Utah
Related: About this forumElisabeth Hasselbeck: Elections a ‘more meaningful measure’ if voters must pass a test
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/elisabeth-hasselbeck-elections-a-more-meaningful-measure-if-voters-must-pass-a-test/Elisabeth Hasselbeck: Elections a more meaningful measure if voters must pass a test
David Edwards
22 Sep 2014
Fox News host Elisabeth Hasselbeck on Monday argued that requiring a citizenship test to vote made the outcome of elections more meaningful.
Two Republican state legislators in Utah last week announced a bill that would require students to pass a citizenship test before they could graduate high school. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day OConnor, journalist Carl Bernstein, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and actor Joe Mantegna were backing similar measures in Utah and six other states.
On Monday, Utah Civics Education Initiative co-chair Lorena Riffo-Jensen told Hasselbeck that requiring a civics test was a good first step for encouraging students to be involved in the community.
Hasselbeck suggested taking the idea one step further by requiring a test to vote.
LiberalElite
(14,691 posts)Would the most wrong answers get an A?
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)That way, only the people who 'valued it enough' would vote! Maybe set it at I dunno, $10000 an election per person so that only the 'right' people who 'really' value it enough would be voting?
mercuryblues
(15,102 posts)and Elizabeth might be onto something.
the southern states are consistently republican voters. They also have the highest poverty rates, and score lowest in the nation for education.
My question is, exactly who would these laws really hurt the most?
get the red out
(13,586 posts)It looks like a test would eliminate her from casting a ballot.
rurallib
(63,198 posts)that would be fun
Vogon_Glory
(9,571 posts)The deafening silence broken only by crickets chirping in the distant background concerning Hasselbeck's latest gambit dismays me.
I confess that I'm torn between wondering if Elizabeth Hasselbeck has a clue as to what happened the last time so-called "civics tests" were used to screen voters or if she's quite as clueless as she professes to be. Segregationist states, particularly in the Deep South, were used routinely to keep Afro-American (and occasionally dissident poor white) citizens from registering to vote and casting their ballots in general elections.
Or perhaps Hasselbeck DOES know. As more and more of America's former middle class falls into debt and poverty and as more and more fed-up centrists join progressives in opposing the Teapublicans, people like Hasselbeck and the people who give them their marching orders realize that corrupting the voting process by instituting so-called voter ID laws won't be enough to keep Republican politicians in office. So-called "civics tests" would be the next logical step in suppressing inconvenient voters who don't march in lockstep with the ever-rightward Republican agenda.