Quote of the Day
Reminder…
Any political party trying to make it impossible to detect voter fraud is sending a clear message — they can’t win on their ideas alone.
Cynical Publius @CynicalPublius
Posted on X, May 8, 2026
This was in response to:
Reminder…
Any political party trying to make it harder to vote is sending a clear message — they can’t win on their ideas alone.
Robert Reich @RBReich
Posted on X, May 8, 2026
There can be some truth in both statements. As is nearly always the case there are tradeoffs involved.
In our current situation it is clear to me that a particular political party cares more about making it difficult to detect fraud than it does about it presenting good ideas.
The original statement isn’t particularly accurate. If it said “…make it hard” it might be. But “harder” could simply be things like “must vote in person unless excused” or “must vote on election day”. Both of these are standard practice throughout the world, in many countries generally considered “democratic” by the cognoscenti. For example, while I don’t know today’s practice, I remember growing up in Holland that they had a single election day, with paper ballots marked by hand, and hardly any absentee voting. And it’s well known that European countries count ballots and report results in a matter of hours — with all those paper ballots.
Handling ballots is hard only if you deliberately make it so. “Voting machines” serve no real need — but they sure facilitate fraud. For example, when you “pull the lever” on an old style voting machine in a big city, what reason do you have to believe that your action will be reflected in the reported numbers? None whatsoever.
Both methods CAN be used to alter vote outcomes.
The thing the left cannot allow itself to know is that every vote suppressed is exactly equal to every fraudulent vote in terms of how much they alter the vote outcome. They are equally bad.
But they are not equally bounded. Suppression has a natural and unavoidable cap – it is *taking away* votes, and there are only so many.
Fraud is unbounded. Oh, sure, if you returned MUCH more than the population of the area, people would eventually notice… but if you carefully bump those numbers over years, there is no hard upper bound.
And we’ve already had cases where, with same-day registration, districts have had “voter turnout” of over 200% of the numbers of voters registered before election day, and……. nothing happened.
The other advantage fraud has over suppression is that, unless you are suppressing the votes manually after the fact (which is a “who counts the votes” problem, not actually a voter suppression problem), your suppression is inherently imperfectly targeted – you suppress some who wold vote the way you want.
With fraud, in all but the least controlled methods, you have either nearly direct or completely direct control of who gets those fraudulent votes.
In short, fraud is, in practice, more damaging that suppression. We have also spent several decades removing every possible barrier to voting that can be removed – suppression is not where the problems are, today.
While fraud is a massive problem, and has been for at least 2 decades that I’m aware of by explicit examples.
“cares more about making it difficult to detect fraud”
What makes you think that’s what’s in their head? Because what they *say* is that there’s so little evidence of actual fraud that the benefit of the new policies Republicans want are far outweighed by the cost, namely unfairly disenfranchising legitimate voters.
And if we stay out of the psychic realm for a bit and continue with explicit actions, surely the push by Republicans to gerrymander their states into Republican-only states has to be added to the equation when talking about election fraud? They’re not even hiding their logic. And you’ve seen my recent post where they want to kill the 14th amendment (which gave slaves the right to vote, among other things).
White Christian nationalists take the “white” part very seriously, and are actively trying to disenfranchise non-white voters. We have so much more clear evidence of that, including out of their own mouths, than any kind of significant voter fraud that it’s not really even a race…. (pardon the pun).
The only people who say they don’t see evidence of massive vote fraud are liars and people who have deliberately not looked at or for such evidence for some reason.
Dems have gerrymandered districts for a LONG time as well. It’s a wicked practice, but a bipartisan one. Look at the NE, with a 40% R population and roughly zero representation. It’ll get worse before it gets better, as modern databases and computer algos can min/max a district just about any way you want it. Hopefully it’ll push for a law or constitutional amendment to force more reasonable / rational / fair / balanced /stable districts. for example, in a 55/45 state with seven reps, make two “safe dem” seats, two “safe repub” seats, and three legit tossup districts.
Why do you hate people who love their own heritage, and don’t want to become a hated and discriminated minority in their own country (but only if they are white)?
“Why do you hate people who love their own heritage…”
It’s not hatred, it’s a well calibrated understanding of how tribalism works and a knowledge of history, plus the basic belief that pride in things you didn’t accomplish yourself is irrational. You didn’t make yourself white. You didn’t make yourself Christian (statistically, I don’t know you personally). Being proud of those things is as irrational as being proud of having 10 toes.
