"U.S. elected officials are complete morons!" That is a paraphrase of an article released by the international news wire, Agence France-Presse (AFP), last week. It said that US elected officials scored an average grade of just 44 percent on a test of history, civics, and economics. Ordinary citizens did a little better, scoring 49 percent on average. The wire was picked up by news agencies around the world and domestically - boldly proclaiming that the country's political leaders are dangerously ignorant about basic principles of government.

Normally, a story like that would quickly get the OhMyGov! "What-the-gov?!" treatment, but something about it seemed disingenuous.  We wondered which elected officials they'd tested and how many? Are we talking about the entire Congress sitting down with number two pencils, or did they just pick out a few local dogcatchers? Neither. Buried in the fourth paragraph is the answer:

Among the questions asked of some 2,500 people who were randomly selected to take the test, including "self-identified elected officials," was one which asked respondents to "name two countries that were our enemies during World War II."

The shock value of the simplicity of that question distracted OhMyGov! at first from the key phrase..."self-identified." Most readers, at first, see the phrase "elected official" and think of Washington, forgetting completely that there are legions of local school board members, city council members, coroners, and small town mayors who face a popular vote to be appointed to their part time jobs and can thus call themselves "elected officials." Not to diminish the important service of these dedicated people, but in reality they often run unopposed or represent politically engaged special interest groups. But anyone who has had to work with these folks will tell you there is no IQ test required for the job.

AFP fails to remind us of this, or tell us how many "elected officials" we are talking about here. The group that administered the test, the Intercollegiate Scholastic Institute (ISI), is more forthcoming. Their website says that of the 2,508 people surveyed, 164 said they have "held an elected office at least once in their life." They also admit that participants were not asked which office they held, so there is no way to know if the Senate is full of idiots (which it might be) or if we are looking at the test results of the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

ISI also commits a grievous testing error that we just can't let slide. It said that:

Only 27% know the Bill of Rights expressly prohibits establishing an official religion for the United States. 

That is a shocking result! How could the American people have missed learning such a fundamental tenet of our democracy? Let's look at the question:

Name one right or freedom guaranteed by the first amendment.

A. Right to bear arms
B. Due process
C. Religion
D. Right to counsel

Notice the difference? The question asks what the "first amendment" guarantees. How many people knew that the freedom of religion was somewhere in the Bill of Rights but blanked on which amendment it was in?

The results of this test are disturbing enough without manipulation and we at OhMyGov! are disappointed the press and the ISI felt the need to resort to deceptive and sensational reporting to get attention. It distracts from the real message that many supposedly educated citizens know little about their country's history, economics, and government, and we should spend more energy on remedying that situation rather than reporting on the "how stupid are Americans?" story that seems to resurface every few months.