Chamblee54

Atlantic Magazine online has a bit of amusement, Are You Smart Enough to Be a Citizen? Take Our Quiz. It is sponsored by Shell Oil, Prudential Insurance, and something called box. PG took the test.
It is thirteen questions, multiple choice. Some are the standards, like “6. How does a bill become a law?”. Some are creative, like the multiple choices for ” iconic American structures”. It would be interesting to see how many people answered Hoover Dam for a picture of the Gateway Arch. What this has to do with qualifying for voting and jury duty is a good question. (PG missed the Gateway Arch. He looked at the 20 available choices, and did not see the correct answer. Maybe the test of citizenship is looking carefully over long lists of options.)
Question 8 is strange. Pictures of the Supreme Court justices are shown, and the respondent is asked to match the picture with the name. Pictures of the Supremes are seldom shown. Even a fairly well informed person might have trouble telling Stephen Breyer from Anthony Kennedy. If you confuse Clarence Thomas for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, you automatically fail.
PG scored 58, meaning citizens attained, with distinction. The scoring is weird. You get one point for every election you voted in over the last 10 years. Georgia’s tradition of runoff elections got PG 5 extra points. 6 of the 9 Supremes were named correctly. The “civic text” question, and the “references” question, were passed without a hitch. It is good to know that Rosie the Riveter was not a 1984 Ronald Reagan campaign ad.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.