“…and don’t want to become a hated and discriminated minority in their own country”
If you think white people are hated and discriminated against in the U.S. you’re watching too much TV. There are certainly folks in minority groups who’ve worked to try and vilify white people, and in Seattle “white guilt” is serious disease. But outside the liberal strongholds it’s entirely without merit to say that white people are “hated and discriminated against” in anything other than anecdote.
But outside the liberal strongholds it’s entirely without merit to say that white people are “hated and discriminated against” in anything other than anecdote.
But what about INSIDE those liberal strongholds? Are white people in the big cities more deserving of being hated and discriminated against in their own country?
Also, the policies and laws enacted by the population centers also apply in the rural areas. When racial discrimination becomes law, it doesn’t only affect people in the cities, even if it’s only the cities’ representatives that vote for it.
“If you think white people are hated and discriminated against in the U.S. you’re watching too much TV.”
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
The discrimination against white people has been extremely well documented and is very public.
The violence against white people *for being white* is not only public, but not uncommonly in headlines, in the form of direct quotes from people approving of it or advocating for it.
When a black criminal dies of an OD, we have a national freakout, throw the nearest (white) police officer in jail, and berate white people for their sin of being white. We put up murals about the innocent Saint Criminal all over the place.
When a black man viciously murders a random white person in public for the crime of being white and walks off bragging about killing a white person we… largely ignore it, remove the mural somebody put up in memory of the murdered white person, and heaven forbid anybody actually wants to hold the murderer responsible.
“It’s not hatred, it’s a well calibrated understanding of how tribalism works and a knowledge of history”
If you did actually have that understanding, you would be surprised white people have managed to hold off on that tribalism this long. Being publicly vilified and blamed for every ill in society creates a people group bond well, usually fairly quickly and strong.
And if you say “White people aren’t publicly vilified”, I and every sane person with any experience in this country will laugh at your absurd disconnection from reality, and a few of us might bother to take the time to list a few thousand headlines doing *exactly and explicitly* that (which would still be a very small minority of said headlines) – I wouldn’t waste the time, but someone might.
If you actually BELIEVE that, I would literally worry about you being out in public with that level of psychosis.
Why are you so bigoted against White people?
Why are you so bigoted against Christians?
Easy: I’m not. What I am is aware that there is a group of white people who happen to be Christian who think that they are superior to other people based both on their race and their religion, and that’s obviously false. It doesn’t take a deep reading of history to realize white Christian nationalism is a cancer.
Do you have the same disdain for people advocating for black/Latino/etc. pride/power/etc.?
Yep. You had nothing to do with being black, or white, or gay, or straight, or having 10 toes, or processing oxygen with lungs. Those are just your biological reality. Being “proud” of those characteristics is irrational.
That said, I understand why they use that term: living in a society that tells you you’re not fully human, mentally inferior, or just mentally ill, it makes sense that you’d band together with others and say “No, in fact I’m fully human and perfectly fine, thanks very much.” But that doesn’t sound-bite well, so they shorten it to “pride.”
“That said, I understand why they use that term: living in a society that tells you you’re not fully human, mentally inferior, or just mentally ill, it makes sense that you’d band together with others and say “No, in fact I’m fully human and perfectly fine, thanks very much.” But that doesn’t sound-bite well, so they shorten it to “pride.”
Which is exactly what you’re telling us is cancerous when white people (who actually do the work, instead of sucking off the commie system.) do it.
And I’m sorry but you can’t separate “White Christian Nationalism” up into three different parts because you lost the argument.
Cause that whole “White Christian Nationalism” is and never was a real problem, anywhere/anytime. It’s bought and paid for SPLC BS.
All of it.
Summary of John: I’m not X, now let me demonstrate how X I am.
I’m not against white people or Christians, they’re just a cancer.
Yep, very convincing, John.
Except you’re straw manning me with a misquote. I said “white Christian nationalism.” That’s a very specific thing (they have membership cards and everything, depending on which branch you adhere to), and is different than white people or Christians individually.
“Easy: I’m not. What I am is aware that there is a group of white people who happen to be Christian who think that they are superior to other people based both on their race and their religion, and that’s obviously false. It doesn’t take a deep reading of history to realize white Christian nationalism is a cancer.”
Typical for an AI communist chat-bot to confuse itself. Your equivocations are once again pure BS.
