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A Voting test is a test designed to determine one's ability to read and write a given language. The term is often used, however, to refer to a test given to determine one's eligibility to vote. Literacy tests have also been used as a means to restrict immigration. The United States adopted a policy of administering a literacy test upon arrival in 1917 in order to filter out unskilled labor. The test was first proposed to Congress in 1897 and was declined four times before ratification. The high demand for cheap, unskilled, immigrant labor made the bill very difficult to pass in its early stages. But by 1917, the United States' views on immigration had changed and the literacy tests merely prefaced the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924. Voting is a method of decision making wherein a group such as a meeting or an electorate attempts to gauge its opinion—usually as a final step following discussions or debates. ...
Literacy requirements for voting are almost as old as the concept of voting is itself. The theoretical basis for them was that illiterate persons were not sufficiently informed about the candidates and issues involved to be able to make a truly informed decision. In practice, however, the literacy requirement was often used to prevent those determined by the ruling class to be undesirable, such as the poor, racial and ethnic minorities, and other groups that it wished to see disenfranchised, from voting.
The literacy test became of prime importance when the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified in the wake of the American Civil War. This amendment forbade any state from forbidding any male citizen aged twenty-one or over from voting on the basis of race. It did not, however, prevent the implementation of other qualifications for voting. Since few whites in the Southern United States in that era desired blacks to vote, they developed the "literacy test", which was usually a virtually impossible test on American government which would be given only to blacks. Whites were often allowed to vote even if they were illiterate, sometimes by the invocation of a grandfather clause which stated that literacy requirements could be waived if a potential voter's grandfather had been a qualified voter, a virtual impossibility for blacks of that era. Contemporary drawing depicting the first vote by African Americans Amendment XV (the Fifteenth Amendment) of the United States Constitution grants voting rights regardless of race. ...
The United States Constitution is the supreme law of the United States of America. ...
Combatants United States of America (Union) Confederate States of America (Confederacy) Commanders Lincoln, President Ulysses S. Grant, General Jefferson Davis, President Robert E. Lee, General Strength 2,200,000 1,064,000 Casualties 110,000 killed in action, 360,000 total dead, 275,200 wounded 93,000 killed in action...
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Southern United States The states shown in dark red are usually included in the South, while all or portions of the striped states may or may not be considered part of the Southern United States. ...
Look up black in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
In American English, a Grandfather clause is an exception that allows an old rule to continue to apply to some existing situations, when a new rule will apply to all future situations. ...
Literacy tests for voting were banned by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and now laws require the printing of ballots in languages other than English in areas where there are high concentrations of non-English-speaking voters, and arrangements are made to assist the illiterate in voting. Literacy tests for voting in the United States thus no longer exist. However, the naturalization process in the United States still requires a literacy test. The United States Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed requiring would-be voters to take literacy tests and provided for federal registration of African American voters in areas that had less than 50% of eligible voters registered. ...
Naturalization is the act whereby a person voluntarily and actively acquires a nationality which is not his or her nationality at birth. ...
See also
In English law, the benefit of clergy was originally a provision by which clergymen could claim that they were outside the jurisdiction of the secular courts and be tried instead under canon law. ...
Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enacted in the Southern and border states of the United States and in force between 1876 and 1967 that required racial segregation, especially of blacks, in all public facilities. ...
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