The trouble is that barriers to voting will always be manipulated by the people in charge to exclude specific people. In the case of the USA, they are used by far right mouth breathers to exclude their neighbors on the basis of the color of their skin.
We see it with ID laws already, but imagine if the Republicans could write exam questions to select who is patriotic enough to vote. They would include questions like “Name the Confederate hero who selflessly defended his state from Northern aggression” or “Which Nascar team has the fastest pit time?” or “Under penalty of perjury, write down the names of all the illegal immigrants you know of residing in your community.”
That’s why literacy tests for voting were ruled unconstitutional.
The trouble is that barriers to voting will always be manipulated by the people in charge to exclude specific people.
That’s just a statement and not necessarily true just because you say so.
Anyway, such a test would obviously not be about Nascar or illegal immigrants, but rather the structure of the government and the content of the constitution, testing whether the testee understands their nation, its values, and the democratic principles it is founded on. I don’t buy the pseudo killer argument that the test would eventually and automatically be corrupted. Keep it on the subject matter, and as long as the constitution doesn’t change, the test doesn’t change meaningfully. Everything outside these topics is irrelevant to the test.
This isn’t a hypothetical. We had literacy tests in the USA and they were designed to discriminate against minorities and newly freed slaves. And we have current politicians in power passing ID requirements with the explicit intention of preventing minorities, immigrants, and people of lower socioeconomic status from voting.
My examples were hyperbolic, but the underlying phenomenon already happens every single day. How many districts are gereymandered? How many polling places have been closed to limit voting in specific areas? Disenfranchisement is already part of the battle, and we the people are not winning it at the moment.
testing whether the testee understands their nation, its values, and the democratic principles it is founded on
It seems like you only want people with certain “values” to be able to vote. What even are a nation’s “values” anyway? Most of the time I hear that it’s just vague nationalist propaganda about how our nation and our people are wonderful. I will admit that’s a bit of a specific nitpick though.
As for “the structure of government and the content of the constitution”, I honestly don’t think the details of how laws are passed or how many seats are in congress, etc, matter much when it comes to deciding which policies you support and which party you’ll vote for.
By their very nature, laws like this exclude people who are less educated and have less free time and/or motivation to study for your test. These are almost always going to be also the most disadvantaged and poorly treated people in society.
The trouble is that barriers to voting will always be manipulated by the people in charge to exclude specific people. In the case of the USA, they are used by far right mouth breathers to exclude their neighbors on the basis of the color of their skin.
We see it with ID laws already, but imagine if the Republicans could write exam questions to select who is patriotic enough to vote. They would include questions like “Name the Confederate hero who selflessly defended his state from Northern aggression” or “Which Nascar team has the fastest pit time?” or “Under penalty of perjury, write down the names of all the illegal immigrants you know of residing in your community.”
That’s why literacy tests for voting were ruled unconstitutional.
That’s just a statement and not necessarily true just because you say so.
Anyway, such a test would obviously not be about Nascar or illegal immigrants, but rather the structure of the government and the content of the constitution, testing whether the testee understands their nation, its values, and the democratic principles it is founded on. I don’t buy the pseudo killer argument that the test would eventually and automatically be corrupted. Keep it on the subject matter, and as long as the constitution doesn’t change, the test doesn’t change meaningfully. Everything outside these topics is irrelevant to the test.
This isn’t a hypothetical. We had literacy tests in the USA and they were designed to discriminate against minorities and newly freed slaves. And we have current politicians in power passing ID requirements with the explicit intention of preventing minorities, immigrants, and people of lower socioeconomic status from voting.
My examples were hyperbolic, but the underlying phenomenon already happens every single day. How many districts are gereymandered? How many polling places have been closed to limit voting in specific areas? Disenfranchisement is already part of the battle, and we the people are not winning it at the moment.
It seems like you only want people with certain “values” to be able to vote. What even are a nation’s “values” anyway? Most of the time I hear that it’s just vague nationalist propaganda about how our nation and our people are wonderful. I will admit that’s a bit of a specific nitpick though.
As for “the structure of government and the content of the constitution”, I honestly don’t think the details of how laws are passed or how many seats are in congress, etc, matter much when it comes to deciding which policies you support and which party you’ll vote for.
By their very nature, laws like this exclude people who are less educated and have less free time and/or motivation to study for your test. These are almost always going to be also the most disadvantaged and poorly treated people in society.