In one simple graph, Quartz shows why Republicans want to make it harder for you to vote:
In an analysis of “voting convenience, identification requirements, poll hours, registration deadlines, registration restrictions, registration-drive restrictions, and preregistration rules,” professor of public administration Quan Li and professors of political science Michael J. Pomante II and Scot Schraufnagel find that South Dakota makes it harder to vote than it is in 37 other states. It is easier to vote in every neighboring state. Minnesota is the 12th easiest place to vote; Iowa is fifth easiest; North Dakota is fourth.
Of the 27 states with higher-than-average “cost of voting,” 20 voted Republican in 2016. Of the 23 states where voting is easier than average, 13 voted Democratic in 2016.
When voting is harder, participation drops. What can we do to fix that problem?
For now, we can safely argue that if states desire higher citizen participation rates in elections, a reasonable place to start would be a same-day voter registration policy. It is common for people to move, and the burden of getting reregistered to vote a predetermined number of days before the general election makes voting costlier. Allowing people to register at the actual polling station would do still more to reduce the cost of voting. Beyond voter registration considerations, early voting polling stations and longer poll hours will, on average, increase citizen participation in elections [Quan Li, Michael J. Pomante II, and Scot Schraufnagel, “Cost of Voting in the American States,” Election Law Journal, Vol. 3 No. 3, 2018, p. 245].
But if you want those policies, you’d better vote for Democrats, because statistically speaking, Republican appear to benefit from making it harder to vote.
Despite having a more educated base, the demos are woeful at leveraging that education, the powers of algorithm and media to win elections.
I wonder if North Dakota can retain its ranking as 4th easiest to vote after the smoke clears from the recent effort to disenfranchise Native Americans.
Notice the bottom of the graph where the base spreads out and becomes more durable and stable? There is a simple reason for that.
Dems want free and fair elections, not fly by the seat of your party’s ability to suppress votes.
Probably because Republicans work harder, and are better at figuring things out like how to register, how to show up on time, and things like that. There can be no other explanation except more doobies being smoked by libbies making them lethargic and too lazy to vote if it’s not too coddling easy. You should have to work really, really hard to get to vote. grudznick could put a gauntlet out there that would be above reproach.
And residents of red states tend to totally ignore the obvious hoops their party tosses out in front of the poor and elderly, minorities and those who don’t speak English as a first language.
Republicans are good at one thing, voter suppression, they are damn good at that and only that. Corruption is second…by a whisker.
Farmers should be asking what Dirty Johnson is gonna do in Washington. Dude didn’t do a thing here but quit his job. Here is what is going on in other parts of farm country.
“In Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a major dairy-producing community, a tight congressional race is stirring up a debate among farmers about whether their Republican representatives are looking out for small-scale agriculture.
The number of dairy farms nationwide has shrunk 30 percent in the last 10 years, to just over 40,000. A 120-cow dairy could lose $24,000 this year to low milk prices alone. “Dairy farmers are really struggling,” says Bob Kauffman, a retired Lancaster dairy farmer. “Trump says farmers are going to sacrifice now to get money later, but a lot of them can’t take another year.” Low commodity prices and President Donald Trump’s trade war have slashed farm incomes; for many struggling farms, these latest hits have pushed them to the brink of shutting down.
Kauffman has voted Republican his whole life, but now, at 76, he is supporting a Democrat in the upcoming congressional election, a first-time candidate named Jess King.
King is trying to unseat incumbent Lloyd Smucker, a conservative wrapping up his first term in Congress. King, whose family goes back 12 generations in Lancaster, trailed Smucker by single digits in early October, in a district that went for Donald Trump by more than 20 points. She’s been endorsed by Bernie Sanders, Emily’s List, and even Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the co-founders of Ben & Jerry’s.”
Give the boot to Dirty Johnson, keep him away from the Russians.
State by state: when voting is harder it is because wingnuts want it to be harder.
The White Supremacist/Racist Party doesn’t like full citizen participation. I’m guessing, based on the party’s behavior, they’d prefer government of, by and for the white male. States where the Racist Party is most effective at limiting participation to their favored demographic is where they’re most successful.
Quartz has proven that, based on the White Supremacist Party’s actual, factual election cheating and results.
Pootiepublicans/White Supremacists/Racists would make great Russians. That’s why Pootie finds them so useful.
Suppression happens in very disquieting ways. They are suppressed by having to go through many stupid hoops that are made purposely vague with contradictory and with wrong information on state websites or sent through the mail concerning what sort of ID is required to vote.
A couple here has been talking about how they each had to take two days off work to cast an early vote. They went to the state website to get the information about what information they would need to get their ID. They gathered all that information and took it to the authorities, then were told that the website does not provide the correct information. They got the real information and had to take another day off to gather the documents they were told they would need to get a valid ID. They got that ID, finally. Two days of lost productivity. That is what Republicans call “running the state like a business.” But that is how Republicans suppress the vote. They purposely try to trip people up and make it so time-consuming to vote that people give up. Mostly they do this to black people and students.
Add in the one-two punch of gerrymandering, and you cement yourself a House and Senate.
Jerry: good note.
Also consider that Brazil wins the US-China trade war. Brazil’s soybean exports to China are way up. Meanwhile the US soybean exports are down 95-97%.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenroberts/2018/10/25/u-s-car-exports-to-china-2nd-biggest-market-drop-56/#6407adcf51ad
https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/10/26/us-soybean-exports-drop-by-97-percent-as-trade-deficit-with-china-grows
Support the trump-lackies to kill the remaining 3-5% of the soybean exports.
Yeah, the King of Bankruptcy Failures wants to share his incompetence with the entire nation, beginning with US farmers.
Yeah, I know, John. We Democrats have this crazy idea that if we just be good and honest, we’ll win elections on the merits of our ideas.
Grudz: Republicans work harder? Baloney. Their base is the easiest to mobilize: older people with time on their hands. Democrats have to get the poorest, youngest, most marginalized citizens to vote, and they’re darned hard to find and darned hard to get to take time off between their two crap-wage jobs to stand in line at the courthouse for ten minutes.
On effort, also what Mike said. The Republicans know that any obstacles they throw in the way of voting will impact Democratic voters harder than Republican voters.
Look what Wisconsin did to Donald’s neighbors: put up the wrong info, cost them two days of pay. Grudz has time and money apparently to chat away at Tally’s and cast his casual Republican votes whenever he wants; Donald’s friends had to make unexpected sacrifices to participate in democracy.
Mobilizing does not equal difficulty in voting, Mr. H. My evidence is that if, as you say, it is more difficult to vote in South Dakota, then Republicans work harder at it because they vote more. Your evidence and emotional reply is that the clay you have to work with is more flawed.
grudznick wins another debate.
Democratic voters are already working harder than the Trumpy retirees. Difficulties in voting hit Democratic voters harder because they have already expended so much time and energy on sustaining themselves that they don’t have as much spare time and money and energy to get to the courthouse and vote. Republicans living more luxurious lives are not hindered to the same extent by onerous regulations on voting.
Grudz says he wins another debate without actually winning it, trying to simply speak an alternative reality into existence.
Mr. Evans would say, if he were here:
grudznick says those Democratic voters would be better off if they worked harder so they had more spare time and money. Living on the dole is tough, but you have to prioritize between getting out to vote and buying lottery tickets and those cigs that they want to tax another $1 on.