This year secretaries of state, election officials, and others have, again, tried a variety of methods to suppress the vote: purging rolls of eligible voters, closing and relocating polling places, enforcing restrictive voter ID laws but closing DMV offices to make getting an ID more difficult, and limiting or abolishing early voting. Given the obstacles thrown in voters’ paths in Georgia, North Dakota, Kansas, Iowa, Texas, and other red states, can literacy tests be far behind?
As a public service, I offer the following practice test to help you prepare should this crop up when you go to the polls on November 6th or in 2020. Here’s what you do: for each item below, choose the answer OR answers most likely to help you gain entrance to a voting booth if your eligibility at the polls is questioned. Be aware, however, that the correct answers usually aren’t the “right” answers.
1. Climate change refers to
a. turning the A/C up or down
b. a left-wing conspiracy
c. funds required to pay a teensy-weensy electric bill
d. a man-made problem leading to more intense storms and rising sea levels
2. Compromise requires
a. cooperation
b. collaboration
c. conciliation
d. capitulation
3. Money is
a. capital
b. speech
c. the root of all evil
d. a Pink Floyd hit
4. Rocks are
a. stones with edges
b. defeated by paper but not scissors
c. what Bill Haley does around the clock
d. bullets
5. A witch hunt involves
a. toil and trouble
b. detecting and following broom exhaust
c. trumped-up charges
d. a charged-up trump
6. Collusion is
a. an accident that occurs while making a U-turn
b. a magic act requiring two magicians
c. an illegal conspiracy
d. a distraction dreamt up by President Obama and the FBI
7. Enemies of the people include
a. cancer and heart disease
b. Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin
c. white supremacists and mass-murderers
d. journalists and news organizations
8. Protest is
a. free speech
b. performed by paid protesters
c. embarrassing and should be illegal
d. justification for body-slamming, using a car as a weapon, and mailing pipe bombs
9. Refugees are typically
a. terrorists
b. rapists and drug dealers
c. gang-bangers
d. poor people — including women, children, and the elderly — who often travel on foot hundreds of miles to escape violence, starvation, poverty, and persecution
10. Human rights are
a. an unnecessary inconvenience
b. applicable only once we’ve distinguished the more human from the less human
c. irrelevant to international discussions about trade, arms sales, and political opposition.
d. moral principles that define and guide the treatment of all human beings
11. Truth is
a. veritas
b. what shall set you free
c. fluid and subject to change
d. whatever dt says it is
12. Sending troops to the border a week before the election is
a. political theater
b. fiscally irresponsible
c. essential in order to secure the homeland from the threat of women and children hundreds of miles away in southern Mexico
d. a way to help Idaho’s elementary teachers sleep better
13. “Fake news” includes
a. any negative reporting about dt or his administration
b. alternative facts
c. propaganda
d. Sarah Sanders’s announcements at press briefings
14. The Constitution states
a. fundamental rights granted to all citizens of this country
b. that “We the People of the United States… do ordain and establish” it
c. that “Treason against the United States, shall consist… in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”
d. loose guidelines subject to change depending on the president’s whims
15. “Great” is
a. part of Dr. Emmett Brown’s favorite saying in Back to the Future
b. a common description of the crowd on the National Mall for the January 2017 inauguration
c. Tony the Tiger’s adjective
d. what America will be when political asylum, birthright citizenship, affirmative action, legal abortion, government use of the term “climate change,” the Endangered Species Act, the Department of Education, Social Security, an unobstructed view across the Rio Grande, public access to national parks and monuments, and the Mueller investigation are all discontinued or abolished
Your answers will vary depending on your adherence to and ability to distinguish facts from lies. However, making this distinction may not improve your access to a ballot and voting booth in future elections unless things change. Before the clocks are turned back even further, make time to VOTE!
