kind can never quite bring themselves to do that.
If you’re anarchist then why do you get so mad when I insult your glorious dictatorship?
You’re the only person here taking a defensive stance for authoritarians, your claims don’t hold enough water to bother poking holes in.
It is 100% used as a weapon to disenfranchise voters.
I do however believe that it should be used on CANDIDATES.
Every single candidate should be made to pass a basic grade 8 biology exam.
Who gets to design the test, though?
Me.
You have my vote, but only if you pass MY OWN candidate tester test.
Mexican exam-off
That is the one fear, especially considering… a now controlling amount of politicians can’t accept basic facts… so we’d see questions like “is climate change real”, “how old is the earth”.
The test will ask how old the Earth is. Any answer over 6000 years or so will be marked false.
Anyone who solves a millennium prize problem earns the right to vote.
I think it should be a coin flip. Heads or tails. You lose whichever way it lands. That’ll keep the riffraff out.
AI.
Fight me.
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.
Cue Cletus declaring that Obama failed it but Trump passed
Keep trying, Jay. One day you’ll make a funny comic.
Idunno I thought the burning coal one was kinda funny
This is a bad idea. You would just be creating another layer of gerrymandering.
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?
If there were a practical way to do it, a way to ensure that only those who were well informed on a topic could have a say in it wouldn’t be an issue. The only barrier to voting would be your desire to inform yourself.
Unfortunately there isn’t, because just about every word in the above sentences can be twisted by someone with illintent.
The concept isn’t fundamentally flawed, it’s just blocked by insurmountable obstacles.Thank you for getting what I was trying to say. Spot on, I don’t think the idea is wrong. It would be nice if there was a test to say “hey are you able to vote on these topics, have you researched, are you voting with your brain or with emotions?” - which is why I say the idea is fine. There isn’t though. There isn’t a single way to do that fairly or equitably.
Thank god the commenters immediately jumped down my throat to tell me what I already knew.
Exactly. The problem with having to meet certain criteria for being able to vote is who gets to set that criteria. We would end up with “black people have to guess the number of bubbles in this bar of soap” all over again.
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.)
You mean like how the house and senate are the ones who actually vote on the laws instead of direct democracy?
You realize that literacy tests were used to exclude minorities from voting, right? The idea is not fine because it’s inherently oppressive.
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.
Uhh, no the idea is most certainly not “fine”
It’s only fine if you don’t think about it at all beyond the surface level presentation.
The concept that only the educated should vote is essentially the entire advantage of living in a republic. If the test was actually fairly made it would be fine, the real problem is it would be used to limit specific demographics from voting while not actually ensuring only the educated can vote
Considering I’m against the concept of living in hierarchical government structures, such as republics, that’s not exactly a benefit from my perspective. It just exposes the flaws of living under hierarchy.
No it’s not.
Is too.
Please explain
Removed by mod
You’re really in a good mood today, aren’t you?
I don’t think they understand why this would be a terrible idea and are just hung up on the fact they want it and we don’t have it.
I mean… I don’t see the comic portraying the idea as good. More just using it as a vehicle to call most people dumb.
The exam:
Q. What is the secret password? A. Make America Great Again
Ahahahahaa xD
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
Nah, the exams wouldn’t be mandatory for everyone. You have a degree? Exempt. You graduated from one of the “certified” high schools (the ones in white neighborhoods but we don’t call it that wink wink)? Exempt. Passed NRA shooting license exam? Exempt.