Your trying to confuse human power structures with actual race or religion.
No where in the New Testament does Jesus mention one thing about race.
He said his family were the “Hearers and the do’er of his word.” And he said that over his own family.
That’s the pre-requisite to be a Christian. And absolutely nothing to do with color or where your from.
What fallen evil humans do with whatever religion they infest? Is just a natural part of being a fallen human. Comes with the territory.
But don’t drag Christ into your ignorant crap. If you were as well educated as you think you are, you would know that.
As for “White Christian nationalism” is a cancer.
Here is your problem.
As stated above, you can’t have Christian nationalism. You can have white nationalism, just like you can have nationalism in any nation on earth. Even the Cherokee to the jewish nations can.
(Which is always/only a problem for communist grifters. Not anyone else.)
And as for “White” being a cancer?
Only someone completely devoid of logic, understanding, and education would say such a thing.
The racism you accuse everyone of is nothing more than a natural self-preservation mechanism built in us by God himself.
And everyone, especially you are up to their nostrils with it. And only a grifter communist would bring such a thing up as being a “problem”.
Ask Irena Zaroska about racism and the ignorance of forgetting it’s natural part of life.
As for whites in general.
We built the modern world.
Good, bad, indifferent. Doesn’t change the facts.
And all the other races combined contributed little other than labor. And damn little of that.
To this F-ing day!
Now I understand how hard it is for communist mind to grasp that. Cause most of you never had to build anything in your life.
But my father said it best. And this was white Christian culture if you will for 1,000’s of years. When he said. “I’m going to leave a better place for my sons.”
And that was a man who was a sharecropper in the Imperial Valley (below sea level and hotter than hell) at age 12 during the depression.
That was a man who was swing a 10lb. broad axe at age14 to make 8×8 solid oak railroad ties, piece work. They had to be straight and square to get paid. Or starve.
He taught that commitment to his sons. Doesn’t matter what others do. You go to work and build. Do what’s right.
We followed in his steps and there is NOT one part of this society we his sons have not left better than what we found. And generally with a bright new shiny factory or building you just take for granted.
You whiny commie rats want to call that kind of sacrifice a cancer? Cause that’s what you are trying to suck the life out of. You and your invading bitchy friends.
Take your commie crap propaganda and go live in Africa. Without anti-biotics.
Man-up and start living by your convictions for once.
“Because what they *say* is that there’s so little evidence of actual fraud that the benefit of the new policies Republicans want are far outweighed by the cost, namely unfairly disenfranchising legitimate voters.”
From experience, NO amount of evidence is enough to change their minds on “very little evidence”. The “see no evil” monkey doesn’t see any evidence.
Of course, the Democrats have also put significant effort into preventing there being evidence, so the evidence we have is IN SPITE of that, which is impressive.
For bonus points, the claims of “disenfranchisement” are among the most openly racist things in American today – “poor, stupid little black people are too stupid and lazy to get an ID, which is also required for 17,429 other things in our society, but instead of helping them get ID, we’ll just exclude them from all of those things and open up voting”.
“And if we stay out of the psychic realm for a bit and continue with explicit actions, surely the push by Republicans to gerrymander their states into Republican-only states has to be added to the equation when talking about election fraud?”
This is “tit for tat” – the Democrats have already gerrymandered the CRAP out of most of the states they control. *Of course*, NOBODY gerrymandering would be nicer, yes. Inherently, Republicans can’t stop it in states they don’t control.
As usual, your complaint is about those shooting BACK.
“White Christian nationalists take the “white” part very seriously, and are actively trying to disenfranchise non-white voters.”
Of course they are. And when those people make up more than 0.whatever% of the Republican voters, that might even matter.
Agreed. In my opinion, the fact that ANY cause to believe fraud has happened ANYWHERE is enough reason for a full audit of the election and the voting systems of the various States.
It doesn’t matter if it “wasn’t enough to affect the outcome,” as claimed. If there’s no investigation, how the Hell do you know it “wasn’t enough to affect the outcome”? (And it might not have been enough to affect the outcome THERE, in that place. But what about all the other places where fraud was alleged but all attempts to look at it were shut down?)
It’s a question of, “Just how ‘raped’ were you, Mrs. Smith?”
If they investigate — and I mean, really look into all facets and all ballots — and find there’s not enough evidence to proceed, then great. I’ll accept that outcome.
But unless and until they do investigate, we won’t know. And that’s a giant question mark that should not exist on any election results.
