The opening night speaker at the Tea Party convention suggested a return to a "literacy test" to protect America from presidents like Obama -- a segregation-era method employed by southern US states to keep blacks from voting.

In his speech Thursday to attendees, former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo invoked the loaded pre-civil rights era buzzword, saying that President Barack Obama was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country."

Southern states used literacy tests as part of an effort to deny suffrage to African American voters prior to Johnson-era civil rights laws.

Prior to passage of the federal Voting Rights Act in 1965, Southern (and some Western) states maintained elaborate voter registration procedures whose primary purpose was to deny the vote to those who were not white," a website for civil rights veterans explains. "In the South, this process was often called the 'literacy test.' In fact, it was much more than a simple test, it was an entire complex system devoted to denying African-Americans (and in some regions, Latinos) the right to vote."

"Because the Freedom Movement was running "Citizenship Schools" to help people learn how to fill out the forms and pass the test, Alabama changed the test 4 times in less than two years (1964-1965)," the site adds. "At the time of the Selma Voting Rights campaign there were actually 100 different tests in use across the state. In theory, each applicant was supposed to be given one at random from a big loose-leaf binder. In real life, some individual tests were easier than others and the registrar made sure that Black applicants got the hardest ones."

Um, excuse me, could you please remind me of the US's official language...oh, that's right, we don't have one

General Eligibility Requirements for U.S. Citizenship

To apply for U.S. citizenship, applicants must:

Be at least 18 years old at the time of filing the Application for Naturalization, Form N-400
Have been lawfully admitted to the United States
Have resided as a permanent resident in the United States for at least 5 years or 3 years if you meet all eligibility requirements to file as a spouse of a U.S. citizen
Have demonstrated continuous permanent residence
Have demonstrated physical presence
Have lived for 3 months in the USCIS district or state where the Application for Naturalization, Form N-400 is filed
Demonstrate good moral character
Show an attachment to the U.S. Constitution
Be able to read, write, speak, and understand basic English
Demonstrate a knowledge of U.S. civics (history and government)
Take the oath of allegiance to the United States

To be fair, certainly there were people that voted for McCain/Palin that couldn't speak English or spell the word "vote" as well.

EDIT: In addition, if they couldn't read....then wouldn't it have been around 50/50 as to whether they voted R or D?