Your proposal suggests that this result is due to lack of knowledge, rather than malice. While I'm a fan of Hanlon's Razor in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the Governor's office clearly employs technologically competent people.

That means that the Governor is either persisting despite knowing better, or is remaining deliberately ignorant despite the expertise at his disposal. Either way, this is at least somewhat intentional.

I've got plenty of life experience that proves that people in power who employ technologically competent people often refuse to listen to expert advice because might makes right.

You don't have to be malicious to be incompetent.

Or you don't have to be incompetent to be malicious.

Right, but if they passed the exam that removes their ability to feign ignorance on the record, leaving malice as the de facto motivation (again on the record)

> due to lack of knowledge, rather than malice

I suspect it's a mix of both.

> Governor's office clearly employs technologically competent people.

But you're assuming the Governor would pass the basic test that even shows that he is competent at listening to other competent people.

This sort of thing was used in the past to keep Black people from voting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test#Voting

The OP is saying the test is for holding office, not voting. There absolutely should be a higher bar for holding office than for voting.

The point is that it's too easy for a malicious actor to utilize this kind of thing to keep the "wrong" people from participating in politics.

I am sure the OP's suggestion was in good faith, just that they weren't aware of some of the history and potential repercussions.

Maybe you're misunderstand, and if not I think your response is a bit disingenuous given that the commenter is saying the test can be used to marginalize a minority.

The commenter's point is that these "tests" can be designed to be difficult for one race/community, but easy for another, thus preventing them from holding an office.

Nope. Imagine a 99% white town where a Black man wants to run for mayor. Sorry pal, you failed the literacy test.

How do you propose we vet office holders?

Very true. Just like gifted programs in schools. We should keep the bar as low as possible so that no one can ever claim we're racist.

This isn't about claiming anything. It was very much used in practice for many years in southern states, to keep people who had the "wrong" colored skin from voting.

It's great to have high standards for public office, but it's the voters who should hold their elected officials to those, not an arbitrary test imposed by the government.

I agree that it's a potentially dumb idea, it sounds like just another kind of Jim Crow era law that could very easily be misused to prevent people from running for office for any reason that people in power see fit (e.g. racism, sexism, other -isms). The only way I see it being a good idea is if you just need to answer the provided questions, and not necessarily "pass" the exam, but that would necessitate voters actually caring if their lawmakers know anything about tech (or the other variety of topics included).

Don't worry about their passing: just require the results be publicly available.

In the US, VoteSmart [0] and others have tried to do this with position surveys for years, but most politicians would prefer not to answer.

[0] https://justfacts.votesmart.org/

Better idea: make it actually illegal to explicitly threaten illegal state violence against people. The governor should at the very minimum be forcibly removed from power for threatening state violence against someone who has very clearly not committed a crime.

You have forgotten to propose to test for morals, dignity and mental health. Because the matter and issue, in the specific case, is not with "notions".

Edit: I don't even know why for some reason I forgot (probably because it comes without saying): basic wits.

And, seeing that somebody really calls is an "odd idea": no, there absolutely should be requirements. Getting the appropriate measurements, reliably and feasibly, that is difficult. Yet, still duly. Duty, in the same intensity that suggests that thing holding office should be flung into space.

There are a handful of states whose constitutions (ostensibly) “test” a for morals by requiring candidates for public office to believe in god. This, despite the federal constitution clearly stating:

> No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

This is (really) interesting and telling, but what it really shows is that extremely low sophistication and its somehow complementary, a massive (and, look: unjustifiable) amount of ignorance, are diffuse in the world and made part of the legislation (that "no belief does guarantee developed morals", and that "no belief is required to develop morals", and that "morals come from a realm different than belief"¹ is just an example).

The information you provided is a further alarm bell about the dire needs we have about vetting people in the current, desperate, worn out world. Normal social interaction as a way to fine tune the individual, the traditional selection way, shows to be ineffective today.

--

¹Oddly, in a world in which the concept of "identification" is increasingly spread, "curiously and consistently" I have not yet heard the expression "X identifies as a moral (and/or dignified, intelligent, sophisticated, compassionate, judicious, reliable...) agent". The concept of "identification" seems to be restricted to tribal matters (and, still notably, "earthly" criteria). These two interlinked factors are very telling about the issues in today's society.

Rulers can't be an expert in all the domains they oversee. Thus the test you speak of should be whether they can build a team of experts and harness that collective expertise to make good* decisions.

Alternatively you could pick the person who's decisions have most often turned out to be good* ones, and hope that they continue making good* decisions.

* For whatever you think is good.

Who gets to set the test? This is a well-intentioned but very wrong-headed idea. History is littered with examples of how these things are abused.

It is up to voters to evaluate their chosen candidates for their qualities and qualifications for the job. The biggest problem right now is that too many vote on party lines instead of for candidates based on their qualities.

There are already requirements for most elected officials. Age, citizenship, and residency requirements are common. Thus the slippery slope argument "if we have any requirements at all that's a slippery slope to having arbitrarily bad requirements" already applies equally to the current situation as it would to any proposal to change the requirements.

> Thus the slippery slope argument

That wasn't an argument I made though. I asked:

> Who gets to set the test?

Which gets to the core of the point. The current requirements are fixed in legal stone and nobody gets to alter them. They aren't being [ab]used for political advantage.

People on here are proposing arbitrary ability tests that [someone] gets to create and alter using [some] undefined methodology.

You combine that with the history of ability-based testing (which, incidentally none of the existing requirements are) and it leaves a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths.

I don't really understand your argument. All laws are set in stone and unalterable, except by the legislature of course. A proposal to change the requirements for an elected office would require the same process as any other legislative change. In the case of the governor of Missouri, this would require amending the Missouri Constitution. I don't think anyone is proposing that some random Hacker News commenter gets to create and alter a test whenever and however they want.

History is littered with examples of eugenics programs, but that doesn't mean we should ban genetic testing.

A better analogy would be:

> History is littered with examples of eugenics programs, but that doesn't mean we should ban eugenics.

To which I'd argue we should absolutely ban eugenics because of the history of eugenics. Just like we should ban arbitrary political entry testing because of the history of exactly that.

I'm not making an "apples Vs. oranges" comparison, I'm making an "apples vs. historical apples" one.

You're looking at it from a perspective of "must pass the test to qualify"?

I'm looking at it from "test results should be public, anyone qualifies to run."

Such a person that could pass would be so unusual, he'd be very out of touch with the general population.

I suspect you would find almost no-one who would have been happy with both Trump's administration and then Biden's adminstration being in charge of writing a test to decide who gets to stand for public office.