# Do Democrats suppress Republican votes anywhere? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 13, 2018, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-democrats-suppress-republican-votes-anywhere/822898 "2018-10-13T08:52:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-democrats-suppress-republican-votes-anywhere/822898/41 "2018-10-14T13:37:00Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > IIRC it wasn’t long ago that California, at least, required an actual _reason_ to request an absentee ballot; e.g. proof or affadavit that you would be out of town on election day. > [@septimus](#): > > I did write “IIRC.” Someone with better memory or Google-fu can fill you in on details. No fu needed for me. You’re showing your age, _amigo_, if you think it wasn’t long ago. 😉 I’ve been voted by mail (without any reason) for over 25 years. Once you sign up, you automatically get a ballot in the mail. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-democrats-suppress-republican-votes-anywhere/822898/42 "2018-10-14T15:58:06Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > No fu needed for me. You’re showing your age, _amigo_, if you think it wasn’t long ago. 😉 I’ve been voted by mail (without any reason) for over 25 years. Once you sign up, you automatically get a ballot in the mail. In other words, you have neither the memory nor the Google-fu to report on the old requirements for voting absentee. Got it. And, since it’s been more than 18 years since I set foot in California: No, 25 years wasn’t so very long ago. 🙂 Since nobody else offered to use their Search skills, bad searcher **septimus** tried. It took almost two seconds to find > [@](#): > > The earliest example of early non-absentee voting that Gronke can recall dates back to **the late 1970s. California adopted a type of early voting called “no-excuse absentee balloting”** — in which voters don’t have to have an excuse to apply for an absentee ballot — because the state was dealing with “an increasing number of people who were simply lying, saying ‘I couldn’t make it to the polling place’ when what was apparent is that they had really long commutes or it was otherwise really inconvenient to make it. > … > “ **Excuse-required absentee voting** started during the Civil War —a product of the competition between Abraham Lincoln and George McClellan,” says Paul Gronke, a professor of political science at Reed College and founder and director of the non-partisan Early Voting Information Center. “Lincoln wanted to assure that he got the votes of the soldiers who were serving away from home.” Since I walked a precinct for John Vasconcellos in _ **1966** _, but wasn’t political in the late 70’s (and spent much of the 80’s out of state), it’s no surprise that I remember absentee voting a bit different thatn you whippersnappers. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2018, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-democrats-suppress-republican-votes-anywhere/822898/43 "2018-10-15T16:18:14Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > IIUC, it was _illegal_ to count those military ballots but the majority of Democrats acquiesced to their counting without pursuing legal remedies — _even though all know these ballots would favor Bush by a huge margin_…And thus Bush, rather than Gore, became the 43rd President of the United States. Bush was already leading by 537 votes before the absentee ballots arrived. The absentee ballots merely widened his lead. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2018, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-democrats-suppress-republican-votes-anywhere/822898/44 "2018-10-16T13:40:09Z")
Yes, in the 1950s. Time is a place is in some 4th dimensional physics. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2018, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-democrats-suppress-republican-votes-anywhere/822898/45 "2018-10-18T06:17:51Z")
> [@Blalron](#): > > I’m not aware of any systemic attempts by the Democrats to make it more difficult for Republicans to vote, even when that might have been to their advantage. When the Tea Party backlash happened in 2010, did the Democrats try to suppress rural white (Republican) votes to maintain their power? In my years of following politics I’ve never seen that happen. As far as I know, seeking to block certain groups from the polls by convoluted laws about what types of ID are allowed and that sort of thing is only done by Republicans, never by Democrats. The favored type of abuse of power by Democrats against Republicans seems to be more old-fashioned: harassing and threatening them with bogus criminal charges and investigations. For example, in 2014 a Democratic District Attorney in Texas [brought bogus charges against governor Rick Perry](https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/rick-perry-vindicated-politicized-felony-charges-thrown-out/) using an obviously nonsensical legal argument. The state Court of Appeals eventually threw the case out with prejudice, but only after Perry had been forced to spend millions of dollars and lots of time defending himself and it basically destroyed his 2016 Presidential campaign. [A much bigger case occurred in Wisconsin](https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/10/wisconsin-john-doe-investigations-partisan-witch-hunt-ends-victims-pain-lingers/), where Democratic prosecutors launched an “investigation” into virtually every conservative activist group in the state. They found a judge willing to rubber-stamp search warrants without any evidence and sent police storming into activists’ homes in the middle of the night, seizing computers, phones, papers, and anything else that they felt like taking. Once again, courts ruled that it was an illegal and bogus action on the part of the prosecutors and the victims eventually [won multiple lawsuits against various Democrats and government organizations involved](https://legalinsurrection.com/2017/10/the-rotting-corpse-of-wisconsins-john-doe-investigation-still-stinks/). There are other examples too. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2018, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-democrats-suppress-republican-votes-anywhere/822898/46 "2018-10-18T06:34:38Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Yet another talking point from the right that I have seen become fossilized among many on the conservative side. > > [Debunked IRS Scandal Shows There’s No Sane Wing of the GOP](http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/10/debunked-irs-scandal-shows-theres-no-sane-wing-of-the-gop.html?gtm=bottom>m=bottom) Well, this fossilized talking point is correct. Conservative groups sued the IRS, [they won, and the IRS lost and admitted wrongdoing.](https://aclj.org/free-speech/victory-in-proposed-settlement-irs-admits-wrongdoing-apologizes-for-targeting-tea-party-and-conservative-groups) So it is in fact true that in the Obama administration, the IRS took illegal action against conservative groups. That lawsuit, of course, should not be confused with the [other lawsuit in which a conservative group sued the IRS for criminal conduct and won](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/why-the-irs-will-pay-this-conservative-group-50-000). The IRS is required to keep information private. Making it public is a felony. The IRS took the list for the National Organization for Marriage and gave it to their political opponents, most likely because Mitt Romney was on the list and they wanted to embarrass him during his presidential campaign. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2018, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-democrats-suppress-republican-votes-anywhere/822898/47 "2018-10-18T11:24:10Z")
Seems like an interesting subject for another thread: Do Republicans ever harass and threaten Democrats with bogus charges and investigations. I’m not sure why you brought that up in this thread. If you were to start that thread, I bet we could come up with some examples. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2018, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-democrats-suppress-republican-votes-anywhere/822898/48 "2018-10-18T12:05:10Z")
Usually, you have to _follow_ the links to determine that they don’t say what they’re purported to say. And with that, I go to my User CP. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-democrats-suppress-republican-votes-anywhere/822898.md?page=2)