A near impossible literacy test Louisiana used to suppress the black vote

It's not possible. Several of the questions have multiple valid answers. It's pretty obvious what the scheme is.

That comment is a reflection of my pedantry and I don't think we're actually disagreeing.

It's not possible to know the right answers because there never were any. This means the test has no predictive power, not that it's impossible, and again, since some Whites unable to prove education did have to contend with this, it was designed that way intentionally.

I feel "near impossible literacy test" is a terrible description. The "intentionally ambiguous literacy test" would be more apt.

More worrying is I am unable to find a definitive provenance for this document. It suggests it was used in the early 1900s but the print quality and format seems unusual in several ways to me. Which is why I attempted to reduce it in favor of considering the rest of the system.

Which question(s)? They all seem to have single answers to me.

That being said, I would expect to fail this test.

eg...

> 28. Divide a vertical line in two equal parts by bisecting it with a curved horizontal line that is only straight at its spot bisection of the vertical.

I have no idea what a curved horizontal line is. A horizontal line is parallel to the X axis of the XY plane and has no curvature.

The reason that it is impossible is that there is no possible set of answers that would require the test-giver to acknowledge that a test-taker passed the test. Anyone the test-taker does not like can be failed.

That's the point. Have you never applied for any sort of license or permit or anything that the government agency really doesn't want to hand out? They're all structured and written this way.

"Impossible" is apt, because it is not possible to answer all the questions on the test in an unambiguously, objectively correct manner.

"Impossible" also refers to how the test administrators used it: in order to make voter registration impossible for some people.

> That comment is a reflection of my pedantry

Stop with this sort of thing, please. It's just noise, and doesn't add to the discussion.

Cite an example? This claim seems extraordinary, since people will sue over almost any process any local, state, or federal government creates.

Prior to the ruling in NYSRPA v. Bruen putting a stop to the practice the LTC application processes in the less permissive towns in Massachusetts were well known to have forms of this sort in addition to the basic state form as well as undocumented "soft requirements" and "nice to haves". In Boston proper you basically had to write an essay, or maybe that was Cambridge, I forget.

"Paris in the spring" is the one I fixated on, but lots of other examples downthread.

"Spell backwards, forwards"

Both "backwards" and "forwards" could be correctly interpreted as the adverb in this one. It could be asking you to "Spell the word backwards, in a forwards manner" or "Spell in a backwards manner, the word forwards".

It's ambiguous enough that someone grading the test who wanted the disqualify you could make the case you got it wrong, no matter if you wrote "backwards" or "sdrawrof".

The first question I see is:

1. Draw a line around the number or letter of this sentence.

I have no idea what "the number of this sentence" or "the letter of this sentence" even means.

You need to draw a line around the "1." part

Number OR Letter, and it never specifies which one. It doesn't say first or last, or anything.

It's debatable whether "1." is part of the sentence (and thus should be left alone). We wouldn't consider a non-alphanumeric bullet point to be part of a sentence.

Regardless of which you chose, if the examiner wished to disqualify you, they could simply say it's the opposite.

Heheh, no voting for you!

It's "Paris in the the spring", with two the's!

No one says it's a part of the sentence. It's a number of the sentence, as in "this is the sentence number one".

"1" is the number of the sentence, not a number in the sentence. As in "this is the sentence number one".

I don't claim this test is useful, but as a matter of fact the first question is not hard.

Meanwhile I'm wondering what 'draw a line around' something means, when they use circle in other parts. If they meant circle, they'd have said circle, no?

That is wrong and you have failed the test. If you include the . you have clearly misunderstood the question. It did not indicate to draw a line around the number or letter and dot. Since you included the dot we will fail you. We are aware the question did not indicate the dot or not and it doesn’t matter. You failed, bye!

I don't argue that it's impossible for the examiner to screw you on the commas — that's always a possibility with an open-ended question. And yet this doesn't make all open-ended questions bad, it just makes then inappropriate for a situation with an adversarial interviewer (which I do agree include the voting process).

However I argue that the question by itself is fine: it is well defined and has only one reasonable answer. No one presented any other sensible answer so far.

Good luck drawing a line around anything except a point at infinity.

I thought the "number or letter" in that sentence is the "a" in "Draw a line".

It isn’t a literacy test, it’s a non-Euclidean geometry test!

Looking at the test from a purely analytical perspective, I only found one that had several correct solutions, the one with the numbers in the circles that directs it he subject to draw a line passing under and over different elements.

I’d be interested to know which ones you saw as ambiguous?

FWIW the test is obviously mostly about tricking the test taker, and not that much about literacy. Along with one question that seems possibly designed to filter out people with a non-Christian interpretation of the cross as a geometric figure.

This test is a caricature of the type of test mentioned in the post above yours, but yes, on many federal tests I have taken, there are a lot of questions that are intentionally tricky or have no correct answers, only less wrong ones.

Most notably, pilot examinations for aviation and maritime certifications.

I think they use these types of questions to exclude rule memorisation and test the ability to reason about the intention or relevant effects of rules and principles of the art involved.

It seems like the intention is also to penalise the inability to reason about ambiguous situations, ensure that the subject can effectively divide attention (if you spend too much time focusing on these ambiguous situations trying to find a nonexistent perfect answer you will fail the test), and to filter out low cognitive ability in general.

I’m not a test design expert, however, so ymmv.

“Spell backwards, forwards.”

Here we have a subjective determination of objectivity.

"Write right from the left to the right as you see it spelled here"

Could be answered with:

right

right from the left to the right

right from the left to the right as you see it spelled here

Clearly racists are just living in non-euclidean space.

Correct. This is how tests work most of the time in real life (open-ended, subjective) and attempts to fully remove ambiguity are often harmful.

My problem with the whole discussion here is that I actually fail to come up with an ambiguous answer to this question that I subjectively find reasonable. Can you positivity contribute by providing an alternative interpretation that you personally would find more plausible? Otherwise complains about subjectively are hollow. Everything is subjective but it only matters in cases people actually disagree.