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InB4 the Non-Voters just start doing the Wilmington Massacre repeatedly.
Check your history books about what happens when the majority of the population has no political voice. Things get ugly.
This is probably in part a meritocracy, though how the government defines ‘merit’ is probably quite subjective.
Humans are all too human. A purely statistical vote such as proportional representation is most likely the most scientific method regardless of what government is elected. If a civilisation must fall through its own vices and fallacy (oh hey, we’ve been there before!), then let’s allow the collective consciousness of our fellow human beings work it out.
Ever…so…fucking…slowly.
What that actually looked like:
I did my best. Do I get to vote?
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.
rgba(46, 251, 217, 0.72)
You don’t get to vote but also you might need to see a doctor. I think you might have ingested way too much colloidal silver. Like this guy
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.
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. :(
You do not get to vote. You drew a curve for question 12 when the instructions specified a line.
@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 😆
Prove you’re literate by solving lateral thinking word puzzles.
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.
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.
And 13 is unclear if it’s strictly ‘more than’ or ‘more than or equal’
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.
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.
It’s not supposed to be anything. There is no correct answer. The ambiguity is the point.
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.
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?
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.
Yeah, but the actual answer is how white are you?
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, 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”
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
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.
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.
You need to cross out enough zeros so that it makes a million. Pretty sure
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
Still trying to figure out what happened in the second frame.
The founding fathers basically solved this issue through the electoral college, you’re not supposed to be voting for the president, you’re supposed to be voting for the people who will elect the president. But that’s all gone to shit, proving Hamilton’s warnings about populism extremely prescient.
Even if it worked as intended, it just kicks the problem back a step
And the approved voters just happened to be from the 50 people who controlled the testing.
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
You mean most people know better?
How could society signal to themselves that they know?
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.
That’s also a trap but I think the quote refers to something else.
Possibly, but I would need more context for a better interpretation than the conclusion I came to.
The exam:
Q. What is the secret password? A. Make America Great Again
Ahahahahaa xD
Sure. Disenfranchise people. That’s a suitable hack to a checks notes stable, legitimate, and responsive government.
Not saying this is the correct route, but I do see the cultural decay, foreign influence, and complete lack of civic duty causing massive political failures in the US in real-time as we grow lazier, less interested, and more content. Any idea how we account for that in a reasonable fashion?
You don’t. People have always said that about basically every country. What is “cultural decay”? Define “civic duty”. Why is it a problem that people are content? Are we lazier? Are people on average more content now?
The key lesson is that you can’t force people to care about what you do. Inspire people and they’ll follow you, don’t and they’ll do something else. FDR increased a sense of civic duty by paying people to do civic works.
I think I might’ve come across incorrectly when I said cultural decay. I mean to convey the consequences of a cultures effect on politics. For example wars, pollution, or nuclear weapons. I think you’d have trouble denying those have effects that are inherently social and require civic cooperation to prevent. Doing otherwise seems to me to actually objectively be a problem, assuming you value living. That’s actually what I meant about laziness as well, that we’re less invested in the core responsibilities that now exist with how advanced our technology and societies have become.
I agree you can’t force anyone, that’s not freedom, but I also feel and fear we may be past the point where inspiration can handle the challenges. FDR never had nuclear war looming, the interconnected and chaotic nature of social media to contend with, or a bevy of other modern factors like llms that I get the gut feeling are insurmontable. I’d like to be convinced otherwise instead of subscribing to apathy but I feel like I’m living through the dawn of a new age.
I’m glad it was a misunderstanding. :)
I think my central point still holds, so I’ll develop on it a bit more.
Every era has its challenges, and they’re all seemingly insurmountable and possibly the worst thing yet. They’re less significant from our perspective, but we have the benefit of history. We know how the story progressed.
FDR did have nuclear war looming, they just only knew that meant “bad”, but not the details. It was probably scarier then. We know now that he actually didn’t because the German program was doomed to failure from the start, but they didn’t at the time. They had an economy that was in tatters, a massive food shortage resulting in poorly quantified starvation, the most powerful militaries on the planet conquering Europe and Asia, and so on.
