From The New York Times (sorry, I lost the link):
So, is this it? Have I voted in the last free election in my lifetime?
My personal experience and by talking with many democrats in Arizona I can say that many democrats did vote early. The reason was that by the time of the election many did indeed took Trump seriously, but paradoxically what was taken seriously was basically a lie of Trump.
His constant talk of rigged elections, of unrest or scrutiny or harassment at the polls was taken so seriously that I do think it was a factor in the past election day. While I do think that it would be hard for Sessions and henchmen to reduce the early vote, I think that the effort now will be geared to inconvenience more people at the ballot box and at registration time.
I’m not sure that the math is going to continue to hold. Voting barriers take out people at the bottom of the income pole. Traditionally, these low wage workers were Democratic.
But note that Trump’s base was people who never went to college. These are people who will generally be at the lower end of the income distribution. One of the Republican party’s other big voting blocks is the elderly, and that’s a shrinking number every year.
The Republican party has been failing to take in the young and it’s hemorrhaging its intelligent supporters. And while those young Democrats might not currently be voting, every year the percentage that does is going to increase.
At the moment, districting and electoral college vote apportioning give the Republican party a fighting chance. But if they start taking out uneducated voters, they might find that they’re shooting themselves in the foot.
We also have to consider that, fundamentally, most voters want the government to do one thing: Improve their economic condition. Every other thing that the government does, more often than not, is going to annoy the majority of the country, even if it pleases the party faithful for the leading party. Usually, the US government is in gridlock. Minus that and the end result is going to be a negative for whoever is in charge, because they’re actually doing something. And particularly if Trump is perceived as doing spectacularly poorly, the amount of love for the Republican party is going to go way down across the country.
If the Republican party wants to stay in charge, their best bet would be to put the car into coast and just let things continue on as they had been. I would argue that this is how Clinton did so well during his Presidency. But I’m highly doubtful, with Trump and Pence leading things from the Whitehouse that that’s what we’re going to get. 2 years from now, I’d put it in as a safe (ish) bet that there’s going to be a massive Democratic overtake of the Legislature.
No, because tightened requirement for voting do not prevent minorities from voting. In some states it’s the law that voters must show a photo ID. I am sure that every minority voter in the country is smart enough to acquire a photo ID if they wish to vote. In 2012, black voter turnout was higher than white in states that had ID laws. Likewise some states allow no-excuse early voting and some don’t. I am sure that every minority voter is smart enough to vote on the right day, if there is no early voting allowed for them. Early voting doesn’t affect voter turnout either.
Or to take an overseas example, France requires ID for voting, and expect its citizens to vote on election day. People of all races are capable of meeting that requirement there, and I’m sure they can also do so on this side of the Atlantic.
I think a voter ID law, supported by the vast majority of Americans, can not accurately be described as the end of free elections in America.
People keep saying that, but I don’t think it’s safe to assume that the elderly of the future will be dramatically more liberal than they are today just because their younger selves are. A lot of the factors that come with age push people towards the conservative end of the spectrum. My own experience is pretty mixed: most of the people I know over 70 are quite liberal, or keep quiet about their politics, but I certainly know more than a few people who are very conservative but were marching in protests in the 60s.
The quoted passage probably wasn’t the best example of what I’m talking about, and for that I’m sorry, but I post from my phone and I can’t look up cites easily.
I guess I didn’t think I’d have to explicitly state this (then again you guys don’t live inside my head and maybe it was unfair of me to expect you to get the point from the sparse OP), but I’m suspicious of the administration’s (and the Republican party’s) intentions in the effort to identify voter fraud. I suspect they will manipulate data, use alternative facts to make the problem look much, much larger than it actually is, in order to justify remaking the electoral process in a way that benefits themselves.
If they are successful enough at this, they could make voting very easy for people in the categories most likely to support them, and very hard for people in groups that don’t tend to favor them.
If you disagree that this could happen, it’s either because a) you think congress or the courts will stop them, or b) you think they’re honest people who have too much respect for the principles of democracy to try something so heinous and evil. There is no c) the voters won’t stand for it. Because if they pull it off, “the voters” will mean “republican voters and a few million or so other people who managed to thread the needle and actually pull a lever, bless their little hearts.”
Here’s a link that may be relevant.
Voter ID, or not, it’s almost impossible for Democrats to flip the Senate in 2018.
Democrats and independents defend 25 seats that year, quite a few of them in red or deep-red states. Republicans defend 8.
An outcome of Republicans 56, Democrats/independents 44 is not unrealistic.
