US Erection 12 *AND* 16 *AND* 20 *AND* 22 *AND* 24 *AND* Beyond

[BoS]

It shows how much they are making this up on the fly…

6 months ago gas prices averaged $2.50-$2.75 a gallon.

Today they’re hovering around $5/gal.

In fairness, not sure that managing food stamps was even on the agenda pre-Iran attack, let alone priority.

[UWSaint]

Whereas vote suppression and other tricks used are by far the greatest threats to open elections.

What kind of vote suppression does not have a "real consequence?" Trying to understand what you mean by the term.

I think that by saying 'vote suppression (on a state level)...are by the greatest threats...', I'm saying there are real consequences.

Voter 'fraud' on an individual basis, does not impact elections.

I mean what do you mean by "vote suppression"? What kind of activity or condition constitutes "vote suppression" that is not illegal, like non-citizen voting?

Individual fraud does not impact elections...but an integrity protocol that requires someone to get a birth certificate but the records can't be located (or insert your one in ten thousand story here) does?

But more than that, have you all memory holed the congressional election that was stolen through mail in ballot fraud less than a decade ago (at a time where most states had even more "security" protocols w/r/t main balloting? Repeating the mantra "fraud doesn't change outcomes," "there's no widespread voter fraud" doesn't make it any more true than the opposite "my opponent only wins because of fraud". Both sides, totally gaslit.

[UWSaint]

Would you agree with me that preventing a person from voting (having, say, an "intelligence" or "industriousness" test) is different in kind than having voting requirements that impose some burden, but do not prevent, voting? An example of a hypothetical burden -- you have to register to vote.

See, this is another thing I don’t understand. Why register to vote? Afaik the USA is the only country that does that.

[lots more how Sweden does it]

Registration is to verify that a voter is eligible (age, residence, citizenship), and then to be able to maintain poll list. Poll lists have a variety of benefits, like preventing double voting. With poll lists, the photo id isn't for verification, it is for identification purposes. Verfication happened with registration.

But every state has its own system. In my state, you can register the same day as the vote. Its not any different in kind not registering, but having to verify your qualifications on election day. (Which istsounds like Sweden does).

Similarly, in many states, registration can happen with doing something else (like getting a driver's license), which sounds very similar in concept, through not the same as, how the government is generating your poll lists by pulling from other government databases that required the relevant eligibility information.

Its not a perfect system (and ours is a state-by-state patchwork), but I think they are using similar tools to achieve the same thing.

[rats19]

5th only mentioned voter integrity…. Maybe he’s closer to correct in that.

Election integrity might be more of the focus here..

Mail ins , dumps , voter machines… election officials

Maybe that’s more the problem..

[5thhorseman]

Now to get to where I am going: Would you agree with me that preventing a person from voting (having, say, an "intelligence" or "industriousness" test) is different in kind than having voting requirements that impose some burden, but do not prevent, voting? An example of a hypothetical burden -- you have to register to vote.

I'd agree that those are different but would suggest they are just two points on a continuum, all of which would be considered voter suppression in the general sense that less votes are cast. Maybe an explicit industriousness test suppresses 30% of the vote whereas a soft barrier like having limited polling stations with long lineups in areas that are not served well by mass transit would suppress 15% of the vote. Both have skewed the results. It's just a matter of degree isn't it?

My question for you is, would you agree that more votes cast in an election will produce better results regardless of the "quality" of the votes (though not random voting), as the votes of single issue voters will at least capture the will of the electorate better than if those votes were not cast?

[rats19]

I think the higher percentage of population voting … the better yah

[UWSaint]

I'd agree that those are different but would suggest they are just two points on a continuum, all of which would be considered voter suppression in the general sense that less votes are cast. Maybe an explicit industriousness test suppresses 30% of the vote whereas a soft barrier like having limited polling stations with long lineups in areas that are not served well by mass transit would suppress 15% of the vote. Both have skewed the results. It's just a matter of degree isn't it?

The point is fair, but in my opinion, the term "suppression" is not. To suppress something, you prevent it from happening. You take away the suppressed thing's agency. When a majority of voters are not dissuaded by, say, long lines, then we know that a typical citizens will absorb that modest time burden as part of cost of of citizenship. When someone avoids that long line, their vote isn't being suppressed; they are making the decision that, for them, they don't want to suffer an inconvenience to participate. The term suppression applied to such banal administrative costs is newspeak, creates a moral panic, clouds clear thinking, and has the effect of devaluing true suppressive activity,

To be sure, I think something like long lines and the degree of inconvenience/burden is absolutely a factor that should go into finding the right policy with respect to election administration. Maybe you have in person or mail in early voting options. Maybe you have laws providing special employee rights on election day. Maybe you invest in more polling stations. Maybe you have drop boxes for ballots and you just make them available, unmonitored, at the library or just send them to a voter's email or address using lists that are never updated so that no one is accidentally "disenfranchised" despite the numerous other ways to vote. Each of these policy options has a different cost to judge against its benefit.

But it is a contiuum, and that's kind of why I am participating in this thread. You can't construct an election system which has zero burden on a voter. It is all a matter of degree. There are two principles which most of us agree with: eligible voters wanting to vote should be able to vote (once) and ineligible voters shouldn't be able to vote; election administration policies that often put these equal principles at odds because creating greater ease sacrifices integrity and creating greater integrity increases voter burden. Once every one gets this, the debate is less understood in hyperbolic "threat to democracy" rhetoric and better understood as a largely "administrative" question where the right balance depends, in part, by tweaks based on shifting behaviors, expectations, new information, shifting technology, and competence in administration. There are many ways to run elections, all are imperfect, only some terrible.

My question for you is, would you agree that more votes cast in an election will produce better results regardless of the "quality" of the votes (though not random voting), as the votes of single issue voters will at least capture the will of the electorate better than if those votes were not cast?

I don't know, because I am not sure how thick the line is between randomness and "quality".

I also think that the single issue voter thing (which is quite prominent) when combined with increasing intra-party orthodoxy by which the parties become a package of issues makes it hard for the system to translate the views of the median voters into government policy. To be sure, the parties orthodoxies do change over time (its a different bundle of policies each election), but its always orthodoxies that shift as opposed to heterodoxy within parties. This might be an intractable feature of party systems. Where single issues are not necessarily connected to broader governing philosophies about the right level of government services, government priorities, taxation, and at the national level, defense and trade policy, but the single issues are the things that cause people to vote, they may get what they want on the single issue but be buying into the party's bundle of goods with respect to philosophy they'd otherwise lean towards. Now its true that not all general philosophy points line up neatly, either, but there is a stronger correlation between lower taxes and government shouldn't try to solve so many problems and often is the problem than there is between lower taxes and abortion rights or gun rights (two big single issue voter motivators in the USA).