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

Leaving aside the topics of authenticity and the questions' historical context, it's interesting that the article claims that "most" of the questions are impossible, while >80% have a single clear interpretation. For example, "draw a line under the last word in this line."

Yeah? Which word do you draw the line under?

Is there a word trick here I'm missing? I can only interpret it in the face-value sense of underlining the last word, "line".

Sorry, no votes for you; it was "word".

No, wait, you needed to underline every occurrence of the word "line".

Again, no idea if this test is real, just, that's the gimmick.

> Sorry, no votes for you; it was "word".

If it was this, there would be quotes around "word".

> No, wait, you needed to underline every occurrence of the word "line".

If it was this, it wouldn't say "last".

This particular one is not ambiguous.

That's not the point. The test giver has free discretion to say either answer is correct or incorrect. You could argue that if the intent was to underline "word" that it would have quotes around it, but it doesn't matter because the test is not supposed to be fair or consistent.

Things like this were at the heart of what Jim Crow was in America. Selective and capricious enforcement of the law to disenfranchise and disadvantage black people at best, enable unaccountable violence against them at the worst.

That's a different argument than what started this thread. Cheating administrators have nothing to do with whether that question is ambiguous or not.

It's not cheating administrators, it's ambiguous questions with multiple possible answers.

As the judge of this test, I interpret your answer as incorrect. I expected the phrase, "the last word in this line" to be underlined. Test failed, no cheating required.

(Note that had you underlined the phrase, "the last word in this line", I would have still judged it incorrect, claiming that "word" or "line" should be underlined. Again, this requires no cheating.)

>As the judge of this test, I interpret your answer as incorrect.

This makes you a cheating administrator in this hypothetical,

>I expected the phrase, "the last word in this line" to be underlined.

... because this expectation is not valid.

Quotation marks are not merely needed to make the question "unambiguous"; they are needed to make your interpretation possible.