When your opponents try to maximize turnout among their base, as is their right, the appropriate response – the only appropriate response – is to try to maximize turnout among your own base, and if it turns out that still doesn’t give you enough votes to win, well, that’s democracy. Remember democracy? The point of it is to make the state do what the people want. Voting is the only chance they get to express their will in a binding way. The higher the turnout, the more legitimately eligible votes are cast and counted, the more sure we can be the result really does represent the popular will. The ends of democracy are never served by voter-suppression tactics, which is what the Pubs are doing with all these ID laws and at-the-polls challenges, despite all this pretextual “voter fraud” bullshit.
Again, you’re assuming that more people voting is a good thing in itself, and that democracy is a good thing in itself.
I also tend to assume that when people bitch about voter suppression, they have an angle. They aren’t upset that votes are being suppressed as much as they’re upset that votes friendly to them are being suppressed.
No. “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.”
I think there’s value in making the vote require some effort, some small sacrifice – something that never places it out of reach, but puts a price on it. Not a price paid vicariously, either; a personal price – time to stand in line at the polls, time to Xerox your license and mail it in, whatever. I don’t view these measures as inherently wrong.
Not necessarily; all I’m assuming is that it’s better than the alternatives.
I definitely agree that greater voter turnout can in practice have bad effects. I was not personally happy about the results when the Moral Majority movement decided to start galvanizing religious conservatives to start flocking to the polls to vote for prayer in schools and against gay marriage and so forth, instead of remaining largely indifferent to electoral politics.
Nonetheless, I stand by the position that more people voting is a good thing in itself, on a deeper level than the level of whether I personally like what they’re voting for. This is supposed to be a democracy of the people, for the people, and by the people. As a matter of principle, I would rather have more voter participation, even if it produces laws and legislators that I’m less happy about, than a government that is just what I personally prefer but which is based on keeping voter turnout low by encouraging apathy and/or suppressing votes.
I’ve got to join Brain Glutton in wondering what’s supposed to be so wrong about this. If the practice of ox-goring is wrong, then surely there’s no need for me to refrain from opposing it just because it happens to be my ox that’s getting gored.
Fair enough. FYI, henceforth all your posts will be vetted by Homeland Security before they appear here. Strictly pro forma, I assure you . . . no more than a rubber-stamp, really . . . indictments for treason or sedition are extremely rare in such cases . . . it’s just a policy to keep you from taking your precious free-speech rights for granted.
Voting does require some effort, by its very nature. You’ve got to either obtain a mail-order ballot, or schlep your way over to the polling station on Election Day, and make up your mind who you’re going to vote for, and fill out the ballot, and pull the lever (or mail it in). The “small sacrifice” you say you’re looking for is already built into the procedure.
From the posts mentioned in the OP, I’m not sure whether Bricker is talking about efforts to legally prevent people from voting when you know it is likely that many of those people actually should be allowed to vote or not.
Again, deftly evaded! You missed your calling, you should have been a matador, that was a perfect Veronica!
Your advocacy of a Calvinist democracy is interesting, but entirely evasive. The discussion is not about whether or not some sacrifice on the part of the voter is desireable, but whether or not such sacrifices are equally distributed.
If a poor man must stand on line for hours to vote, while his more advantaged counterpart need not, then there is no such equality. And if the powers that be can manipulate the law to their advantage, and secure their grip on political power by such unsavory means, there is no equality.
Put baldly, if equal access to voting rights would do damage to your political position, you are obliged to change your political position. Or at least be so honest as to abandon any pretense to democracy.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, do we not? And if you don’t, would you be so kind as to directly say so, that we might recognize cynicism for what it is?
They’re not inherently wrong. What I find disappointing is that you do not see the inherent difference between encouraging people to have their voices heard, and the silencing of competing voices.
Citizens of the US have the right to vote in elections. Preventing them from doing so is denying them that right. If you want to deny someone their rights, you better fucking well have a rock solid reason for doing it. It better not be denial over some typo or misplaced hyphen. It’s also not appropriate to require extra effort from some people while letting others have it easy, based on their assumed loyalties.
Says the guy who works in an office with at least one Xerox machine. How many of the potentially-disenfranchised don’t and need to go to a currency exchange to find one, costing them bus fare both ways and another quarter for the copy? Why should that person jump through more hoops than you?
Because when their enemy’s ox is getting gored, they’re not going to care. I’m saying that most of the people who complain about voter suppression don’t really care that votes are being suppressed. It’s like what happened back in 2000 in Florida, where the Democrats, who’s rallying cry was “count every vote”, did their best to disqualify millitary absentee ballots, and the Republicans, who had taken the position, “Hey, the rules are the rules, and if the people of Florida can’t figure out how to cast a ballot, tough for them” all of a sudden cared so much about our soldiers trying to vote in Florida having their views heard.
Well, but when the enemy’s ox is being gored, the enemy will be the one complaining.
I say we ought to listen to both, and avoid intentionally disenfranchising those who are likely eligible to vote. If we agreed with the argument that we shouldn’t stop voter suppression that democrats complain about because those democrats stand to benefit, we’d be throwing away half the law.
Most of the modern system of laws is adversarial-things don’t just appear in court. They appear there because someone who was wronged brings them in.
You tell me how we distinguish the democrats from you, if I steal your stuff. You have a legal right to have your stuff. You can sue me to get compensation.
but… you stand to benefit from suing–you’re going to get more money! By your argument, you shouldn’t recover. It’s money you’re entitled to, but it’s more nonetheless.
If these people are entitled to vote, they should vote. It shouldn’t matter who they vote for.
I’m glad that someone is trying to defend their right to vote. I’d be just as glad when a republican fights for the right of republican voters to be counted.
Quoth one Chris Cannon, Republican, Congresscritter, and member of the House subcommittee on commercial and administrative law:
“The difference between ACORN and [Nathan] Sproul is that ACORN doesn’t throw away or change registration documents after they have been filled out.”
(From the Times link above.)
Let’s see how the hypocrites in the GOP spin this. Should be amusing.
For 28 years, the Democratic party had most of their numbers in stupid people, and the Republicans had most of their numbers in smart people.
You being someone who leans Democratic (of those two), I can see why you would decry trying to keep those of lessened intellect from coming to the polls. But as someone who values the vote of smart people over stupid people, I can’t personally admit to being particularly hurt by the loss of these votes.
I like to think that you’re at least partly wrong about that, but even if you’re not, then we’ve got a backstop, because at that point the enemy will suddenly start caring about the deplorable practice of ox-goring.
Even if everybody’s only standing up to protect their own ox, that still is a better outcome than everybody lying around in a supine state of egalitarian indifference.
The Emerging Democratic Majority is not based on stupid people, it is based on the more educated and sophisticated populations of the “ideopolises” – meaning, not “places of idiots,” but “places of idea,” in case there was any confusion. How can anyone seriously contend Blue America is not smarter than Red America?
There’s a very good reason why votes are not weighted by the voter’s IQ or education, and I should hope I don’t need to explain it to you.
Voting does require some effort, by its very nature. You’ve got to either obtain a mail-order ballot, or schlep your way over to the polling station on Election Day, and make up your mind who you’re going to vote for, and fill out the ballot, and pull the lever (or mail it in). The “small sacrifice” you say you’re looking for is already built into the procedure.