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Can you pass an old voting literacy test?

Travis said:
Give it a shot. I know I was pretty well stumped by some of them.
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Can't made head-nor-tail of the first question. Most of the rest seem pretty easy, although some appear to be (!) deliberately ambiguous, e.g. #7 - I wonder how many were caught out by the "wrong" sort or size of "cross." It's also notable that some questions are "draw a line under..." while others are "circle..." or "draw a line through..."
 
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No, but I chuckled as I watched Oprah answer question after question in that crappy movie. Very realistice.
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
I wonder how many of the graders could have scored that without a cheat sheet?
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I am pretty sure that no cheat sheet could have helped because I suspect there was no answer key. The "grader" would simply point at the response to more difficult or ambiguous question and say "that's not the right answer, therefore you fail." If an applicant did have the temerity to ask what the correct answer was, he would be told that it is against the rules to provide correct answers to applicants who failed.

ETA
On second thought, failing people was even easier than I described. Given that few rural black residents of Mississippi would own a watch, the test administrator would simply wait until six or seven minutes had passed and say, "Time's up. You didn't finish, so you fail." With that approach, the test administrator himself could be illiterate.
 
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Ladewig said:
I am pretty sure that no cheat sheet could have helped because I suspect there was no answer key. The "grader" would simply point at the response to more difficult or ambiguous question and say "that's not the right answer, therefore you fail." If an applicant did have the temerity to ask what the correct answer was, he would be told that it is against the rules to provide correct answers to applicants who failed.

ETA
On second thought, failing people was even easier than I described. Given that few rural black residents of Mississippi would own a watch, the test administrator would simply wait until six or seven minutes had passed and say, "Time's up. You didn't finish, so you fail." With that approach, the test administrator himself could be illiterate.
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Still begs the question "were the 'graders' any better educated"?
 
Upchurch said:
​

That is the only one I simply can't parse. What does that damn comma mean?

  1. Write this backwards: forwards
  2. Write this forwards: backwards

:confused:

I'm inclined to think it's the second one.
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It's intentionally designed so you can mark it wrong regardless of what is answered, depending on melanin.
 
Upchurch said:
​

That is the only one I simply can't parse. What does that damn comma mean?

  1. Write this backwards: forwards
  2. Write this forwards: backwards

:confused:

I'm inclined to think it's the second one.
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I think it is which ever isn't the one the black person wrote.
 
There's an XKCD for that.



The fifth panel also applies to postmodernists.


Obviously it is slightly different, but it sums it up.
 
Upchurch said:
​

That is the only one I simply can't parse. What does that damn comma mean?

  1. Write this backwards: forwards
  2. Write this forwards: backwards

:confused:

I'm inclined to think it's the second one.
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That's the thing. Both interpretations are possible. The thing is completely ambiguous, and you can make a semi-sensible, irrefutable explanation for each of the two possible answers to be the only correct answer. The grader can freely chose to either accept or refute any of the two possible answers, with an explanation.

ETA: In fact, I think there's one explanation that fits both ways: English, ************, do you speak it?
 
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Upchurch said:
​

That is the only one I simply can't parse. What does that damn comma mean?

  1. Write this backwards: forwards
  2. Write this forwards: backwards

:confused:

I'm inclined to think it's the second one.
Click to expand...

I think it is a double command:

Write "backwards", "forwards". Or sad the long way:
Below write the words "backwards" , "forwards".

So you end up writing the two words exactly as listed.
 
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