Are there any real world examples of this? A knowledge test to vote of course sounds like an improvement. However there is the “what are the true facts” problem. Was the usa winning the vietnam war while it happened? Were we always at war with oceania?
You have the fundamental conflict that for the government to be held accountable and for errors to be recognized, the voters have to know they happened. But if the government writes the knowledge tests they can make it a precondition to vote be that you “know” they are doing a good job.
Brennan considers the question at length in his book, precisely because of unreasonable restrictions of suffrage in the past. The level of knowledge he is seeking is not high—knowing the distinction between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, or the outline of how a congressional bill becomes law, fundamental questions of fact about how the current government works rather than contested questions about history. Shockingly, the majority of the eligible voters in all countries surveyed are unable to achieve better than 50% on basic knowledge tests (relative to their own country—it makes no sense to quiz Swedes about Australian parliamentary procedure).
Are there any real world examples of this? A knowledge test to vote of course sounds like an improvement. However there is the “what are the true facts” problem. Was the usa winning the vietnam war while it happened? Were we always at war with oceania?
You have the fundamental conflict that for the government to be held accountable and for errors to be recognized, the voters have to know they happened. But if the government writes the knowledge tests they can make it a precondition to vote be that you “know” they are doing a good job.
Brennan considers the question at length in his book, precisely because of unreasonable restrictions of suffrage in the past. The level of knowledge he is seeking is not high—knowing the distinction between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, or the outline of how a congressional bill becomes law, fundamental questions of fact about how the current government works rather than contested questions about history. Shockingly, the majority of the eligible voters in all countries surveyed are unable to achieve better than 50% on basic knowledge tests (relative to their own country—it makes no sense to quiz Swedes about Australian parliamentary procedure).