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Comment by breadwinner | Hacker News Reader

United States from the 1890s to the 1960s required voters to pass a literacy before they could vote. We should bring back this rule. Voters should have a minimum level of knowledge about the world, science and democracy in order to vote. This would have prevented the current disaster which threatens not just our democracy, but by denying climate change, the entire planet.

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I'm not even American and yet where I'm from it's common knowledge that literacy tests were used to systematically disenfranchise black people from voting.

Right, and that was apparently constitutional. If so we can bring back the law, but this time to disenfranchise dumb voters.

No, it wasn't. https://www.annenbergclassroom.org/timeline_event/literacy-t...

As you see in the article you linked, it was ruled unconstitutional only because it violated the 15th amendment. That amendment makes it illegal to deny the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. It is still legal to deny the right to vote if someone is deemed not smart enough.

The literacy tests in question were designed from the start to be ambiguous, so that the same answers could be marked wrong for a black person and correct for a white person. Frankly, there is nothing that could convince me that the Republicans wouldn't try to repeat the same thing if given the opportunity.

You think at the time they openly said they were trying to take the vote from black people? Or did they say exactly what you're saying now, that they were simply trying to ensure that only smart and educated people could vote.

Your argument is valid, but isn't it clear that the status quo can't continue? Close to half of US voters decided it is OK to ignore climate change. Is it possible to educate them?

Why would this be a good thing?

Keep in mind that the word "dumb" gets thrown around in all sorts of situations and has no objective, easily-verifiable test for "dumbness". It's entirely plausible that merely "making a decision I disagree with" could be construed as "dumb". Imagine if, say, Biden and Fauci had decided to disenfranchise anyone who refused the COVID vaccine as "dumb", or, worse, Trump and RFK decided that taking those vaccines made you "dumb". See how easily this can be abused?

Even with that aside, the natural consequence of disenfranchising "dumb" people is that you want to fuck them over somehow. No thanks.

It's incredibly naive to think that a tool like poll tests will only be used in the narrow way you personally would like them to be used.

No matter what kind of voter you particularly would like to target, the people administering the poll tests will (ab)use them to disenfranchise whomever they please.

Even if you believe the people in power who administer your elections would do this the "right" way, if you give them power, then the next people who come along -- who you may not agree with -- will also have that power.

Uhhhhhh you do know that even the fairest test for "dumbness" would do exactly the same thing as before, right?

I suspect that any configurable or discretionary barrier to voting will be used to disenfranchise voters unfairly, at least some times in some places. As it is, I'm aware of an age requirement (18 years) and a criminal status requirement (not a felon, sometimes just not incarcerated).

A literacy/civics/logic/knowledge/etc. requirement would at best discriminate against people who are uninformed, unintelligent, uneducated, unable or unwilling to take a written test, etc. But they are people whom the laws affect and who should be able to vote. I don't think that they are a comparable category to the exceptions mentioned above, but that's debatable.

Most importantly, the test would be optimized to exclude whoever the test designers and proctors consider, knowingly or not, unworthy.

I understand the desire to exclude the dummies. I know thoughtful and educated people who espouse the same wish, but it's just too dangerous.

If you've seen some of the kinds of poll tests that were administered, especially during the Jim Crow era, you'd change your tune. These tests can very easily be structured to be ambiguous, and can be graded in such a way to disqualify whatever groups of people you want.

Right but now you can have ways to remove bias. Like automated assignment and grading

creating unbiased tests is a really difficult thing to do even when trying really hard, and whatever tests we have for voting would absolutely get used to disenfranchise certain groups of people. just look at how bad gerrymandering is despite being explicitly illegal

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