Only one party is vehemently opposed to investigating. As the saying goes, if they have nothing to fear, they should have nothing to hide. (And no, the 4th Amendment does NOT swing both ways. Government officials acting in their official capacity on behalf of We The People — such as every election board refusing to even glance at the issue — do not enjoy the same Constitution-enshrined rights We The People enjoy.)
As an analogy, imagine a law enforcement agency refusing to investigate a possible homicide — saying they just know it’s an accidental death but also saying they haven’t looked at it and won’t look at it — and all the while we know the suspect(s) they might have to name is one or more of their own officers. Would we accept that?
Or: The local chief of police was pulled over for driving erratically, and upon opening his window smelled strongly of whiskey, couldn’t focus his eyes, and was slurring his speech. But he refused a Breathalyzer on-scene and a blood alcohol test later, and the department is flat-out refusing to investigate the possible DUI or charge him because he says he wasn’t drinking. Would we accept that?
I say: No, we wouldn’t; we’d want and demand answers. Answers based on objective evidence and testimony given under oath and penalty of perjury.
So why is it okay to just NOT look into it when we’re talking about national elections?
(To be clear, I’m not an “election denier”; I just refuse to accept “We don’t know, so we say it ended like this,” as the conclusion. There’s enough testimony — and in some cases, evidence — that the 2020 election was “less than fair” that it needs to be investigated fully, if for no other reason than the peace of mind for those of us in the middle.)
“If there’s no investigation”
Seriously? Ask your favorite search engine or AI for a list of investigations and/or investigating bodies, and you get a list of government agencies a mile long including the FBI, DOJ, and CISA, and that doesn’t even include the *state* agencies running their own investigations.
The 2024 election was one of the most scrutinized elections in history. There is literally nobody outside of election deniers saying “we don’t know.”
“Ask your favorite search engine or AI for a list of investigations and/or investigating bodies, and you get a list of government agencies a mile long including the FBI, DOJ, and CISA, and that doesn’t even include the *state* agencies running their own investigations.”
And when you look at what they “investigated”, most of them opened an investigation, asked a few questions, got answers like “we didn’t keep that data”, and closed the investigation saying, in effect, “Oh well.”
It’s like the lawsuits filed about 2020 – most of them were thrown out for “standing” and such things. The courts were DESPERATE to find ways to not rule on that stuff.
(Oh, and the cases that WEREN’T thrown out like that, the Republicans won well over half of. Hmm.)
“There is literally nobody outside of election deniers saying “we don’t know.””
Well, we know what happened in several places, like Georgia, where the state was flipped very obviously with fraud, right there on CC TV for everyone to watch and….. NOTHING was done about it.
Delay, delay, delay, delay… and now he’s sworn in and we can’t do anything about it. Oh well!
So yeah, that “investigation” is really helpful when nothing is actually DONE about it.
2024 was scrutinized specifically because 2020 wasn’t.
As Deoxy pointed out, most of the “investigations” were agencies asking a few questions, being told there were no records retained (really? in a number of close elections that could have gone to a hand-recount, they didn’t keep the ballots as required by law? why not? and why were the investigators okay with that?), and not pressing further.
Again, it’s like the local police chief being caught driving under the influence, refusing all tests (which he does not have a legal right to refuse), and the next morning after he’s sobered up, everyone looking at the situation, seeing no “official” records or evidence, and shrugging with an “Oh, well.”
And no, saying “We don’t know” is not denying the 2020 election. Saying “The Democrats cheated, Trump actually won in 2020,” is election denial.
But I’m not saying that, am I?
In another context, a “climate change denier” says “The climate is not changing.” A climate change skeptic says “The climate is always changing, but we don’t know how much of the current change is caused by nature vs. caused by human activity. This needs more research.” There’s a subtle difference there.
However, if it makes you feel better to slap a label on me in order to make it easier to disregard my arguments, go ahead and call me an election denier. Or a Doubting Thomas, if you like. It doesn’t affect me one bit.
Speaking of election manipulation:
https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/was-the-2024-election-rigged/
Science just proved what we all suspected
Thom Hartmann
Alternet
. . .
It sure looks like tech billionaires and foreign dictatorships gave us Trump in 2024. This is as bad as the massive Russian bot presence on Facebook and Twitter back in 2016, which Robert Mueller documented gave Trump the presidency that time.
