Learn to be a Louisiana voter....

[Kit-Ginevra]

Congratulations!Your time machine has worked and you have landed in Louisiana in 1964.There's a presidential election coming up and you'd like to vote,so you get down to register.As a critter from the future,you haven't got any proof of your education,so you'll need to take a quick literacy test when you register.

You have ten minutes.Your time begins now

How did you do?

[mjr]

It would be nice if they actually gave the answers.

Some of them are worded in a somewhat tricky way. Like, there's a difference in "draw a line around" and "Circle".

I'm not even sure some of us "modern" folk could pass it.

That test is VERY easy to fail.

[Nunavut Pants]

The point is that many or most of the answers are subjective. And the people "grading" the tests were basically all white, and most or all of them were pretty invested in making sure that the "wrong sort of people" (read: people with more skin pigmentation) never voted.

[Deserted]

That sorta goes without saying.

I managed to do it in less than 10 minutes -- aside from the drawing bits -- but I'm not under the gun, so to speak; very much a low-stress situation here... and I also tend to do well at this sort of nonsense test anyway.

It's obvious that some of the questions were designed to be absolutely impossible to answer if you're poorly-educated. I bet most white residents of the US back then would've failed, not just the non-whites.

[EricKei]

Just a fair warning -- Take care where y'all run with this one, guys. We're monitoring the thread.

[mjr]

The point is that many or most of the answers are subjective. And the people "grading" the tests were basically all white, and most or all of them were pretty invested in making sure that the "wrong sort of people" (read: people with more skin pigmentation) never voted.

That's valid. But I agree with both you and Deserted. Next to impossible to pass, because most of the answers are subjective. Though I'd say that education level has little to do with it for certain questions. Like the two phrases I noted earlier. What does "draw a line around" mean? You can't circle it, that's wrong. You can't underline, that's wrong, too. And obviously you wouldn't be able to ask for help...

[Ben_Who]

It would be nice if they actually gave the answers.

Some of them are worded in a somewhat tricky way. Like, there's a difference in "draw a line around" and "Circle".

I'm not even sure some of us "modern" folk could pass it.

That test is VERY easy to fail.

Don't assume the test was applied equally to all people with a low level of education, either. The article says the test was applied disproportionately, implying that the registrar had broad leeway in saying who could and couldn't vote.

[Nunavut Pants]

Exactly--the whole point was so that whoever was giving the test could mark many of the questions wrong no matter what the test taker answered. So they could basically pick and choose exactly who they wanted to vote. And those just happened to be.......

[wolfie]

Just like the Grandfather Clause. Ever heard of something being "grandfathered" under the old rules when the rules change? That term has its origins in an exemption from education/literacy tests to be allowed to vote if the prospective voter's grandfather was eligible to vote in the election of 1860 (last presidential election before the Civil War).

Of course, how would someone prove that? The son of two mulattoes, who only had one grandfather (both grandmothers were raped by their owner) - nope, you don't qualify. Someone less than a year off the boat from Scotland (grandfathers were not resident in the U.S. in 1860, and therefore not eligible to vote in the election) - here's your ballot, sir. The registrars would assume that any white person's grandfather was eligible, and no black person's grandfather was eligible.