Take the Impossible “Literacy” Test Louisiana Gave Black Voters in the 1960s

Slate ^ | June 28, 2013

[rlmorel]

LOL...I had to assume they made the question the way they did specifically to see if you could find the easy way to solve it, but...I am in Massachusetts, and odds are the test was “designed and administered by liberals” as noted above...:)

[autumnraine]

Well, to be truthful, many sharecroppers (whites included) didn’t have much of an education either and it would have difficult for grandmother to do some of the more complicated questions near the bottom.

But that’s the point, it’s a LITERACY test. Not a ALL WHITE PEOPLE ARE BORN KNOWING THIS test.

It was disproportionate because white children (and this is 1964, but many older adults would have been born in the 10’s and 20’s) had a better opportunity to go to school.

Sadly, while I don’t think you should vote if you can’t even read the news or inform yourself, it did affect blacks moreso than whites.

[autumnraine]

I agree.

[FXRP]

sdarwrof

What do I win?

Seriously though, a few of the ones near the end were ridiculous and numerous enough to cause almost everyone to make at least one error. All we have to do is look at the number of typos in this forum to understand the difficulty of the test.

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

here is the question you couldn't see. "30. Draw five circles that one common inter-locking part."

it looks like the word "have" is left out. I didn't know that hyphenating interlocking was the literate way of writing that word.

[kabumpo]

Didn’t call you a snide name - mistook your name.
No ox to be gored - don’t believe in castrating animals - so your supposition is wrong.

[bmwcyle]

This is too hard for Democrats today.

[af_vet_rr]

And you know this how?

Are you really arguing that Democrats didn't try to keep blacks from voting? If you have evidence that they weren't, then maybe you should present it to the rest of the country, because the Voting Rights Act, among other things, was specifically created to address Democrats oppressing Black voters.

[af_vet_rr]

Anyway, your probably right, it still won't stop dead people from voting.

What you really want is a math test, or perhaps a memory test, because apparently a lot of folks forget that they can only vote once.

[a fool in paradise]

"Which party currently controls the Senate?"

"How many zeros are there in a trillion?"

[a fool in paradise]

What difference does it matter at this time anyway?

The Democrats will thwart ballot language when an initiative gets on the ballot that they don’t like where you vote NO to approve something or YES to end it.

Also, here in Texas there are ballots in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, English, and possibly other languages. LAWS are only written in one language (English) with certain Latin legal terms borrowed. The specific language of a law means something that is debated by judges when the law is considered. When the voters vote on constitutional amendments that are written in four different languages, which one is the TRUE law? They don’t all say precisely the same thing.

There I said it.

[a fool in paradise]

Would this be a bad time to bring up that minorities are given a lower standard to pass to become firemen and policemen? Damn rigged tests.

Double standards still exist but the discrimination goes the other way now.

[a fool in paradise]

Seeing as how valid ballots were tossed out and invalid ballots were tallied to give Al Franken a “victory” by judicial decree (and Obama a 60 seat Senate majority to ram through Obamacare), no handwritten ballot will ever mean a thing to a crooked judge.

[Diamond]

I think the test is stupid, the concept is stupid, and requiring someone to pass the test in order to vote is stupid, but let’s not get our expectations too high. What did we expect? It was a test designed and administered by liberals.

We are in 100% agreement on that.

But the test is not impossible unless you are required to get every answer correct, and then it wouldn’t be impossible, just very hard.

I would disagree with you that question 27 is a completely solvable word puzzle because the lack of punctuation in the question leads to the logical dilemma that each of the following answers could be "correct", when there is supposed to be only one correct answer:
"right"
"right from the left to the right"
"right from the left to the right as you see it spelled here"

And question 30 lacks a necessary verb. Is one supposed to correctly guess the missing verb?

[Chickensoup]

That test was unfair and requires more than a fifth grade education to perform all correctly. There were some seriously bad people back then trying to stop voting rights.

I always thought that a better voting test would be the 1960s citizenship requirements for naturalization.

[SamAdams76]

Personally, I found the test to be very annoying.

[rlmorel]

Heh, I see this as dancing on the head of so many pins...bottom line, this test was put in place by liberal Democrats to prevent black people from voting. It was wrong and likely effective towards their ends.

Salon (and other liberals) think conservatives are taking the country back there.

That is what I have an issue with, and it is especially galling because, as we all know, liberals are amongst the most vehement racists, if not for their outright racism, then for their “bigotry of low expectations”.

[Diamond]

Agreed. Well said.

[NCLaw441]

You know, there ought to be a law against such tests.

[D Rider]

What you really want is a math test, or perhaps a memory test, because apparently a lot of folks forget that they can only vote once.

Excellent point. Many politicians need a math test also,since they can't budget per $hit. And especially poll workers need a math test, since they have to keep recounting and recounting till they get the correct outcome.