We’re past the age where the president is likely to be able to inspire unity of purpose like they did then, but that’s always been how you get people to care: someone needs to convince them, or you pay them. In a time if turmoil, you can inspire a lot of purpose by giving people a stable job, and then constantly extolling the virtues of the purpose they’re working towards.All that to say, we don’t know the future. You are living through the dawn of a new age. Our problems aren’t insurmountable, we just don’t know how to do it yet. The details are different, but it’s not a new circumstance.
I’m not an advocate for apathy, but… If it does go wrong, what actually happens? America collapses, war, people die, and turmoil. We can’t know the timeline, and we have 3/4 of those now with the remaining being pretty intangible. The fall of the Roman empire, depending on which fall you’re looking at, took 300 to a 1000 years. To the people living through the fall, it wasn’t even visible. The final fall ushered in the Renaissance, both a period of great development, but also pessimism born out of the proceeding centuries of turmoil (European peace shattered by 200 years of war, famine, several plagues, and an ice age). Injecting masses of fleeing scholars from Constantinople into that propelled things to new heights as their knowledge from the fallen empire blended with the local knowledge.
We don’t know if the empire is falling, how long it’s going to take, if we’re at the beginning or the end, or if we’re even in the empire. We don’t know if the collapse will trigger a dark age (not actually dark, just “not roman”), or a golden age as waves of American scientists, artists, writers, mathematicians and engineers take their work to China and unintentionally create a fresh blend of perspectives and shared knowledge that builds on both. (Stereotypes aside we have a lot of those).People problems are ultimately solvable by people, inevitably by talking.
History consistently tells us that it’s weird, messy, and long. Live life, be kind. If someone says to do something for other people for moral reasons, it’s a coin toss if they’re doing something history will look kindly upon. If someone says to do something for group identity, they’re probably fine. If they say to do something to someone else for group identity, they’re most likely not. If someone is saying something you’ve heard before but a lot of people are listening and the people in power don’t like it, thiniare probably shifting. Maybe not for the people speaking, but shifting.It’s late and I’m rambling as I fall asleep. When I say “you don’t”, I mean that history and society are too much to bend in a deliberate way. Best you can do is the right thing at the time as best you can and not worry too much about your role in the big picture. So few people have a role that sets them at the bend of those forces.
Also, I’m not too worried about LLMs and social media, fundamentally. People have been saying and believing bizarre shit forever, they just made it easier and faster. The fading lustre of the Internet is just a drift back a bit towards before it, when people just believed stuff and then no one ever corrected them.
The problem is looking at it too functionally. You cannot fix it by “fixing” voting as if voting magically creates a functional government. It’s a method to derive consensus. You cannot look at a system that is failing to produce consensus and then fix it by directly removing anything that increases consensus. That’s insane.
You need to critically look at the entire system and identify what the problem is. In this case it’s largely the abstraction layers. People now interact with their government through filters even greater than the old Hearst days. Information flows from media filters to the population and from the population to government through social media filters. And both of those filters have their own agendas. Of course nobody believes the resulting government is responsive or legitimate. It’s not.
There are many potential solutions for civic engagement. But that largely means breaking down the very walls that powerful interests have created. There’s no easy solution to it. Certainly not “let’s make these stupid people unable to vote.” A solution is much more radical and takes understanding both what you want to achieve and how the current system is preventing it.
Fair and reasonable. I just don’t see a large force that would lead the current us in that direction naturally, and if I did I feel like I’d have more hope for a stable tomorrow.
If I recall correctly, Aristotle proposed something like only the educated being able to voted. I think if everyone was guaranteed free access to both a high school and college education, along with all food and living costs covered for anyone studying, then I could see having at least any associates level degree being an okay barrier of entry to voting.
However, such a thing would need to be protected by some unremovable barriers. For instance, education would need to continue receiving appropriate funding, food and other living costs such as renting a room would need to be covered even as the cost for these things are variable. People with disabilities would need to receive proper accommodations.
There’d need to be a massive overhaul of the education system. Most people who do graduate still make stupid-ase, self-sabotaging choices.
Oh for sure, there are a lot of different areas in education that need to be changed. We need to go back to teaching people how to think rather than prepping them to just memorize for the test. That’s not even mentioning the issue that AI can have on the learning processes.
