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  • handing people water while in line does not support a specific party

    So, you're right on the merits, but you're wrong on the political strategy.

    Long lines are a deliberate consequence of under-supplied polling locations. And under-supplied polling locations are a result of disenfranchisement efforts by incumbents. By subverting the intent of the incumbents to discourage voting, you are de facto in support of anti-incumbency candidates and are therefore breaking the spirit of the law.

    You'll note that the long-line polling locations also tend to be over-policed and over-surveilled precisely for the purpose of identifying edge-cases that violate the law and prosecuting it. Neighborhoods with richer and more incumbent-friendly voters tend to have a police presence more fixated on hedging out anti-incumbent protesters and keeping out people not registered to vote in these wealthy enclaves.

    • I just don't agree with your assertion that voter disenfranchisement efforts are necessarily a function of an incumbent party. There are many politicians who want people to vote even if it's not for them.

      • There are many politicians who want people to vote even if it’s not for them.

        I've never met a politician that's spent money or resources turning out voters for the opposition.

        I'll spot you that plenty of politicians are blasie about losing or so overconfident that they don't see their defeat coming. Consequently, they don't work to undermine election integrity deliberately. But any instance in which a politician or party seeks to disenfranchise the voting pool, it is consistently in defense of their partisan self-interest.

        • "There’s no such thing as a vote that doesn’t matter. It all matters.”— Barack Obama

          “To vote is like the payment of a debt, a duty never to be neglected, if its performance is possible.” –Rutherford B. Hayes

          “The future of this republic is in the hands of the American voter.” –Dwight D. Eisenhower

          “Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.” – Abraham Lincoln

          “The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.” –Lyndon B. Johnson

          “Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves, and the only way they could do this is by not voting.” –Franklin D. Roosevelt

          • “To vote is like the payment of a debt, a duty never to be neglected, if its performance is possible.” –Rutherford B. Hayes

            Jesus Christ. Imagine knowing enough history to dig this quote out of the dumpster fire that is the Hayes legacy and neglecting HOW HE BECAME PRESIDENT.

            • That's not really the point under discussion, is it?

              You said there were no politicians who would advocate for voting in general. I just googled up a bunch of quotes to the contrary. I'm sure I could find governers, senators, mayors too but I was focusing on presidents.

              In fact, in regards to Hayes, Bush Trump - isn't losing the popular, but taking the presidency due to process actually an excellent case for more voter rights and less restrictions on the voting process?

              And what the hell does the Compromise of 1877 have to do with giving voters water?

              Once again, because I feel like you're derailing here by attempting to drag this discussion into 200 year old minutiae, should we not be able to make voting an easy, relaxing, simple, comfortable process and isn't that better for society?

              • You said there were no politicians who would advocate for voting in general.

                And you've provided no exceptions. All of these guys preceded over expansive and thorough voter suppression. 2010 was a high water mark for gerrymandering and voter caging under Obama. When he wasn't placidly abiding by Red State governors demolishing voting rights, he was actively complicit in defunding and denigrating outreach groups (specifically ACORN, although there were quite a few others) that sought to enfranchise more people.

                Hayes ended Reconstruction and turned the southern states over entirely to a century of white nationalism. Our modern system of majority black neighborhoods enduring six hour voting lines where reactionaries can accuse people of fraud for handing out bottles of water could be traced precisely to this moment in history. But that just leads us into the next name on the list.

                Eisenhower and his hatchet man Nixon perpetuated enormous deliberate disenfranchisement as part of the Southern Strategy.

                Lincoln is probably the strongest name on your list, on account of the 13th amendment, if you ignore the machine politics that got him over the line to begin with. Cooping was a common practice in both parties and was instrumental to swinging both his national campaign and the midterms that gave him a Radical Republican majority. Also, don't ask how many votes the Native Americans got while he was purging them from western territories.

                Lyndon Johnson was almost certainly involved in voter fraud in his 1948 Senate primary and only escaped indictment on technicality.

                I'm not even sure why FDR is on the list, given that he was a Democratic President elected in the thick of Jim Crow.

                None of these political leaders was fussy about winning a rigged game. All of them benefited - either through active malice or complicity - in pursuit of their political ends. And you can definitely argue the necessity of these underhanded tactics given the alternatives. But you can't - with any amount of seriousness or credibility - claim that any of these candidates seriously supported enfranchising their opposition.

                Once again, because I feel like you’re derailing here by attempting to drag this discussion into 200 year old minutiae

                If you consider some of the most pivotal elections in US history and the means by which they were won "minutiae"...

                • I mean they still advocated for everyone voting in general.

                  You can do that if you're confident you can win. Which is why the gerrymandering apes could do it. But they still did it, because they knew they didn't have to worry about the election, so they could say the right thing, even if it isn't what they did. Because advocating for everyone voting you makes you seem confident, and the perception of the people would be "must be an honest man" instead of "oh shit they're that confident, how have they fixed this system I know to be crooked".

                  Or that's how I perceived this conversation of you guys.

                  Tldr you're both right essentially

61 comments