What did Democrats do wrong?

[dirtywick]

I suppose "what the Democrats did wrong" was fail to scold people like Alex enough?

Anyhow, it's not obvious how restricting voting to citizens is even about race, unless you're in an ethno-state.

In a modern, multiracial, & multiethnic society (like the U.S.) we don't make voting about race anymore; any rule against Canadians voting doesn't take their race or ethnicity into account, not even the ones who sound French.

i agree it's not obvious. but basically the idea is that by targeting minority voters they hurt the dems more than themselves, and by saying it's to keep illegals from voting in large numbers in an organized fraud by the dems, they get to take the moral high ground of protecting election integrity and attack their opponents for not caring about secure elections. when really, they're just tipping the scales in their favor.

which kind of hinges on whether or not you believe there is an organized plot by the dems to fill the ballot boxes with the votes of illegals, and whether or not the republicans have it in them to stoop to voter suppression.

the best piece of evidence is that the leader of the republican party engaged in election fraud in 2020, insisted on auditing a bunch of states as a part of his election fraud delay tactics, and in doing so didn't find any evidence of a bunch of illegals voting for the dems.

so that's kind of where i sit on that

 

[d4m10n]

i agree it's not obvious. but basically the idea is that by targeting minority voters they hurt the dems more than themselves

GOP operatives do indeed target minority voters, e.g. by packing them tightly in overwhelmingly ethnic districts as a first step in gerrymandering.

We were talking about i.d. laws, though, and those do not take race into account. You could make the case that certain groups are statistically more likely to have official i.d.'s than other groups, but I'll wager any analysis is going to reveal class to be much more predictive than race.

 

[dirtywick]

GOP operatives do indeed target minority voters, e.g. by packing them tightly in overwhelmingly ethnic districts as a first step in gerrymandering.

We were talking about i.d. laws, though, and those do not take race into account. You could make the case that certain groups are statistically more likely to have official i.d.'s than other groups, but I'll wager any analysis is going to reveal class to be much more predictive than race.

right, so those kind of tactics disproportionately effect minorities, which happen to lean dem. probably why they're doing it at all, certainly not because they're concerned about election integrity.

edit

i agree it's probably class that's more predictive than race. just so happens the extremely poor are also over represented by minorities.

 

[dirtywick]

if i could put it this way, if they were to say we don't hate black people, we're going after poor people. and i say, well an awful lot of those poor people you're disenfranchising are black which makes it a racist tactic, i feel like that's a fair statement. best i could do was they weren't trying to be racist, they're targeting other factors that just happen to end up effecting black people more. but accidentally racist is still racist isn't it?

 

[Random]

if i could put it this way, if they were to say we don't hate black people, we're going after poor people. and i say, well an awful lot of those poor people you're disenfranchising are black which makes it a racist tactic, i feel like that's a fair statement. best i could do was they weren't trying to be racist, they're targeting other factors that just happen to end up effecting black people more. but accidentally racist is still racist isn't it?

Ah, the old song of, "We're not disenfranchising black people because we hate black people. We are disenfranchising black people because they won't vote for us. Because we hate them. Totally different."

 

[arthwollipot]

Why is there so much overlap between black and poor, do you think?

I guess we'll never know. One of life's little mysteries.

 

[Pixel42]

which kind of hinges on whether or not you believe there is an organized plot by the dems to fill the ballot boxes with the votes of illegals, and whether or not the republicans have it in them to stoop to voter suppression.

If I was an illegal immigrant in the US the very last thing I would do is draw attention to myself by trying to vote, even before ICE turned into the gestapo Trump has made them. It's an enormous risk for a benefit which a large percentage of US citizens can't even be bothered to use.

Voter ID is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, causing real and unnecessary problems for many with a legitimate right to vote and motivation to do so.