Could we bring back voter literacy tests?

[arandomuser]

After seeing a report that the largest pro trump facebook page, was not run by american nationalist who as their page suggested " love america" but instead were ukranians with a pro russia agenda (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/th...ing-2019-09-23) Huh weird ukraine has also been in the news lately... and yet millions of americans were easily fooled by this disinformation campaign much like they were by russias in 2016, i've came to the conclusion we need to bring back a form of literacy tests for voting.

Now the literacy tests of old had clear racist intent, but i feel like we've came along enough in equal opportunity of education that voters can be asked simple questions learned in high school civics class. And clearly even republicans could get aboard with this, they support voter ID laws, and clearly this is just a step above that in trying to maintain our elections integrity, in fact i think most opposition to this might even come from progressives,
but i feel like with how easy disinformation is with twitter/youtube/facebook if we want to preserve democracy ( obviously democracy is used in an abstract sense to describe our republic) and people participating in it need to be knowledgable of what they are doing and the implications of their vote.

[Kaleredar]

No. Efforts need to be put into large-scale takedowns of these foreign sources while educating people about the dangers of misinformation.

There should be billboards, TV commercials, radio ads, banner ads, you name it, all pointing out what misinformation looks like and what kind of information is suspect. The "random unsourced facebook infographic/meme" posts should have been pointed out as garbage and died out long ago. But people attack the message, giving it legitimacy and inviting argument, instead of its dubious source, which would destroy it outright.

Pending that, efforts should be directed into reversing gerrymandering and updating election equipment to be more secure.

[Xeones]

I mean it would be cool if to run for president you had to prove you knew how to read, since it's obvious Trump would fail.

But I don't think this is the answer. Any time you want to "solve a problem" you need to judge who can be hurt by your solution. And honestly most americans would prove uneducated in regards to the questions you're suggesting and I have no clue which political leaning would be hurt more by it.

[Raqubor]

I mean it would be cool if to run for president you had to prove you knew how to read, since it's obvious Trump would fail.

But I don't think this is the answer. Any time you want to "solve a problem" you need to judge who can be hurt by your solution. And honestly most americans would prove uneducated in regards to the questions you're suggesting and I have no clue which political leaning would be hurt more by it.

Dumbos shouldn't vote.

[arandomuser]

I mean it would be cool if to run for president you had to prove you knew how to read, since it's obvious Trump would fail.

But I don't think this is the answer. Any time you want to "solve a problem" you need to judge who can be hurt by your solution. And honestly most americans would prove uneducated in regards to the questions you're suggesting and I have no clue which political leaning would be hurt more by it.

both extremes would probably be hurt, people that have very strong ideological bents that lend on the irrational. Most highly educated and political insiders fall in a neoliberal direction, whether it's center right or center left, the average voter is highly emotion driven, and this will make it so the voters who participate will be much less emotionally driven focus more on the actual policy implications of their vote, because in order to vote they'd need to understand how government actually functions.

[Monster Hunter]

After seeing a report that the largest pro trump facebook page, was not run by american nationalist who as their page suggested " love america" but instead were ukranians with a pro russia agenda (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/th...ing-2019-09-23) Huh weird ukraine has also been in the news lately... and yet millions of americans were easily fooled by this disinformation campaign much like they were by russias in 2016, i've came to the conclusion we need to bring back a form of literacy tests for voting.

Now the literacy tests of old had clear racist intent, but i feel like we've came along enough in equal opportunity of education that voters can be asked simple questions learned in high school civics class. And clearly even republicans could get aboard with this, they support voter ID laws, and clearly this is just a step above that in trying to maintain our elections integrity, in fact i think most opposition to this might even come from progressives,
but i feel like with how easy disinformation is with twitter/youtube/facebook if we want to preserve democracy ( obviously democracy is used in an abstract sense to describe our republic) and people participating in it need to be knowledgable of what they are doing and the implications of their vote.

The solution to losing an election isn't to attempt to limit voter demographics that tended to vote against you, such a notion is so draconic that im suprised I need to say it.

You win elections by targeting the majority demographics and swinging there vote, if your campaign isn't good enough to stand up to a misinformation campaign which is nothing new to democracy then that's your own fault.

[Wyrt]

No, the solution isn't to disenfranchise people.

We need better regulations on what can be called news. Also forcing network news stations to separate their opinion shows and news shows onto separate channels with different names.

