US Presidential Election 2024 - Trump vs Harris - Vote Hard with a Vengence

[Brad Sallows]

Given that the history of voter suppression in the US skews heavily towards being perpetrated by conservatives, primarily intended to stop minorities from being able to fairly exercise their democratic rights, you'll have to excuse my skepticism that there's any sort of noble intention behind what Judicial Watch and similar groups are currently doing.

If "history" is the subject, the Democratic party did its share of voter suppression - against blacks - for all those long years after the Civil War. That was pretty clear cut. A mere assertion that conservatives are perpetrating most of what amounts to suppression isn't worth much without examples of what is meant by "suppression".

 

[RangerRay]

And another opportunity to bring up this gem from the last election…

View attachment 88517

From the folks who brought you “Better Dead than Red” t-shirts back in the 80’s…

 

[Brad Sallows]

Ok, if you want to talk about the problem of trust in the electoral system, outdated voter rolls in both blue and red states is not the problem. The relentless spread of misinformation, fear-mongering, and false claims by the GOP is the real issue.

Don't be absurd. Democrats are also spreading their own misinformation, fear-mongering, and false claims.

 

[Brad Sallows]

At the end of the day out of date voter rolls aren’t an issue by themselves.

The issue is if they are misused for fraudulent mail in votes. But it’s also a disgraceful act to remove folks who are likely not to notice. Now if you vote in person, and you where stricken from the rolls for some reason, you can prove you are 1) a citizen of the USA 2) a resident of that voting district and still have your vote counted. But not everyone votes in person, or shows up the polls with their passport and two forms of ID to show their legal residency (and not all states accept their own Drivers Licenses for that)

Generally in the past it was a Democratic Party effort to suppress the Black vote, however there has been a flip of that effort into the MAGA Republican base. The same folks who drink Russian disinformation like it’s lite beer.

I was somehow dropped from the list for a recent election here. I know not why, but I have no reason to believe anyone was trying to suppress my vote. Sh!t happens. It was a trivial matter to show ID and vote.

I'd sure like to see some examples of what Republicans are doing that suppresses voting. Note that voting control measures comparable to what are used around the world in countries which routinely hold free and fair elections are not voter suppression.

 

[Pelorus]

If "history" is the subject, the Democratic party did its share of voter suppression - against blacks - for all those long years after the Civil War. That was pretty clear cut. A mere assertion that conservatives are perpetrating most of what amounts to suppression isn't worth much without examples of what is meant by "suppression".

It's a cutesy play to try to "both sides" this, but you should have noticed that I specifically said "conservative" and not "Democratic", because most of us can acknowledge the impact of the Southern Strategy on the history of the US that's brought us to the modern era. As a Canadian, I'm much less concerned with party tribalism compared to the history of racism that influences their social divisions to the present day. See, for example, How a coastline 100 million years ago influences modern election results in Alabama:

As far as liberal vs conservative attempts to suppress votes go, see the following for a summary:

Voter suppression in the United States - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

What started as poll taxes, literacy tests, and Jim Crow laws has become the following in the modern era (as just a few highlights from the start of the article):

In 1981 and 1986, the Republican National Committee (RNC) sent out letters to African-American neighborhoods. When tens of thousands of them were returned undeliverable, the party successfully challenged the voters and had them deleted from voting rolls. The violation of the Voting Rights Act got the RNC taken to court by the Democratic National Committee (DNC). As a result of the case, the RNC entered a consent decree, which prohibited the party from engaging in anti-fraud initiatives that targeted minorities from conducting mail campaigns to "compile voter challenge lists."

In the 2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal, Republican officials attempted to reduce the number of Democratic voters by paying professional telemarketers in Idaho to make repeated hang-up calls to the telephone numbers used by the Democratic Party's ride-to-the-polls phone lines on election day. By tying up the lines, voters seeking rides from the Democratic Party would have more difficulty reaching the party to ask for transportation to and from their polling places.

Allegations surfaced in several states that a private group, Voters Outreach of America, which had been empowered by the individual states, had collected and submitted Republican voter registration forms while inappropriately discarding voter registration forms where the new voter had chosen to register with the Democratic Party. Such people would believe they had registered to vote, and would only discover on election day that they were not registered and could not cast a ballot.

It continues to the present day with numerous examples, again heavily weighted towards conservative misconduct. This assumes of course that this question was made in good faith and not just you sealioning.

 

[Brad Sallows]

It's a cutesy play to try to "both sides" this, but you should have noticed that I specifically said "conservative" and not "Democratic", because most of us can acknowledge the impact of the Southern Strategy on the history of the US that's brought us to the modern era. As a Canadian, I'm much less concerned with party tribalism compared to the history of racism that influences their social divisions to the present day.

"Conservative" covers too much ground. Most libertarians and classical liberals consider themselves "conservative" in the American political context (in which "liberal" is mostly synonymous with "progressive"). Libertarians and classical liberals tend to support civil rights. "Reactionaries" fits.

The "Southern Strategy" was a fringe idea of the person (or small handful of people) who concocted it, and its use to explain the party alignment flip in the southern states is approximately a myth. That shift is now understood to mainly be a consequence of social welfare policies that began in the 1930s, and also Republican party policy shifts that were not specifically aimed at southern whites but to which southern whites were drawn. Whatever the "Strategy" might have been, looking across election results for several cycles it's difficult to see "impact" - in 1964 Goldwater didn't win southern states; Johnson lost them because of his support for the Civil Rights Act. Nixon in 1968 won most of the southern states Johnson won. Nixon in 1972 won 49 states.

Wikipedia is unfortunately not reliably apolitical about contentious political issues. It's not a source likely to provide a comprehensive list of all things which might result in voter suppression. I doubt there is a reliable source readily available. Too many partisans characterize unexceptional voting controls as "suppression" if the effects can be shown to land disparately on different ethnicities, but the underlying causes of the disparities are other social ills.

People ought to stop slagging "Republicans" and "conservatives" with the ills of the fringes that climb into their tents, just as people ought to stop slagging "Democrats" and "progressives" for their extremist affiliations (eg. communists).