March 13, 2023
In 2022, the midterm elections took on a greater importance than normal. The outsized influence of former President Donald Trump, the seats gained by the Democrats in the Senate as the incumbent party, and the record numbers of votes cast all played a role in this bizarre election cycle. However, one particular outcome from that election has deep ramifications for American politics as a whole. In New York’s 3rd District, Representative George Santos won in an upset a seat that had previously been held by three term incumbent Robert Suozzi. He was the first Republican to win the seat in a decade, and even that was surprising. While Santos had been competitive in polling, his win was part of a string of upset victories by Republicans in wealthy New York districts, most notably the New York 18th where Sean Maloney (the Democratic Congressional Committee Chairman) lost a stunner. What makes Santos’ win so important is the controversy that came after. The scandals, lies, and outright deceit shown made for a systematic reveal of a shocking failure in the vetting process we have for candidates; a public breakdown of the sacrosanct trust that our citizens place in their representatives; and an outcome that places American democracy in grave danger.
On December 19th, a couple weeks after the election, the New York Times published a bombshell story alleging that Santos had uttered a multitude of lies in his quest for office. He had previously said he was the descendant of Jewish grandparents, that he had worked at Goldman Sachs, and that he had graduated from Baruch College. More troublingly, he had been accused of violating several campaign finance laws during the election and was also under investigation for fraud in Brazil. During the campaign season last fall, Santos loaned his campaign over half a million dollars and claimed to have millions in assets. This is especially stunning because in 2020, Santos had claimed no assets other than a one-time payment. Now, Santos is hardly the first candidate to run afoul of campaign finance laws or even the first to be under investigation by the FEC while being a sitting representative. The big issue is that he is the poster child for a new generation of Representatives on both sides of the aisle who have proven themselves woefully inadequate for the job. This is raising fundamental questions about the people we are electing to run the country and there are now suggestions about basic guidelines that candidates must meet before being eligible to run for elected office. Santos’ case reveals the need for some sort of background check or ethics verification on candidates, but why stop there?
Frankly, there needs to be some sort of civics test to prove that someone can handle the role of being a Representative prior to their name appearing on the ballot. Given that the US House can impeach federal officials, control federal spending, and (in the case of no candidate receiving 270 electoral votes) even elect the next President, it is necessary to ensure that our candidates are the best they can be. It is a job that requires a certain level of dedication and competence, and suggestions of a federal test are valid. Of the 435 members in the house, only 1/3 have a law degree, and 64% have some form of a graduate degree. Now, I am by no means suggesting that someone needs a law degree or a graduate degree or even a degree of any kind to be effective as a legislator. However, I do feel that it is concerning that in a body expected to form new laws, only 1/3 are qualified to actually practice law. One way to ensure that all of our candidates understand the process of making and enacting new laws would be requiring all candidates to take and pass a civics test. We don’t need candidates to be experts in every field, but a baseline level of legal knowledge should be expected given their positions in government. Former congresswoman Liz Cheney alluded to this in 2021, saying that “We’ve got people we’ve entrusted with the perpetuation of the republic who don’t know what the rule of law is.” Cheney went on to add that a Constitutional boot camp should be required for new members of Congress [5]. The future of the country is too big of a deal to entrust to those who need a training camp after being elected. It is my belief that a civics test or some other form of examination would be a useful tool to make sure that members of both the House and Senate are still operating effectively.
Another major benefit of these sorts of tests would be to ensure that our government can still effectively do their jobs. The Congress has never been older than it is today, and given that these people have incredibly taxing jobs, it is not unreasonable to be worried about their mental faculties. In the Senate, Chuck Grassley of Iowa is 89 years old and was recently elected until 2028. Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat from California, is also 89. In fact, the average age of Congress is 60 years old. According to the school of Public Health at Columbia, the brain begins to significantly diminish in capacity past 60 years old and this rate increases exponentially as people get older [2]. A civics test could serve as a check to prevent representatives from themselves and their age, and also serve as a deterrent to the wilder members of Congress such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and her “Jewish space lasers.” We have senators such as Tommy Tuberville of Alabama who cannot name all three branches of government, which frankly, is outrageous.
