You must log in or # to comment.
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, 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”
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
I can help! So the first step is to be white, and then the second step is to do whatever you think seems right
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.
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.
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 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
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
1 is a digit in the number below
0 is not one million
0 is below 1 million
Read my comment again.
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’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.
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.
Instructions unclear. Drew circle instead of line.
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
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.
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.
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.
You do not get to vote. You drew a curve for question 12 when the instructions specified a line.
Deleted
@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.
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.
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?
Me.
You have my vote, but only if you pass MY OWN candidate tester test.
Mexican exam-off
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
Every single candidate should be made to pass a basic grade 8 biology exam.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
They used to do that in the US during the Jim Crow era. It went predictably.
Keep trying, Jay. One day you’ll make a funny comic.
Idunno I thought the burning coal one was kinda funny
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
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.
And the approved voters just happened to be from the 50 people who controlled the testing.
It’s not working. We have relatively equal education in Germany, and we have plenty of intelligent, educated people voting far right.
“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.
Even people who are actually smart buy into fascism, though. It’s not just a question of dumb vs intelligent, but of ethics.
We have govs and gobs and gobs of research that show that the best forward for everyone is cooperation. In fact, a lot of that research explicitly shows that the least ethical approaches are often the worst ones by nearly every metric except for “gives a handful of the wrong people way too much power”.
It’s like the four day work week and how we know it’s better not only for employee happiness but also for productivity and talent retention. We know that paying people fairly means that people can actually afford to buy the products we sell. We know that GDP is a bad measure of economic strength and that the most robust economies are those where a lot of smaller amounts change hands frequently. We as a species know all this, and anyone I would consider intelligent would have picked up on these patterns even if they weren’t explicitly told but they ARE being told, over and over again.
We need a new measure of what intelligence is but anything qualitative instead of quantitative is incredibly difficult for most people to grasp and they end worshipping the worst people who have stuff regardless of how they got it. I have the same diploma as my classmates and most of them shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near building design; pointing out my ability to graduate from a program even they could graduate from is not worth that much.
Intelligent people are not omniscient or universally unbiased. Just because they’re capable of doing a difficult job well, speak eloquently or excel in IQ tests doesn’t mean they won’t fall for political fallacies, aren’t xenophobic etc…
Being good at your little task, and in this case we’re talking about degrees so it’s just passing a couple courses and schmoozing your boss afterward, does not make you intelligent. I know some profoundly stupid people who barely scrape by, many by just overworking themselves because they lack the ability to grow and learn new, better ways to do things on their own.
The bar for “intelligent” is on the fucking floor, apparently.
Sure, keep believing that “truly intelligent” people are immune to fascism. There’s no way that will ever come back to bite you!
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%.
Arguably the educated and intelligent are more likely to profit from fascism (to an extent), anyway - they’re going to do the oppressing, while most workers are going to be on the ‘being oppressed’ side.
Are they very educated then?
If I recall correctly, Aristotle proposed something like only the educated being able to vote. 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 change. People with disabilities would need to receive proper accommodations.
A caveat I’ll add is that there would need to be more community colleges built and much more funding for pre-K thru 12th grade as well.
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.
I saw a video that part of the problem is that there’s a whole generation taught to research and form their own opinions, but weren’t taught to differentiate facts from bullshit. I think it was by JJ McCullough.
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
