Saturday, November 04, 2006

I have a serious problem with this test. Namely--how does knowing about an individual and his policies have anything whatsoever to do with being able to recognize them by look? I read up on the issues, and I could match the names with the jobs correctly with over a 95% success rating--but would lose twice by not being able to match the portrait to a name and job (if I had one I'd have both), so barely squeaked by with a 70%. Are you really going to tell me that being informed about our political leaders means being able to judge them in a beauty contest? If we all voted blind--on policy and fact and ignorant of what these people looked like--we'd be a much more informed electorate. And don't get me started on what this means for blind voters--they'd all score zero on that test, and I'd be willing to bet that some, at least, are far more informed than the average voter (some in almost any group, after all, are far more informed than the average voter).

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