Now before I go too far into what a civics test might look like, I think it’s important to note what the current qualifications are to be a member of the House. Under the Constitution, a member of the House must be an American citizen, a resident of the state they represent, and over 25 years old. If that feels a little too lax to you, that’s the idea. The House was designed to be the people’s chamber and therefore the Founding Fathers wanted it to be accessible to all. However, there is some historical context to this. During the time of the Founding Fathers, the typical people who were in politics were older, wealthy, white men. In the modern day and age that isn’t the case, which is a good thing! Diversity of thought is good, but it also means we need to be vigilant to ensure that our candidates are still worthy of the roles they are campaigning for. Secondly, changing the requirements to be elected to the House would require a constitutional amendment. Constitutional amendments require 3/4th of state legislatures and 2/3rds of Congress to vote in favor. This makes any potential amendment highly unlikely. However, the purpose of this article is to suggest that we should have an additional qualification and speculate as to what it might look like.
There are a couple of key points that I believe are imperative. First, the taking of the test itself and the grading should be public. There should not be any way for fraud to be claimed or any form of bias. Second, the point of this exam is not to create excessive trick questions but simply to assess the candidate’s fitness for office. To that end, there should be a mental faculties section composed by doctors that tests whether someone’s brain can handle the rigors of federal office. There is proven research that Alzheimer’s disease and dementia begins to set in as someone reaches 80 years old, and I think that asking our federal officials to serve at such advanced ages is ludicrous. Now, the test for mental faculties would come from a non-partisan group such as the American Psychologists Association and the results would be released to the public. It is important to note that this result itself should not be immediately disqualifying. Instead, it merely would serve as another data point to allow voters to make a more informed decision on the fitness of candidates. Indeed, the whole point of this proposal is simply to ensure that voters can have the most information possible to choose the best candidate available.
Now, having established the mental fitness of candidates for office, it is my opinion that these candidates should also have to publicly take and pass a civics test to run for office. Before a primary debate, on national TV, each candidate should have to take a test and pass it to debate. It could serve not just as a way to measure candidate fitness, but also as a way for younger Americans to learn about how our government runs. Some believe that this is patently ridiculous, as they claim that it is the role of the voters to decide who is fit for office. While I think that argument has merit, I simply don’t think it holds water anymore. The role of the office is too great, and the voters have proven themselves simply untrustworthy of a power like that without screening. This might seem overly harsh, but the knowledge of Americans as to the actions of their government is woefully lacking. According to Ilya Somin (A law professor at George Mason) in 2010, only 34% of voters knew that the banking bailout bill had been signed by George Bush and not Barack Obama [3]. A study done by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found that only a quarter of Americans could name all three branches of government and close to a third couldn’t even name one [7]. Even if one wants to claim that candidates are likely to be more knowledgeable than voters, I don’t see the harm in making them prove this publicly through a civics test. Plus, it’s hardly like this civics test is something unexpected. The government already has candidates for civil and foreign service jobs take exams. Every immigrant who comes to the United States and eventually wants to be a citizen must pass a civics exam. If we expect those who work for our federal government and those who come here for a better life to demonstrate their knowledge of our system of government, why should our politicians be exempt? Their positions are so eminently important and dangerous that they should absolutely be under scrutiny and tested. Nobody is saying that these candidates need to have all this knowledge immediately. Given time to prepare, government officials manage to ask intelligent questions on a wide variety of subjects during committee hearings. It should be noted here that these questions are not meant to be trick questions. The information is publicly available and comes directly from historical documents such as the Constitution. A simple test on how the government works, on the jobs of Congress, and on the powers Congress is granted should be easy for any politician to pass. Now, some might claim that a test like this wouldn’t necessarily prevent candidates like Santos from running for office. The goal of these civics, ethics, and mental faculty tests are not to limit the number of candidates who can run but instead to create a baseline. The voters make the final choice as always but these tests just ensure that the voters are choosing between candidates who understand the role they are running for.
