# Why was this post not modded?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-post-not-modded/783610>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [April 2, 2017, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-post-not-modded/783610 "2017-04-02T21:32:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![snoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@snoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snoe)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2017, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-post-not-modded/783610/55 "2017-04-03T19:23:42Z")

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Disclaimer: I have a (leftward) bias on political matters, but I tried my best to approach this question fairly. (I am fairly new to the SDMB, so I’m not overly familiar with the minutae of the forum rules and the history of their enforcement. I’m hesitant to dive into this particular stream, with so much water under so many bridges, but here goes nothin’.)

> [@Historical Verdict on the 1876 Election](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-verdict-on-the-1876-election/783456/3):
>
> In a GQ thread on the 1876 Presidential Election
> 
> > [@Historical Verdict on the 1876 Election](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-verdict-on-the-1876-election/783456/3):
> >
> > I was vaguely aware of some of that FtP, but the details are interesting. Certainly the subsequent history supports what you say. Moreover, depriving blacks of the right to vote is still ongoing and it is no longer confined to the south. That’s what all the voter ID laws are about and note that the parties have traded position.
> 
> Emphasis added
> 
> While the mention of denying Blacks the right to vote is borderline for GQ considering it doesn’t address 1876, why is the vitriolic crack about voter ID laws allowed? Remember this is in GQ not Debates.

I think Hari’s comment was relevant to a big chunk of the comment he replied to, specifically this part:

> [@Historical Verdict on the 1876 Election](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-verdict-on-the-1876-election/783456/2):
>
> However, there is **no doubt whatsoever** that Democrats achieved that result, and carried Alabama and Mississippi as well, only through sickening, brutal, wholesale massacre and intimidation of African American would-be voters.
> 
> Democrats of the time were quite open about their methods. “We shall carry the next election,” Democratic candidate for Governor of Louisiana John McEnery promised in 1874, “if we have to ride saddle-deep in blood to do it.” Former Confederate General Martin Gary laid out a similar plan for South Carolina: “Every Democrat must feel honor bound to control the vote of at least one Negro, by intimidation, purchase, keeping him away or as each individual may determine how he may best accomplish it . . . A dead Republican is very harmless.”

Hari’s followup comment is an elaboration based on how Hari understands the relationship between the politics of 1876 and today.

The voter ID statement’s _truth_ can be argued (endlessly), but I don’t see it as much of a political “crack” or “jab” or whatever. It might be _wrong_, or too far off-topic for GQ, but in itself it doesn’t seem … _cheap_, as in a cheap political shot, which is how I read posters’ objections to it.

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