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

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319 points rcarmo | 1 comments | 21 Oct 24 21:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.203s | source
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nneonneo ◴[21 Oct 24 23:35 UTC] No.41909665[source]▶
Note: there are questions about this test's authenticity. Per a note on https://www.crmvet.org/info/la-test.htm:

> [NOTE: At one time we also displayed a "brain-twister" type literacy test with questions like "Spell backwards, forwards" that may (or may not) have been used during the summer of 1964 in Tangipahoa Parish (and possibly elsewhere) in Louisiana. We removed it because we could not corroborate its authenticity, and in any case it was not representative of the Louisiana tests in broad use during the 1950s and '60s.]

Each parish in Louisiana implemented their own literacy tests, which means that there wasn't really much uniformity in the process. Another (maybe more typical) test: https://www.crmvet.org/info/la-littest2.pdf

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InvaderFizz[dead post] ◴[21 Oct 24 23:44 UTC] No.41909723[source]▶
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VariousPrograms ◴[22 Oct 24 00:17 UTC] No.41909921[source]▶
It's definitely not reasonable. You shouldn't lose your right to vote because you don't know which office of government pays USPS mail carriers or the term length of US judges. There are lots of likely-disqualifiers mixed in with the gimmes like "Who is the first president?".
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1. roenxi ◴[23 Oct 24 06:02 UTC] No.41922249[source]▶
> You shouldn't lose your right to vote because you don't know which office of government pays USPS mail carriers or the term length of US judges.

That isn't actually all that clear cut. I'd agree that it is probably a bad idea, but there is potential that the results would be better if voters understood the system that they were delivering instructions into.