If these were normal circumstances, I’d agree that it would be very hard for Democrats to flip the Senate in 2018. But I’m talking about these particular circumstances where, if the ruling party makes voting irrelevant, nobody will ever be able to flip the Senate, or the House, or the White House ever again.
I believe you are absolutely correct. I said as much when I linked to that same article in another thread:
And, no, minority voters will not think far enough ahead to make sure they have photo i.d.s. That is something that grass-roots Democrats will have to make a high priority in the next two years: making sure that every Democratic voter has whatever s/he needs not to be turned away at the polls.
I believe the Republicans absolutely have as a goal to curtail free elections and make as sure as they possibly can that Democrats remain the minority pretty much forever. I only hope they fuck up so badly that so many of their supporters change sides that even their dirty tricks will not keep them in power. But people are generally so stupid and apathetic that I don’t have [del]much[/del] any hope.
ETA:
That’s the plan.
There is some comfort from historical precedent at the city level: cities which were almost entirely under the control of “bosses” and “machines” have been cleaned up, and the oligarchic levels of control have been broken.
How would they do this? Can you point to examples?
Why?
Do you have evidence for your belief?
The usual inadequate funding of them and the hoops that some states make the poor and minorities to jump is.
Ninja’d!
North Carolina’s Deliberate Disenfranchisement of Black Voters
A federal appeals court finds the impact of the state’s voting law can only be explained by “discriminatory intent.”
Suggest you read the whole article for a comprehensive picture, but here’s a short quote:
I’m hoping the judiciary saves us.
Keep in mind the average term of a federal judge is about 25 years. And there are about 1000 federal judge positions (9 SCOTUS, ~200 appellate judges, maybe 600-800 district judges). Of those 1000 or so, about 700 were appointed by Clinton or Obama. The other 300 were done by Bush.
So those judges are already showing some pushback against these voter suppression agendas, as can be seen by many judges overturning the gerrymandering or voter suppression passed in GOP states. However, who knows. But an independent judiciary may help save us from GOP efforts at voter suppression. It was my understanding that even when voter suppression was tried, it was only marginally effective. It isn’t like Jim Crow voter suppression, where blacks could make up 40% of the population of Mississippi but only made up 1% of voters. It was more that turnout was declined by 1-3% or so, or in some states it wasn’t affected at all. That was my impression, it was either ineffective or marginally effective (although in swing states, marginally effective is all it takes).
The GOP didn’t abolish the filibuster, which is good.
I never vote in national elections, but if I did I need no ID here for that or any other normal purpose. However if I suddenly did, I’m pretty sure I could work out how to get it and go out and get it if I was planning on voting.
Democrats insistence that their voters are too imbecile to manage this does credit to their hearts, but not to their voters’ heads.
One interesting bit IMHO.
In the latest court challenges to states trying to make more restrictive ID laws one has to note that in North Carolina even with the law supposedly struck down a lot of confusion still was there and other restrictions. In Virginia the courts ruled that the ID laws there were not so blatant and less assholish restrictions as were in North Carolina did take place. So the courts told the opponents of voter ID that they did not had a case in Virginia. And that is because the ID law in Virginia was not set up in the discriminatory way as the Republicans did in North Carolina and other states.
The result? The Republicans carried North Carolina, the Democrats won Virginia.
And thank you for showing your ignorance to all. Democrats like me are not opposed to ID laws when they are fair. Not the ugly caricature that the Republicans want to impose in many states of the south.
Can I point to examples from the past? Here’s some stuff about grandfather clauses, literacy tests and poll taxes. And before you say it, I know it wasn’t the Republicans doing it back then, I’m offering it as an example of how creative people can get when they’re desperate to deny other people their rights, not an example of Republican treachery.
As for how they could do it now, in time for the 2018 or 2020 elections, I don’t know what particular strategy they’d use, but I don’t think it would take too much imagination to come up with something. To be clear, I’m not just talking about keeping black people from voting. I’m talking about pressing every electoral advantage they can to suppress likely Democratic voters and pretending they’re doing it to “crack down on fraud” or some nonsense like that.
From research I have seen before, generally people abandon the middle as they age, with men going right and women going left. But if we compare what this meant for party affiliation in earlier times (1994) to more recent times (2014), there is a noticable difference:
It used to balance out relatively even. In today’s world, the Millennials are looking to be a major force as they start voting regularly. And if we look at how things skewed in 1994, the Greatest Generation tended to lean Democrat. That seems to plausibly be an indication of the strength of the Democratic base in the early 20th century and possibly an indication that people tend to maintain their lean through life. If so, we should expect that the Millennials will keep on keeping on.