The Value of Civic Literacy

In May and June of 1959, the Supreme Court heard and decided Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections. Louise Lassiter, a Black citizen of North Carolina, argued that the law that denied her the right to vote was unconstitutional.  That law required that the prospective voter "be able to read and write any section of the Constitution of North Carolina in the English language.”  The Court that heard her case was the Warren Court, arguably the most liberal Supreme Court in American history.  This Court had ruled 9-0, just a few years before, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in favor of Brown.  One might have expected Lassiter to prevail.  But the Supreme Court ruled that the law was constitutional and not discriminatory, because it tested everyone regardless of race (laws that did discriminate, and were thereby unconstitutional, had grandfather clauses that exempted those <whites> who already had a voting history).  Justice William O. Douglas, arguably the most liberal justice ever to serve on the Court, wrote the majority opinion.  That majority was 9-0.  Congress subsequently prohibited literacy tests as part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Such civic literacy laws were constitutional – but they were rendered illegal by Congress.

“A 2019 survey of 41,000 Americans commissioned by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation found that of citizens in the 50 states surveyed, only the citizens of Vermont were able to pass a basic multiple-choice test on American history.”  62% of all native-born Americans failed the test with a threshold of failure at 50%!  Americans are not civics literate.

We joke about our neighbor down the block – a Swedish fellow 35 years old who immigrated here five years ago – knowing more than we do about basic American history, about the Constitution, about our governmental institutions.  After all, he had to pass a test – a Citizenship test – to become a citizen, to earn the right to vote, to earn the right to sit on a jury, fgodsake.  The test is ten questions randomly chosen from a pool of 100 questions, with a pass/fail of 60%.  The 100 questions and their answers are readily available to everyone online.  It is no joke that our foreign-born neighbor knows our history better than native-born Americans.   We should fix this embarrassing gap.

It is sixty years since Lassiter.  It is clear that institutional racism is not completely a relic of the past, but we no longer live in Louise Lassiter’s world.  It would be foolish to assume that the average White high school graduate knows more about our history than the average Black high school graduate.  Or that the average White adult is better equipped to exercise his right to vote – conscientiously – than the average Black adult.   A civic literacy test no longer discriminates specifically against people of color.  If you can read and you have access to the internet (or have an address where a ten-page handout with all the Q's and A's can be sent to you), passing this test should be a slam-dunk.  Having everyone know more about our civic history will raise the level of our political conversation and it will make it much more difficult for politicians to lie to us – that cannot possibly be a bad thing.

The right to vote is a sacred right.  But all you now need is citizenship, eighteen years, and stupid.  Adults always pair freedom with responsibility, yet we allow irresponsible citizens to vote.  Why would passing that same Citizenship test as our Swedish neighbor be a burden to our countrymen?  Who would protest such a requirement?  The test is easy, and it can be prepared for in a few hours’ time.  Thomas Paine said: "What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value."  There is reason to believe that having to earn the vote would expand the voting population, not shrink it.

If we can require some small effort from ourselves to exercise our right to vote, surely we can require more of our would-be elected leaders.  Would it be too much to ask that anyone running for national office – the House of Representatives, the Senate, the presidency – be able to pass a high school level American history test in addition to scoring 90% on that Citizenship test?  And surely it is not too much to ask of candidates for the highest office in the land – the presidency – that they have performed a few years of public service before they run for that high office.  Our Founding Fathers could never have imagined the mess we are in today, our democracy in the balance.

If you like the idea of asking that we take our civic literacy more seriously, speak to your friends, spread the word, and demand that your elected representatives get on board.  Take the test online; discover how good a citizen you are! 

Addendum: Monday, 12/07/2020

The Trump administration has made the test harder.

Addendum: Saturday, 08/14/2021

"On February 22, 2021, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it is reverting to the 2008 version of the naturalization civics test as of March 1, 2021."

It has been brought to this author's attention that requiring civic literacy is voter suppression.  My response: 1) The most effective form of voter suppression in the USA is voter turnout, typically near 50%; nothing suppresses voting quite like voter apathy.  2) Thomas Paine suggests – and I agree – that putting a sensible "price" on voting would actually motivate voters who do not vote today.  3) The only citizens who might actually be "discriminated against" by this requirement are those who believe that freedom is not doing what the government tells you to do, like anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers (and I am OK with those kinds of folks not voting; democracy needs all the help it can get).

Addendum: Sunday, 12/04/2022

Here is a dramatic enactment of this essay's problem (click on it).

Then watch this.