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.
The only way to do it would be to fundamentally change the structure of the system so that power is distributed horizontally instead of top-down. This way, no singular individual can consolidate power over others. Essentially, we need an entirely new government and economics (as capitalism is inherently hierarchical and exploitative), a total redistribution of wealth and power of authority.
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.
That kind of sounds like we won’t need it anymore if we’re developed enough to be able to implement it well.
Nope, it’s a terrible idea.
Who defines ‘service’? Who assigns ‘service’? Who decides you have done enough ‘service’? Who decides who is capable or not capable of ‘service’? What happens when two different officials have different ideas on the above? What happens when different administrative regions have different ideas on the above? What happens when different regions have different numbers of Voters? What are the health risks of ‘service’? What the health risks of the jobs that aren’t ‘service’? What about people who are incapable of doing ‘service’? What about people who choose not to do ‘service’? How are resources distributed between Voters and Non-Voters? What about political issues that largely only affect Non-Voters? What happens when the Non-Voters vastly outnumber the Voters and rightfully decide this is a crappy system?
I suggest the game Shadowrun if you want a look at a world where the Certified Citizens are a small minority. It’s not pretty.
It’s a direct democracy, so generally Citizens decide what constitutes “service”…or at worst “representatives” (if we’d building off the framework of the idea). As far as administrative regions vs. federal…well, assuming we have a system that’s not broken and janky like this one, I think we could manage. As far as weighting things like “health risks”, yeah that’s a serious weakness here…but not an unaddressable one.
What I see is a world where we aren’t screeching about “immigrants” because most folks are similarly just residents. And residents have every right and protection as a citizen…aside from voting or holding office. I see a world where the responsibility of such power also comes with commitment to building society…rather than simply being born, whining, and burning everything down in a tantrum…as we basically see now with bourgeoisie white folks.
Don’t throw an idea away just because it isn’t immediately a panacea to every broken aspect of our current system.
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.
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.
Iirc, in the book, the point was that it was hazardous service - there was a real risk of loss of life or limb, which they underlined at every opportunity (remember the recruiter’s obviously prosthetic hand? He had one that blended in much better!) Otherwise, like dick_fineman said, customized to your abilities and you’re provided for. The idea was to filter out the self-serving sort.
But yeah, the problem becomes who gets to assign which duty - it becomes very easy to assign some people more hazardous positions depending on how “correct” their thinking is. Or more subtle things, like cultural fit, or education level.
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.
It is 100% used as a weapon to disenfranchise voters.
I do however believe that it should be used on CANDIDATES.
Who gets to design the test, though?
AI.
Fight me.
Anyone who solves a millennium prize problem earns the right to vote.
Me.
You have my vote, but only if you pass MY OWN candidate tester test.
Mexican exam-off
I think it should be a coin flip. Heads or tails. You lose whichever way it lands. That’ll keep the riffraff out.
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.
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.
Queue Cletus declaring that Obama failed it but Trump passed
Every single candidate should be made to pass a basic grade 8 biology exam.
There is a general rejection of such a test. Obviously voting in its current form doesn’t work. If everybody keeps being allowed to vote, what can be done to improve the quality of the outcome?
If everybody keeps being allowed to vote, what can be done to improve the quality of the outcome?
With you being the judge of what is the “quality of the outcome”? That isn’t democratic.
Right, who could make that judgement? And everybody voting under the influence of propaganda is also not democratic.
So what is the moral thing to do?
An education system that doesn’t aim to turn the population into diligent cattle.
Make it more accessible and provide better candidates.
Accessible things like:
- nearly anything other than first past the post
- Mandated Paid time off to vote.
- Vote by mail(universal absentee ballot).
- Strict adherence to vote outcomes (Congress cannot ignore at state nor national level).
- full-stop limits on campaign spending
- reform campaign donation regulation
- limit campaign advertising to small window near election (e.g. 3 months prior)
Better candidates like:
- Anyone left of “defacing property is equivalent to or worse than assault on a person”
- One that has a platform people are excited to vote for
I promise you there’s plenty of highly educated idiots, such a test would only limit the voting base to elite idiots.
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
