by Erica Frank

Voter registration drives are sweeping across the South. Tensions are running high: some people want everyone to have a voice in the government, and others want to restrict voting rights. Mississippi has recently gained thousands of new voters, and the conservative establishment in Louisiana is nervous.

Fighting Against Equality

Although this year has had several advances for civil rights and equality, not everyone is willing to share their freedom. Between the 24th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act, many formerly disenfranchised people now have the right to vote—and some communities are fighting back against that.

Louisiana's Tangipahoa Parish has decided the standard voting registration process is too easy. The parish fears that if it loses the ability to literally just refuse to allow black people to register, they might actually vote. The new test, which "may be given to anyone who cannot prove a fifth grade education," is guaranteed to block voting rights at the whim of the administrator.

The previous test was available across the state but administered selectively. Registration offices mostly required black citizens complete it, but it was occasionally used for some whites without much income or education. It involved a statement of identity and moral qualifications, followed by a short multiple-choice test.

The moral declaration involved criminal history (most misdemeanors disqualify a person from voting for five years) and personal life questions: "Common law" marriages or an illegitimate child were five-year disqualifiers. Women had to declare they had not given birth to an illegitimate child; men only needed to declare that they had not "acknowledged" themselves as the father of an illegitimate child.

The test asked questions about the Constitution and government, and covered facts like the required age of the President and the limits on Congressional powers to regulate commerce. It asked for details that Civics classes often cover, but that any adult might not recall readily.

Although it asks about some obscure facts, the test itself, and even the application form, don't seem particularly onerous. What they hide is a long history of excluding black voters; many parishes in Louisiana have not registered a single black voter this century. Some required that new voters must be personally identified by two registered voters, even if they have a driver's license or military ID card. If no local white voters agreed to "verify" the identity of a black person, they are neatly barred from the vote.

A History of Discrimination

Recent legal changes threaten that entrenched racism. The new Civil Rights Act bars literacy tests as requirements to vote–except for people who haven't completed the sixth grade. Hence the new test, which "may be given to anyone who cannot prove a fifth grade education."

Note the "may." Registration officials can skip the test for anyone they think is qualified to vote: that is to say, wealthy or well-educated white people or friends of the registrar. Of course, they cannot give the test to anyone who can "prove" a fifth grade education, but the law establishes no standards for "proof."

Educational Differences

Before Brown v. Board of Education ten years ago, most areas in the South had segregated schools, and there were fewer non-white schools. Black children had to walk much farther than white children, and the schools often lacked the amenities of white schools, like heating in the winter, or enough books for every student, or a curriculum that covered advanced topics like "algebra" or "literature." Some of the many problems with black schools in the south were described years ago in Charles Johnson's Growing Up in the Black Belt, which discusses, among other topics, the difficulties of getting an education while working on a farm.

The schools themselves are better now, and will be better in the future without segregation, but their legacy continues. Today's adults include those who attended Depression-era schools that operated under a scant fraction of the money received by white schools.

Many who did get grade-school educations did not complete high school, because they needed jobs as soon as they were able to work. While the law only requires a 6th-grade education, how many schools give out certificates of completion of 6th grade? And how many adults keep that certificate for decades? Even if they did receive one, and kept it, nothing guarantees the voting registrar will accept it. The local official may decide, "That document looks like a forgery. I don't recognize the name of that school, the date is unclear, and I can't read the signature of the principal. You'll have to take the literacy test."

The Unpassable Test

This new test is literally unpassable. Several questions have more than one potential answer, allowing the administrator to declare the test a failure no matter what is answered. It consists of 30 questions that must be answered entirely correctly in 10 minutes—and a single wrong answer disqualifies a person from voting.

The average reading speed is 200 words per minute; the full test has about 650 words. Most people will waste over a third of their time just reading the questions. They then have, on average, 13.5 seconds to answer each question.

It looks simple enough at the start. The instructions say "Do what you are told to do in each statement, nothing more, nothing less." That seems simple—until you consider how someone could interpret it.

1. Draw a line around the number or letter of this sentence.

Any reasonable person would circle the "1." An unreasonable person, like a registrar trying to find an excuse to bar someone from voting, might claim the answer is incorrect if the line around the "1" also included the dot after the number, as that was not part of the instructions. A very unreasonable person might mark it as a failure if the words "the number or letter" were not circled.