A peer-reviewed study released Thursday in Nature, the world’s most prestigious scientific journal, has finally put hard numbers to what a lot of us suspected the moment the 2024 election was called for Trump (and Republicans in Congress) by the big networks: the algorithms that control our largest social media platforms intentionally and explicitly tilted the playing field, and they tilted it for Donald Trump and the GOP.
Researchers at New York University Abu Dhabi created hundreds of “sock puppet” TikTok accounts in New York, Texas, and Georgia (via VPN), uploaded to them either pro-Democratic or pro-Republican videos to show their political leanings, and then watched what TikTok’s algorithm fed back to them every day over the 27 weeks leading up to Election Day.
Across more than 280,000 recommendations, Republican-seeded accounts received about 11.5 percent more “party-aligned content” than their Democratic counterparts, while the pro-Democratic accounts were force-fed 7.5 percent more attacks from the other side. As Professor Talal Rahwan put it:
“The algorithm wasn’t just giving people what they want; it was giving one side more of what the other side says about them.”
The pro-rightwing bias was even more dramatic when researchers looked at how the candidates’ own accounts did. Candidate Trump’s official TikTok videos were pushed to Democratic-leaning users 27 percent of the time, while Kamala Harris’s videos only reached Republican-leaning users just 15.3 percent of the time.
Translation: Leading up to the 2024 election, TikTok was working overtime to expose Democrats and lefties to MAGA’s most persuasive messaging, all while shielding rightwingers, independents, and Republican voters from Harris’s voice.
Making it even more astonishingly consequential, studies show that TikTok matters enormously to young people; roughly half of TikTok users under 30 say they use the app to keep up with politics and news, and that TikTok-engaged demographic shifted a mind-boggling full 10 percentage points toward Trump between 2020 and 2024 following this exposure.
Young men, for example, flipped from voting 56 percent Biden in 2020 to 56 percent choosing Trump in 2024, the kind of swing that decides battleground states.
Even more troubling, other research shows that TikTok isn’t an outlier. It’s one piece of a much larger algorithm-run social media ecosystem, and that system is now the main way a plurality of Americans engage with politics. Pew Research, for example, found that 42 percent of US social media users consider these platforms “important” for getting involved in political and social issues, and almost none of them have any idea how the top-secret social media algorithms decide what they see.
Sometimes it’s so obvious that it’s surprising it’s not a bigger news story.
Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology found a “structural break for Musk’s metrics around July 13th, 2024,” the exact day Elon Musk endorsed Trump. Overnight, algorithm-driven view counts on Musk’s own X posts jumped 138 percent and retweets exploded 237 percent, far above what any other major account experienced.
And it wasn’t just Musk’s own posts that got the boost; other pro-MAGA, pro-white supremacy, pro-GOP right-wing accounts across X were also systematically amplified. A separate peer-reviewed field experiment published this year in Nature randomly assigned active US users to either an algorithmic or chronological X feed for seven weeks. The result — what could only be called successful brainwashing of those being fed posts by the X algorithm — was astonishing.
The scientists noted that those on the algorithmic feed shifted “towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump, and views on the war in Ukraine.”
And once people are initially convinced of a worldview, changing their mind is a huge and usually unsuccessful undertaking, which is why rightwing billionaires were so eager to fund Charlie Kirk and other programs to indoctrinate schoolkids. Switching back to a chronological feed didn’t undo the damage.
This was on top of the roughly $277 million Musk personally spent electing Trump and Republicans, $239 million of it through his America PAC, making him by a wide margin the largest individual donor of the 2024 cycle.
Then there’s Mark Zuckerberg. After spending a decade telling Congress that Meta was politically neutral, Zuckerberg watched Trump win, metaphorically dropped to his knees, and immediately killed the fact-checking systems on Facebook and Instagram that kept identifying and calling out Trump’s and Republicans’ lies and misrepresentations.
Like a loyal puppy (or a terrified rabbit), Zuck called Trump’s reelection “a cultural tipping point,” wrote a $1 million check to Trump’s inaugural slush fund, replaced his head of global policy with longtime Bush-era Republican Joel Kaplan, and then announced he was moving Meta’s trust-and-safety operation from California to Texas. Meta’s institutional pivot toward Trump and MAGA wasn’t even subtle.
