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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.
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?
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.
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.
It’s not all lazy and slow-witted voters, the media presents the news as if we all had a degree in government. That’s apparently what they’ve put in as a filter but it only allows the worst of the bunch to fly by the seat of their pants, getting their vote from impressions and gut feelings.
Yeah it sounds fun unless you have any awareness of how this actually worked out when it was used in the past. Fully not okay.
You mean tests that were designed to ensure that only “the right people” were able to pass them. As well as a grandfather clause that exempted all of those right people (in modern times there would likely be a voter roll purge that would somehow lose most liberal voters while miraculously keeping all of the conservative ones).
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.
The most scientific method would be one that doesn’t rely on a singular entity to represent the majority. It is impossible to adequately represent the interests of all within a community through one singular political entity who has full authority to dictate law, especially in a stratified society of differing classes with diametrically oppositional interests. Due to the implicit biases of the individual holding power of authority, they will always choose what is in their best interests of their respective class, which intrinsically will be to the detriment of the oppositional class.
Instead, power of authority must be distributed horizontally, all parties of interest retain autonomy, representing themselves through a multi-tiered, federated structure where any political agreements come about through consensus of those involved.
They used to do that in the US during the Jim Crow era. It went predictably.
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.
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
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.
Okay buddy cryptofash rhetoric
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.
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.
Judging from the rest of this author’s work, I highly doubt they thought about this any deeper than a puddle.
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
What that actually looked like:
I did my best. Do I get to vote?
You do not get to vote. You drew a curve for question 12 when the instructions specified a line.
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.
Deleted
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.
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. :(
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
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)
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
It’s not supposed to be anything. There is no correct answer. The ambiguity is the point.
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.
And 13 is unclear if it’s strictly ‘more than’ or ‘more than or equal’
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.
I would always assume not more than or equal unless it says so
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.
I can help! So the first step is to be white, and then the second step is to do whatever you think seems right
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.
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
1 is a digit in the number below
0 is not one million
0 is below 1 million
Read my comment again.
I’d second this interpretation… least based on my interpretation of “cross out THE NUMBER”.
0 is a number.
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
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…
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.
Instructions unclear. Drew circle instead of line.
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.
@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.
Except the candidates would all be garbage anyways haha
Hahaha both sides, am I right. Ahahahahh
Shut the he fuck up and actually vote in primaries and we will have better candidates.
I vote in all the primaries you shut the fuck up you don’t know who you are talking to dude
The options in the primaries usually suck too or the people in power push out the ones the people actually like.
Candidates being all garbage is exactly what you’d expect when they’re just pawns for the people actually running the government (i.e. owners of big corporations).
Since they’re shit, they’re not popular and can’t achieve much on their own. When they’re not useful anymore they can be blamed and replaced by the next puppet.
Of course they’re also shit, exactly because they’re in the pocket of the very wealthy. In the US it seems even impossible to gain any significant position without their blessing.
Fuck no. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test
Between the 1850s and 1960s, literacy tests were used as an effective tool for disenfranchising African Americans in the Southern United States. Literacy tests were typically administered by white clerks who could pass or fail a person at their discretion based on race. Illiterate whites were often permitted to vote without taking these literacy tests because of grandfather clauses written into legislation.
The problem there is the administration of the tests, not the tests themselves.
you think the current racist rich people wouldn’t be racist and rich if we introduced an exam to the voting process?
I think the qualifying questions could be attached to the ballot and submitted anonymously.
Race should not be discernable … in theory.
The tests never explicitly directly measured race nor required the voters name. They can design the tests to discriminate all sorts of ways based on the content.
This is true. Whoever decides the questions and determines the correct answer holds a lot of power.
Aside from the existing deficit due to hundreds of years of systemic discrimination you mean?
Everyone affected by the policy decisions of the land should get to vote. No matter their race, literacy or political belief
Yes they should. But at the same time completely ignorant people should not. This is too big of a decision to leave up to disinterested and ill informed voters. I don’t care if you are left or right. blue or red.
If you don’t know the basics of how our government works you do not deserve to have a say. If you do not know the basics of what is happening in the country, then you do not deserve to vote.
ANYONE voting should be informed.
How we test for this? i have no idea. There can not be a simple education requirement or literacy test. There are plenty of uneducated people that are very up to date and informed on current politics. There are plenty of very educated people that don’t care about what’s going on and just vote by party.
But just because you have the right to an opinion does not mean your ignorant opinion is worth anything.
Yes they should. But at the same time completely ignorant people should not.
Jesus. You’re literally arguing for removing franchise from the majority of citizens. If they primarily reside in an area and will be affected by the policies, they should be able to vote on them, whether or not they’re ignorant.
The problem is that you can very, very quickly arrive at the conclusion that if someone just had enough knowledge, they’d vote like me, and strip the vote from everyone that doesn’t agree with you. Except that people can, and do, have different beliefs, even with the same knowledge.
I certainly trust The Party That’s In Charge At Any Given Time to subjectively come up with the criteria that objectively determines a voter’s ignorance level
A check to make sure they understand exactly what they are voting for seems sensible.
And that is a non-solvable problem.
We just need to make sure the voting machines are not racist. Solvable, if we’re starting from scratch.
The phrase “voting machine” is also a problem.
Only when accompanied by “paperless” or “closed source”
Nope. It’ll never work. Because when I walk into the voting booth, how do I KNOW FOR A VERIFIABLE FACT that this machine here in the booth with me is running the published software?
Computerized voting will always be a mistake.
Computerized voting will always be a mistake.
disagrees in brazilian voting machine noises
The machine produces a physical paper record you can read, it doesn’t matter what software it’s running if you can verify your vote is accurate.
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Even if you assumed the test successfully filtered out an educated voterbase, it would take all but five seconds for X party to cheat their exams, kind of like the “grandfather law” which essentially bypassed jim crow era literacy tests for everyone who was white.
Even if you assumed the test successfully filtered out an educated voterbase
“Educated” is already doing some heavy lifting. What education are you demanding voters possess?
Because I’ve had an earful about “Marxist Professors corrupting our youth!” for my entire life. I doubt conservatives would consider any kind of liberal exam a legitimate test of voting aptitude.
Meanwhile, there’s enough jingoism and nationalism in our education system already, such that I could see an exam question “Which religious extremist sect was responsible for 9/11? Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists” or “Is an individual with XY chromosomes a man or a woman?” that’s a bit… loaded? Especially when administered right before a national election.
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.
Ah yes, blamed the disenfranchised voters for not wanting to jump through another hoop. Its a big club, and, sorry, pal; even if you fill out the test, you ain’t in it.