2. Draw a line under the last word of this line.

Normally, we'd assume the correct answer is to underline the final word, "line." Someone looking to disqualify an answer might insist the underline belongs under "word"—the last "word" of that line. Or they might decide the phrase "the last word" needs the underline.
Nothing in the law prevents irrational interpretations.

There is no answer key with the "correct" version. The administrator decides whether an answer is using the "right" interpretation, and appealing that judgment requires access to the courts. A would-be voter might be able to file a legal claim, but that won't help in time to vote in the upcoming election.

6. In the space below, draw three circles, one inside (engulfed by) the other.

Which of these answers is correct?

Guessing wrong will cost you your ability to vote.

9. Draw a line through the two letters below that come last in the alphabet.

Z V B D N K I P H S T Y C

Does that mean "draw a line through Z and another line through Y?" Or does it mean, "draw a single line through Z, the intermediate letters, and Y?" Or does it mean, "draw a curving line through Z, running over or under the remaining letters and going through Y?" Remember the instructions: Do nothing more or less than what you are told to do.

Guessing wrong means you can't vote this year.

Multiple Interpretations

As the test progresses, the instructions become increasingly opaque and subject to interpretation. Biased officials can use these ambiguities to disqualify potential voters.

20. Spell backwards, forwards.

Does that mean, "spell the word backwards as it appears normally," or "spell the word 'forwards' as 'sdrawrof'?"

21. Print the word "vote" upside down but in correct order.

Does that mean printing the word as ǝʇoʌ, so it looks correct if you turn the page 180°, or ʌoʇǝ, so the letters are in the normal correct order but are upside down? Note that writing "Ǝ┴OΛ" may disqualify you; the original used lower-case letters only.

24. Print a word that looks the same whether it is printed forwards or backwards.

Is that a palindromic word like "civic" or a mirror-image word like "bid?" A word like "MOM" qualifies as both, but the registrar might decide that's a name and not a normal word, or that words in all capitals don't count.

27. Write right from the left to the right as you see it spelled here.

Is that asking for the single word "right" or the entire phrase "right from the left to the right as you see it spelled here"? Or the partial phrase, "right from the left to the right?"

Incomprehensible Questions
And then there are questions that are just incomprehensible:

28. Divide a vertical line in two equal parts by bisecting it with a curved horizontal line that is straight at the point of bisection of the vertical.

Everyone knows how important geometry is when you're trying to make a sensible, well-informed vote. Note the impossibility of a "curved… line" that is "straight at the point of bisection." The administrator might also  use a ruler to decide if the vertical line has two "equal" parts.

29. Write every other word in the first line and print every third word in the same line, but capitalize the fifth word that you write.

Better hope you saved time on some of the early questions, because this one is going to take more than 13 seconds to complete. See that switch from "write" to "print?" Apparently, voting in Louisiana requires both cursive and print skills. Did you print the answer to the question 27? NO VOTING FOR YOU.

Finally, we come to the pièce de résistance, the ultimate question for barring undesirables from exercising their right to vote:

30. Draw five circles that have one common interlocking part.

This question is about half an inch above the bottom of the page. A biased registrar can find many ways to mark the answer wrong, no matter what the would-be voter has drawn in the space:

First, by declaring that the answer must have only one common interlocking part. The registrar may demand that no two circles connect other than at that part—a physical impossibility that would disqualify anyone.

Second, by declaring that the submitted drawing does not consist of true circles.

Third, by saying the resulting image is too small to see, or the interlocking part is not clearly a part of all five circles.

Fourth, if the drawing touches the words, or the applicant erases a mistake, the registrar may claim that he or she did "more than what was asked."

Fifth, if the drawing is done on the back of the page where there is more space, the registrar can insist the answer isn't in the correct place. He may decide the applicant left the answer blank. If, to avoid that, the applicant wrote, "answer on back," that may count as "more than what was asked"

Racism in Action

I've mentioned under half of the questions on the test. Some of the remaining are more clear-cut than these, but even one wrong answer disqualifies a person. This test is not designed to test whether someone can read well enough to cast a ballot. It's not designed to test someone's general literacy, or understanding of civics. It's not even designed to require black voters to have a better education than is required for white people. It's designed for one purpose: to prevent black people from voting. It forces them to undergo an unpassable test administered with subjective bias.

This is exactly the kind of discrimination the Civil Rights Act was designed to prevent. If the Civil Rights Act can't stop this, we need a new law that does. Every adult should have the right to vote!

(Are you registered?)

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