We Don't Know Jack 2.0

As a follow-up to yesterday's bit about the civics test, I decided to go find a test that was more than 10 questions. As it happens, the History Channel has a 96-question remake of the official citizenship test here.

I got 93 of the questions correct, though it should be 94 because I misclicked on the 'who was the first President' question. Either way it's an easy pass; as far as the naturalization people are concerned, I breezed through it. In the actual test, you are given 10 questions, and you must get six correct to pass. That option is available through the link. But we're thorough around here, so you need 58 correct to pass on the full test. That shouldn't be any trouble for actual citizens. It will be, as we've seen far too often, but it shouldn't. This is the minimum we ask of people asking to come here, so the people already here should lay waste to the damn thing.

An important word of note: this particular test is as of the period immediately prior to the November election. That will come into play during the test.

We Don't Know Jack

One of my least favorite stories to have to read is the one where someone gives a civics quiz to the American public and then has to report that America failed miserably. You know the ones, where it turns out that half the people can't find their home state on a map, 30% think the Bill of Rights was written by a mind-reading chicken, 25% identify Abraham Lincoln as "perhaps a type of building material", etc.

Well, here's the latest one. This one, however, has a twist on the concept: a subset of the people polled was a group that had been elected to office at some point in their lives.

The general public scored 49% on the quiz.

The elected officials scored 44%.

Ten questions from the quiz are here, click that if you don't want some of the questions spoiled by the article). Without revealing question or answer, I missed Question 6 but got everything else correct. Americans in the audience, please, please PLEASE tell me you can get more than five right.