Given the contentious issue of fair ballot-counting that arose during the last couple of national elections, there are efforts being made in each state to ensure that all citizens who are eligible to vote have the opportunity to do so come November. It’s probably fair to say that one thing (maybe the only thing) the Democrats and Republicans can agree on is that every legal vote should count.

Just recently, for example, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that about 98,000 people whose citizenship documents (e.g., driver’s license, tribal ID number, birth certificate, passport, and/or naturalization papers) hadn’t been confirmed can vote in state and local elections, in addition to the national races. Apparently, there was a glitch in the system a few years ago, and this ruling was made to rectify that error.

Even after the 15th Amendment was ratified in the aftermath of the Civil War and was then solidified through the Voting Rights Act about a century later, the Supreme Court has had to deal with myriad cases involving voting and elections. Qualifications for casting a ballot are now centered on individuals who perhaps didn’t take the most legally direct route to live and work in this country.

There are, of course, many naturalized American citizens who went through all the proper procedures and proudly take their places in the polling queues among native-born voters. As a matter of fact, those who had to earn citizenship might well be prouder than many who just got lucky by birth.

I believe I’ve touched on this subject before, but do you know what kind of questions naturalized citizens had to answer in order to get that voting privilege? Some of them are more than a little daunting, even for those who had the advantage of being born and educated in one of our 50 states.

See if you know the correct answer to these actual questions on the naturalization test:

  1. What is the supreme law of the land?
  2. What did the Declaration of Independence do?
  3. How many amendments does the Constitution have?
  4. What is the economic system of the United States?
  5. What are the three branches of the federal government?
  6. What stops one branch of government from becoming too powerful?
  7. How many U.S. senators are there?
  8. Who is one of your state’s U.S. senators now?
  9. How many voting members are there in the U.S. House of Representatives?
  10. How long is one term for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives?
  11. How long is one term for a member of the U.S. Senate?
  12. How long is one term for a U.S. president?
  13. If both the President and Vice President can no longer serve, who becomes President?
  14. How many justices are on the U.S. Supreme Court?
  15. Who is the current Chief Justice?
  16. What age do citizens have to be to vote for president?
  17. Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
  18. Why did the Colonists fight the British?
  19. When was the Declaration of Independence adopted?
  20. Name three of the original 13 states.
  21. When was the U.S. Constitution written?
  22. What territory did the United States buy from France in 1803?
  23. What did Susan B. Anthony do?
  24. Who was President during World War I?
  25. Name one of the two longest rivers in the United States.

ANSWERS:

  1. The Constitution
  2. Announced the separation of the U.S. from Great Britain
  3. 27
  4. Capitalism
  5. Legislative, Judicial, Executive
  6. A system of Checks and Balances
  7. 100
  8. (Author’s note: No fair looking on Google)
  9. 435
  10. Two years
  11. Six years
  12. Four years (Author’s note: You can’t say “too long”)
  13. The Speaker of the House of Representatives
  14. Nine
  15. John Roberts
  16. 18
  17. Thomas Jefferson
  18. Because of taxation without representation, because the British army stayed in their houses, because they didn’t have self-government. (Any of these are acceptable answers.)
  19. July 4, 1776
  20. (Author’s note: Any three of these will do.) New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia
  21. 1787
  22. The Louisiana Territory
  23. Fought for women’s rights and civil rights
  24. Woodrow Wilson
  25. Missouri River or Mississippi River

How did you do? Those 25 possible questions are only the tip of the iceberg. There are actually 100 that can be part of the citizenship test. Applicants are asked 10 questions and have to answer six correctly in order to pass the civics part. So, if you correctly answered 15 of these 25, you just squeaked by.

About 244 million Americans are eligible to vote this November. Apparently about one in ten of those are naturalized citizens who had to answer questions like the above. How many of the rest of us do you think could pass the test?

©MMXXIV. William J. Lewis, III – Freelance Writer