There are problems with my suggestion. First, it is difficult to ensure that the tests given are fair and that there is no shady business involved with grading. Second, it might seem like a pointless exercise given that most candidates would easily pass. However, that is exactly why it should be given. If we want and expect our elected officials to do good jobs, to be educated and aware of their responsibilities, and to make intelligent and rational decisions then we should screen them beforehand. Civics tests, mental aptitude tests, and deep dives should be required of all candidates before they can run. Some opponents to this idea claim that these candidate tests are similar to literacy tests that were historically used to prevent African Americans from voting [6]. I don’t think that this applies here for one major reason; these tests are going to be based on completely factual information. The answers will be able to be found directly from lines in the Constitution or in different laws passed by Congress. It eliminates the subjective aspect of literacy tests. Second, the ethics and mental faculty tests will not bar candidates from running. They will simply reveal the behavior of candidates and allow voters to make a more informed decision. Why wait and see how someone behaves after they get elected when we can have a good idea of who they are beforehand?
While voters should always have the final choice, there are many benefits to having candidates like Santos, who have massive concerns, undergo all sorts of vetting before even running on the ballot. He poses a massive security risk at this point in his public life, and this situation could have been easily avoidable. If a candidate has clear red flags that suggest they may be in legal trouble or beholden to foreign interests, this should be revealed well before the election. A 2018 report found that from 2017 to 2018, foreign interests spent $530 million influencing US candidates and US policy decisions [4]. I think that we as voters deserve to know who took that sort of money; this sort of information is vitally important to allow voters to make decisions. I am not advocating for taking away the power of the voters, but we need to ensure that their choices are all meeting a baseline. It’s okay if not every voter knows all the features of government, but its inexcusable if this is the case for our candidates. Those who take the immigration test for citizenship need to get six out of ten questions correct on basic American history and government operations. I hardly think this standard is unreachable for our esteemed elected officials. Couple that with a thorough background check and a mental aptitude test before placing names on the ballot and we should be able to consistently eliminate poor candidates, a goal that benefits everyone. The standards aren’t incredibly high here and I do not think they should be. Electing candidates like George Santos degrades the sanctity of American government and makes us a laughingstock, and is not what this country is about. Allowing individuals to be elected without verifying their pasts and verifying their knowledge does us all a great disservice.
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[1] Candidate Characteristics, https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/pages/instructors/setups/notes/candidate-characteristics.html.
[2] “Changes That Occur to the Aging Brain: What Happens When We Get Older.” Search the Website, 10 June 2021, https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/changes-occur-aging-brain-what-happens-when-we-get-older#:~:text=In%20the%20early%20years%20of,even%20more%20by%20age%2060.
[3] “Do Voters Know Enough to Make Good Decisions on Important Issues? Reply to Sean Trende.” Cato Unbound, 22 Oct. 2013, https://www.cato-unbound.org/2013/10/22/ilya-somin/do-voters-know-enough-make-good-decisions-important-issues-reply-sean-trende/.
[4] “Foreign Interests Have Spent over $530 Million Influencing US Policy, Public Opinion since 2017.” OpenSecrets News, 8 Aug. 2018, https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/08/foreign-interests-fara-lobby-watch-exclusive/.
[5] “Inside Higher Ed.” Civics Test Should Be Required to Hold Public Office (Opinion), https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2021/10/21/civics-test-should-be-required-hold-public-office-opinion.
[6] “Literacy Tests and the Right to Vote – Connecticut History: A Cthumanities Project.” Connecticut History | a CTHumanities Project – Stories about the People, Traditions, Innovations, and Events That Make up Connecticut’s Rich History., 12 Sept. 2022, https://connecticuthistory.org/literacy-tests-and-the-right-to-vote/.
[7] Strauss, Valerie. “Many Americans Know Nothing about Their Government. Here’s a Bold Way Schools Can Fix That.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 30 Nov. 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/09/27/many-americans-know-nothing-about-their-government-heres-a-bold-way-schools-can-fix-that/.
[8] Why Do Voters Back Corrupt and Dishonest Politicians? https://carnegieendowment.org/2016/12/13/why-do-voters-back-corrupt-and-dishonest-politicians-pub-66432.
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