YouTube — also largely owned and run by right-wing billionaires — isn’t innocent either. A UC Davis audit using 100,000 sock-puppet accounts found that right-leaning users get systematically funneled into channels pushing rightwing extremism, conspiracy theories, and hard-right “otherwise problematic content,” while left-leaning users see nothing comparable.
A separate Brookings analysis found that YouTube’s algorithm tugs every user, regardless of where they start, “in a moderately conservative direction.”
(continues online)
Was any of that illegal? Was any of that different in kind than paid advertising, billboards, and appearances on campuses, television, and radio?
I doubt any was illegal now that we have Citizens United. But it reinforces my assertion that we need to not have billionaires: you can’t claim you believe in freedom for the common man while at the same time focusing power in a small number of people who have enough money to buy the government they want.
So you think Citizens United was wrongly decided? Do you also think the general population is so weak minded they can not determine truth from falsity in a free speech environment?
“So you think Citizens United was wrongly decided?”
Yes, but then I also think the general principle of “corporations are people” is stupid as well, and Citizens United leans heavily on that. There’s a whole body of law that I think is deeply corrupt and set upon rotten foundations.
“Do you also think the general population is so weak minded they can not determine truth from falsity in a free speech environment?”
Do you believe advertising works? Speech, free or otherwise, can be used for manipulation, advertising being a primary illustration of that. Cognitive scientists make their careers illustrating how we have a whole brain-full of cognitive biases and weaknesses that lead us to believe things that aren’t true, and show how we can be manipulated into actions we wouldn’t otherwise have taken. We are all, every one of us, “weak minded.”
A couple good books on the subject:
https://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-So-Smart/dp/1592407366/ref=sr_1_1
https://www.amazon.com/People-Believe-Weird-Things-Pseudoscience/dp/0805070893/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0
So, you think you have a better understanding of the case and the constitution than the majority of SCOTUS. Good to know.
Yes, advertising can be effective. And?
Are you suggesting advertising be banned from elections?
“So, you think you have a better understanding of the case and the constitution than the majority of SCOTUS. Good to know.”
Are you saying you can’t think of any SCOTUS cases decided in a way *you* think were wrong? SCOTUS isn’t infallible, and even us mere mortals can point out when the emperor has no clothes.
“Are you suggesting advertising be banned from elections? ”
No, I was using that as an example of how easily manipulated we are as humans. Responding to your “weak minded” characterization.
Blah- blah-blah.
And Joe Biden got 81 millions votes and never left his basement.
Let me say it again. Trump is a New York liberal. Bought and paid for and as treasonous as you and Nancy Pelosi are.
That’s why our forefathers gave us a republic. With first laws the rich and powerfully ignorant couldn’t get around through voting.
(So you’all just took reading comprehension out of schools. Well played.)
But there isn’t going to be anyone in elected office that isn’t bought and paid for.
That just the reality of a dying empire.
And the blood suckers it attracts
But then you already know all that. As you and Trump probably both get a regular check from AIPAC?
Summary of all of that: How DARE anyone do for Trump what big portions of the left BRAGGED PUBLICLY about doing for Biden??!??!??!!!?!!??! (See Time magazine for that – “bolstering” an election.)
And of course, “right-wing” billionaires BAD, but LEFT-wing billionaires GOOD! Soros spends VAST sums of money on political stuff, more than all the rest, but that’s OK because… he supports the “proper” people.
So yeah, the usual double-standards and complaining about tit-for-tat, even if those claims WERE true (which is about as believable as Obama endorsing Trump).
You know….it NEEDS to be harder to vote. MUCH MUCH more difficult. That way we can weed out the countless brain dead idiots who vote for the STUPIDEST people and the STUPIDEST ideas. In fact not only should we demand proof of citizenship we should require an IQ test in order to vote. And anyone who believes a man can get pregnant is AUTOMATICALLY permanently disqualified from suffrage.
Well, when that policy is enacted you’ll definitely love the IQ test you get when liberals are in power….
They’re likely to doctor the “IQ test” into an “mental competency test,” such that if you appear too non-Woke, you’re not of sound mind and should be kept from voting.
The lesson: Never give yourself a political tool to wield against your opponents, that you wouldn’t want your opponents wielding against you when (not if) they regain power.
Neither side seems to learn this.
For all that we would all love only “intelligent” people to vote, having the state in charge of any such test is not just an invitation but an outright DEMAND for abuse. It would be happening by the time it was implemented the very first time.
