Voter Literacy Test

Last week, the Supreme Court offered their opinions on several important cases.  While the Defense of Marriage Act and California's Proposition 8 were voted down, the 1965 Voting Rights Act took a shocking hit.  Slate blogger, Rebecca Onion, published an interesting article in response to that decision.

First let's get some background.  After the Civil War, the former slaves were named citizens of this country.  With that citizenship, comes the right to vote (if you were male).  In order to get around that, the white population came up with interesting methods to prevent the black population from voting in elections.  Since most of the former slaves were poor, they instituted a poll tax.  Since many of the new citizens couldn't read, they created citizenship or literacy tests.  These methods disenfranchised many citizens of their constitutional right to vote.  Also, this was most likely to happen in the South.

Part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act looked more closely at the states and counties that had used these methods in the past.  If Alabama wanted to change an election law, they required pre-approval from the Department of Justice.  Alabama didn't like that and took their case to the Supreme Court and won.  Essentially, the Court said that states and counties should not be punished today for their historical crimes.  I would agree with that in principle, except that almost every state affected immediately came out to say how they were going to change their voting procedures.  And most of those changes disproportionately affect blacks, hispanics, and poor people.  Things really haven't changed as much as they think it has.

Anyway, back to the Slate article which takes us back to Louisiana before 1965.  She provided a full example of the Literacy Test that everyone had to take before they could vote.  It is 30 tricky questions completed in 10 minutes, and you must get a 100.  I went to one of the best colleges in the country, but I had to read some of the questions two or three times to understand what they were asking.  If you made one mistake, determined by the white election official, then you were not allowed to vote.

I present to you, the first page of the test.  If you follow this link, then you can take a look at the rest of the questions.  Good luck, you're going to need it.  Maybe we all need it.