There’s a lot of chatter here that reads to me as confused or jumping the gun re “voter suppression / election integrity” and charges of “racism.”
I think the claims (that many here find utterly preposterous) are pretty simple to explain and keep basic:
Every political party will do what they can to win elections.
If political party X believes that a particular group of people — call them group A — will not vote for them (or not vote enough for them), then you can be damn sure you’ll find party X recommends policies that end up making it harder for group A to vote.
Opposing political party Y could then leap to the claim “you’re discriminating against group A!” and they’d likely be happy to exaggerate this or overstate it in the interest of making their opponent look bad, maybe adding in “you must really hate group A!”
(this seems to describe the situation most of you smartie pants are obsessed with, where X = republicans, Y = dems and A = black or minority voters. But it also can describe other situationsX =Dems, A = military personnel and Y = republicans. )
the simple truth is that republicans don’t actually give a sh*t about “election integrity” or “voter fraud,” they just want policies that help them win elections. The exact same is true of Democrats; they don’t actually care about widespread civic engagement, as they claim; they simply want more voter turnout because research indicates it helps them.
And as distasteful as this can be, it’s also 100% rational.
Evidently, a general rule of thumb or piece of conventional political wisdom is that larger voter turnout favors dems and restricted turn out favors repubs (though this is NOT a hard and fast rule). You can be damned sure that if the rule of thumb had this flipped then each party would be making the others’ arguments.
(side note: and I am not saying smaller or restricted turn out is inherently bad; one can make an excellent defense of this position, noting that really only those actually knowledgeable about and concerned with issues should vote. Achieving this would require lowering voter turn out.)
So do I think voter ID laws are racist? Well, not explicitly. But they are pursued by repubs because these laws could help the secure elections, and repubs simply don’t care if that does or does not disproportionately impact black people or other minority voters. The poorest among us are disproportionately not white, and it’s those folks who are more likely to be kept from voting because of voter ID laws. The republicans know this and support it because, again quite simply, it helps them.
Dems are just as sh*tty / rational on this point, too.
the history of voter suppression in our country is fascinating and implicates ALL parties. Here is a pre-2016 piece on this
How Dems Suppress Votes
I suppose my “point” here is to effing relax on the extreme-sounding reactions to these claims of racism or, better yet, stop repeating the political talking point that repubs care about anything other than winning (and again same for Dems on their BS “we want more people to vote cuz it’s good for the country!”)
so a bunch of people claim your voting policies are racist? So what? They kind of are and they kind of aren’t. Deal with the baggage like grown ups.
ETA : I think I fixed that link so that it points to an actual article.
