This is an extremely disingenuous and intellectually dishonest strawman of the views that people of the political party that you're attacking actually hold. This shouldn't be on HN:
> Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.
> Reducing voter turnout under the fig leaves of 'protecting the vote' or 'fighting rampant voter fraud'
You describing these justification as "fig leaves" proves rather conclusively that you are making partisan, as opposed to factual, statements.
> is a long-term party strategy
...and your goalpost-moving from describing individuals on HN ("You can tell someone's political party merely by asking whether they support a high voter participation rate. You can also offend members of the other party by pointing out this fact.") to the strategy of political organizations further undermines the idea that you're making this comment in good faith.
If you're making this comment in good faith, then you don't understand how biased you are. You are, factually, not approaching this from a neutral standpoint.
> You describing these justification as "fig leaves" proves rather conclusively that you are making partisan, as opposed to factual, statements.
This is just electioneering 101: The party leadership can’t explicitly say “voter participation hurts us,” they have to instead pound on the table with unfounded claims of widespread fraud as an explanation to the party rank and file for the voter suppression they’re engaging in.
I’m not saying I don’t have opinions, but I don’t need to lean on them when the facts make the case for me. The fact is that the low information voting bloc of the party is indoctrinated with the rampant fraud myth, and they support policies that suppress participation as a result. The high information leadership encourages this false belief because they know they lose elections when voters participate at high rates.
It gives me no pleasure to report these facts. They are what they are.
What I'd like to see from the Democrat camp is making mail voter registration easier, making government IDs mandatory, and also improving voter identification. Maybe also moving all voting to Sundays, so most people have time.
Better voter identification IMHO is a reasonable ask from Republicans that's always shot down by Democrats. They say it excludes people that don't have ID.
To me it seems reasonable to make having ID mandatory. And also making your ID mandatory for voting, like in every other developed nation I know. Make it free to get a state ID in the same legislation.
This would take away the main argument Republicans have for saying there's potential fraud. Having ID is also good for people, because it eases interaction with the state in other things.
Voter ID would be reasonable if everyone had them, or had free and very easy access to get them. Most countries have some kind of unified government ID, in Germany for example it's mandatory to own one of two kinds of government ID. Sadly this is not the case in the US, where many disparate state IDs exist, and many people never have any government ID for their whole life.
Now, Republicans could take away this argument by instituting a government ID like you're suggesting. It would have to be well thought through - the structure of US society puts many roadblocks in front of those least likely to have IDs, like:
- often large distances to government offices, which can be expensive to travel if you don't own a car
- many people basically can't take time off work, sometimes from multiple jobs, or they risk losing their health insurance
- usually you need some kind of documentation to get a new government ID, and many people don't have this available for a number of reasons - according to this source[0] at least 1.5%
Any solution would have to work around these issues, but it's definitely not impossible. And once this is implemented, the Democrats' concerns would be taken care off - why don't Republicans seem to ever work on this? If you started requiring voter ID without doing this, you'd de-facto be banning people from voting - often times those who are already marginalized. Yet I haven't seen Republicans running on implementing such IDs. Why do you think that is?
I would agree with you that the Democrats should bring this up too, if there were evidence for voter fraud beyond the usual margins (that also exist in elections in other countries). But I haven't seen such evidence, and all attempts by Republicans to find evidence in investigations has completely failed. So why should Democrats compromise with them on this point? Why can't Republicans alleviate their concerns before implementing voter ID?
This reminds me a lot of the attempts during Trumps presidency to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Somehow they always tried to repeal it first, and never presented their better replacement. Four years ago, they promised that their plan is two weeks away, yet it's still nowhere to be found. But they are still running on repealing the ACA. I wonder why? Why does this pattern keep coming up?
Didn’t some Republicans literally say equivalent of “voter participation hurts us” recently? I can’t find the quote right now but I remember seeing it float by in my news feed.
> This is just electioneering 101: The party leadership
Again, you moved the goalposts from "individual voters including people on HN" to "party leadership". You are either incapable of understanding that voters are not equivalent to party leaders (which is an extremely serious flaw), given that I already pointed it out to you, or you aren't acting in good faith.
> I don’t need to lean on them when the facts make the case for me
> It gives me no pleasure to report these facts. They are what they are.
The "fact" that you are claiming is: rank-and-file republican voters ("You can tell someone's political party merely by asking whether they support a high voter participation rate") are using voter fraud as a "fig leaf" for voter suppression. You have provided exactly zero evidence for this claim, despite repeatedly asserting that it is a fact, and changing the goalposts when challenged.
Furthermore, "Fig leaf" doesn't have anything to do with whether or not voter fraud exists - it has to do with whether the users of that justification honestly believe in it. And, speaking as someone with many conservative friends who honestly believe in it, your assertion is factually false,
Your claims are uncited, false, and politically biased. This is partisan political activism.
> Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.
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