But there are ways to make it harder to vote that have nothing to do with direct IQ tests and such. The old “land owner” method was a fairly decent method when this country was founded – not perfect (no such thing), but passable.
I don’t think that will work anymore, for several reasons, but some kind of “skin in the game” requirement seems… not just reasonable, but an actively good idea, even *required* in the long term. It’s what “landowner” was meant to be, I think – those who were *committed*, who couldn’t just going to up and leave at a moment’s notice.
That is to say, it’s not that we want “intelligent” people, per se (though it would be nice). What we want is people who have the right *incentives* – those who want this country to survive and do well… despite any official definition of what “doing well” means, since people can (and very much do) disagree on that.
Right now, we don’t have that, and it’s a problem.
I hope you’re sitting down, because on this we agree, the “skin in the game” side of things. If I had my way in order for your vote to count there’d have to be some evidence you knew what you were voting for. Just as getting citizenship requires you show you understand the culture and laws of the country, voting should require you to demonstrate you understand something about the issues and the people and the government itself.
Unfortunately such a test would be too easy to manipulate for partisan ends, so I don’t see it happening, but I like the idea.
” If I had my way in order for your vote to count there’d have to be some evidence you knew what you were voting for.”
Functionally impossible – just as abusable as the IQ test (as you point out).
The best I can come up with is “net taxpayer” – that is, have all social benefits officially given the value SPENT on them (which should be fairly difficult to game just TOO hard AND point out how badly managed that money is!), and if you haven’t paid enough taxes in the last the period to make up for it, you don’t vote. (Quick edit: this would be *by term of office*, so you’re not locked out forever until you pay back the benefits you got 20 years ago or anything. That would be a bad idea for multiple reasons.)
Now, the actual details would be difficult, but if you can’t support yourself for… well, *nearly* any reason, you should say, “Thank you for supporting me” and SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP, because the productive people are supporting you. THEY get to vote, and you get free stuff.
And since the government accepts donations (that is, you can pay more taxes than you owe), anyone who is close can just pay a little more to get over the line.
It’s not perfect, and, as I already pointed out, the actual details will be difficult (Social Security, for instance, would probably have to not count as a tax benefit, based on how it has been sold tot he public, and soldiers medically discharged would probably need to be exempt, that kind of thing), but conceptually, it works.
That’s “skin in the game”, without any policy opinions or “what would you vote for” questions involved.
I’ve thought about it for a long time, but I’m not remotely too proud not to listen to suggestions if someone has a better idea on how that might be done.
(Note: I have actually seen some ideas I think would be more *effective* but that have quite a bit less chance of ever becoming reality than this one, and this one is already **really really** hard to imagine this passing.)
In our current situation it is clear to me that a particular political party cares more about making it difficult to detect fraud than it does about it presenting good ideas.
RE: “presenting good ideas” — In my AO, there are a LOT of political candidates running in the primary, and the advertising runs across two different lines, depending on the party (and I’ll leave which party plays which message for the reader to determine):
1. “Fully supports the Trump agenda”
2. “Fully opposes the Trump agenda”
That’s it. There are variations in language, but that’s the gist. With one single exception, that’s all the messaging the primary candidates in my AO feel they need.
And I’m so sick of hearing about the “Trump agenda” that I’m willing to vote for the one exception just based on that alone. (That one exception is running as a political-outsider successful-businessman against a multi-term career politician; that’s what his ads say.)
On principle, whether or not I personally support or oppose President Trump, it comes down to this: Show me you have at least one original thought in your head and how it will benefit this State, instead of selling yourself as a mindless “yes-man” or “no-man”. Should be simple, but this round there’s only one guy who seems able to do it.
“Show me you have at least one original thought in your head and how it will benefit this State, instead of selling yourself as a mindless “yes-man” or “no-man”.”
I think there are plenty of people who would meet that criteria who nonetheless advertise as “MAGA” or “antiMAGA”, because bumper-sticker-or-smaller is what waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much of the electorate demands.
Like any other set of labels (Republican or Democrat, for instance), it doesn’t HAVE to mean that person is just a brainless soldier for the cause, it’s just shorthand for people who want the summary.
Any time there’s a division for any significant length of time, the factions get names. We got really dumb names this time, and it’s annoying, but otherwise, it’s not really any different than R v D, Red vs Blue, Yankee vs Reb, Left vs Right, etc, etc, ad nauseum.
After reading the actual opinion of cases that went differently than my preferences, I have never thought they were clearly wrong.