Are you trying to set the password at the GUI level, or are you doing this in a terminal? I suspect it's in the GUI if it's failing because the password won't pass the quality test.
Just give the user a temporary password that passes the quality test to begin with, then in a terminal, change the password to one you really want with a simple command that won't involve the quality test like this:
sudo passwd useername
You'l be prompted for your password, the user's new password, and once again to verify that you typed the new password correctly. It won't be tested there.
You can also create the user at the command line, but it sounds like you've already figured out how to do that in the GUI, and that will work fine.
