Matthew's Journal

No. Because I'm not proposing a test one can fail. I'm proposing that it be very much like the driving theory test, only much much shorter. So the questions and answers will be made publically available (along with which answer belongs to which party/MP) at the time when the election is announced / manifestos are released. You could also have as many goes at sitting the thing as you liked, free of charge. So all my test requires one to do is to take the half an hour(?) to memorise the answers for your party. In fact, I wouldn't be against making it open book - if you're organised enough to write down / cut out the answers and take them with you to the polling booth then good on you. It's not really an intelligence test at all, it's a "can't be arsed" test, or a "has the faintest idea what these parties actually believe nowadays" test.

If your irrational fear about Europe being swamped by immagrants was that great, it could probably spur you on to learn and remember some trivia about the anti-immagrants party for 5 minutes, which in turn might give you a broader idea of the issues for the next election.

Obviously it may be possible to think of edge cases who should be entitled to vote, but are not capable of answering four simple open book questions. In which case there should be an exemption committee to deal with them on a case to case basis. But I can't think of any myself.

(I don't think this would actually work, because it's so open to abuse, or to skewing whole campaigns until they become soundbites on the four issues chosen by the government. But I think in a hypothetical situation it's not a bad idea.)