Voting literacy tests often served as an excuse to intimidate blacks at the polls, and they are certainly objectionable if discriminatorily applied. Yet I see nothing wrong with such tests in principle. If someone is going to participate, albeit in a humble way, in the great affairs of state, ought he at the very least to be able to read? And how about a math test while we're at it?The problem, in principle, is that such tests give the state the power to decide whether people are “fit” to be full citizens and to exclude them from the democratic process if they fail to come up to government standards.
In practise, this would result in the creation of a disenfranchised underclass: unable to give voice to their aspirations through the ballot box, excluded from political discourse and set apart from the rest of American society. If these people had no right to vote, who would protect their civil liberties? They would be forced to depend for protection on the enlightened paternalism of their rulers.
But why stop at literacy and math tests? Why not make the right to vote dependent on demonstrating a thorough understanding of the American constitution, economic theory and the major issues in foreign affairs? Better still, why don’t we just pick the most intelligent politically informed person in the country and give them the vote? And I mean THE vote; no one else would have one.
The answer is because this would not be democracy it would be tyranny. The effective rule of law depends on the consent of the governed; government derives its legitimacy from the will of the people, not just the clever people or the people who can be “trusted with the franchise”.
Voting competency tests, if implemented, would deprive me of my vote. Not because I’m functionally illiterate or mathematically challenged but because I would refuse to participate in any testing program designed to disenfranchise my fellow citizens.
I’d like to think that there are a lot of Americans who feel the same way.
UPDATE
This item has been edited since it was originally posted. Following an e-mail from Aaron I’ve removed the word “permanently” from the phrase “permanently disenfranchised underclass” as I accept this may be an exaggeration. As Aaron points out: “If people really wish to vote, then presumably they can learn enough to pass the test.” I accept this but note that people do not always react to be being unfairly excluded by trying harder to become members of the group that excluded them. But that’s a whole other argument.