[Howel]

Same answer as always, no. Simple reason, democracy is the act of voting in people who represent your interests; which guess what, even illiterate people have interests that needs protecting and put forth; heck to some extent they need it more for that very reason.

[Machismo]

No, stupid people are still allowed to vote. Racist people are still allowed to vote. Homophobes are still allowed to vote. Authoritarians are still allowed to vote.

The solution is to publicly call those people out for being those things, and voting for shitty candidates. Naming and shaming is exactly what free speech is all about.

[Adam Jensen]

No.

Last time we had this, it was used specifically to target black people. Back in the day freed slaves had less literacy than white males. This was used as a cudgel against blacks. Tests were given out to black voters with questions deliberately designed to confuse and be vague.

Who's to say even now in the 21st century that it wouldn't be used again to disenfranchise minorities? I agree that stupid people should not vote, but literacy tests are a bad idea because they're easily abused. Instead, we should strive to make stupid people not stupid.

[Knolan]

Nope, one vote per adult.

Not being able to read does not mean you do not understand the problems you face and if you think one party is going to represent you, you should vote for them.

[Wyrt]

Nope, one vote per adult.

Not being able to read does not mean you do not understand the problems you face and if you think one party is going to represent you, you should vote for them.

I wish it was one vote per adult.

[rayvio]

sadly it doesn't matter what methods you use to force people to make an informed and sensible vote. unless there's actually a candidate who it would be sensible to vote for, all votes will be for the corrupt and untrustworthy simply because that's the only kind of people who can get into a position to be voted in

[Kujako]

No. More people should vote, not fewer.

[Rozz]

No
The ill-informed still pay taxes and suffer the same consequences as others. They deserve a right to vote, since they're also citizens of the nation.

[downnola]

If anything, it should be easier for people to vote, not harder. You're part of the problem if your answer to not getting your way politically is to suppress the vote.

[Felya]

Every person who suggests such a thing, assumes that the bar will be set beneath them. Never realizing the possibility of the bar being far higher than they think. As in... I’m pretty sure that most people who support this, would end up not meeting the criteria for voting.

There are two very important tenants that one must keep in mind when voting. Education and voting rights. As long as you have candidates supporting those, you should have the knowledge and ability to impact government. It’s why you should never vote for those attacking education or the ability to vote. Making the OP, a horrible idea...

[Thekri]

The idea of shrinking the suffrage has always been an appealing one to many people. The idea is that if you have fewer, but more informed voters, you get a better product overall. This makes sense in theory, as long as you have a diverse group of opinions, more informed decisions are good.

However, like most political theories, this fails really hard in practice. The problem is that someone is going to tweak the qualifications to ensure that their candidates win, so instead of a more informed opinion, you get a more partisan opinion. This already happens in districting, and we have seen all this before in voting rights laws prior in our history.

Like it or not, idiots are part of America. We can't legislate them into irrelevance, because ultimately those idiots are still people. So we should just focus on better education to reduce the number of idiots in the first place.

[Temp name]

Every adult of age gets to vote. Restricting that is a great way to not have a representative democracy

[Lynarii]

The solution to the OP's problem is to do more to protect the voting systems and process from outside interference. It should never be to attempt to take the right to vote away from a valid citizen of the country.

And even if you wanted to try and limit who can vote, any form of intelligence testing would be a TERRIBLE way to do it. Citizen vs Non-Citizen is about as clear a line as it's possible to make, and even then there are edge cases and messy situations that can muddy the waters a little bit. Intelligence is a very subjective measurement (you can give the same person a similar test 10 times and get 10 differing results depending on things like time of day, mood, specifics of questions, etc...) and you'd have to come up with a cutoff line that can stand up to scrutiny and be defended as something other than an arbitrary 'because I want it here'. And find some way to prevent the line from being used as a bludgeon to serve some people's needs while hurting others. Good luck with that, the reason such things were eliminated was BECAUSE they couldn't find a way to even pretend it wasn't being used as a weapon.


Edit: Ooh! I know how this could work. You could weight everyone's vote by their deviation from average (100) IQ. So if a person with a 150 IQ votes for you, they're smart so probably right, and you get 50 votes for that. But if someone with a 90 IQ votes for you, well they're probably wrong, so if they're voting for you you're probably a bad candidate and you lose 10 votes... Perfect system, nothing could possibly go wrong with it, we need it in place for 2020 stat. /s