Here’s a question. Is the current situation in which the Republicans are systematically trying to limit how many people can vote (and the Democrats are trying to make it easier for people to vote) a natural byproduct of America’s two-party system?
In other words, would it really ever be in the interests of a major political party to restrict voting in a multi-party system?
Since there is a political price to pay for nakedly trying to disenfranchise people, a political party would not make the effort unless they had the hope of a sufficient upside. In a strictly binary system, it might make sense. But in a system with, say, proportional representation and/or a prime minister, I’m doubtful that it would ever pay off enough to compensate for the way it alienates people.
But maybe it’s normal for a two-party system to develop in such a way that one party always benefits from higher turnout and one party always suffers. In such a system, the party that suffers will begin to doubt the worth of people’s right to vote, since that right imperils their hold on power.
What do you think?
That’s a really interesting question. More and more I suspect that the US has reached the end of what can be accomplished in a 2-party system. That it can lead to voter suppression is another straw on the camel’s back.
Yet every argument I can think of that might support the premise falls apart in my head due to lack of information about the variety of multi-party governments in the world and what forms voter suppression could conceivably take on.
This is the thing Republicans do that makes me the angriest. The anti-bortion stuff, warmongering, gun “rights” bullshit, etc, is more dangerous and worse. But this is what viscerally pisses me off the most. It is a direct attack on democracy that’s intertwined with the absolute worst aspects of our history.
Truly, they have no shame.
Your question requires not one but two premises. For voter suppression to make sense, you need not just a two-party system so that the game theory aspect applies, but you also need a system in which voter registration is not automatically conferred as part of citizenship. Like multi-party democracies, the US is almost alone among western democracies in not having this feature. I suspect it’s a direct outgrowth of slavery and especially Jim Crow – other countries, especially in places like Africa, have ethnic minorities that have been systematically prevented (or terrorized) from voting, but no other western democracy has this sort of bigotry as hard-wired into its political system as the US does. The closest analog is the disenfranchisement of native peoples in Canada and Australia (as well as some parts of the US and Latin America), but the numbers, by comparison to African-Americans and now Latinos in the US, are small.
There are ways to monkey with turnout that don’t rely on suppressing voter registration, and we see those here, too – restricting voting hours or ballot booth access, electronic vote fraud or other ways to subvert the vote count, etc. – but suppressing or invalidating voter registration is by far the easiest and affects the most people. Make registration universal and it goes away. That’s a big reason why it isn’t universal here.
no, it’s a by-product of one party being a white supremacy party.
What political price? GOP partisans applaud and I question whether a single issue would sway independents. Any loss in the voting booth due to independents rejecting the GOP would be countered with the reduction of opponent voters kept from voting.
Just why the hell do you think the GOP is doing this? There is no down side.
The white ruling class has never been interested in democracy. I’m surprised you even pose such a question knowing the history of voting in this country. Every progression on voting rights has had to be fought for and this is no different. Is it the last gasp of a dying breed? One can only hope. The quicker they are marginalized the better. The fact that they are working against themselves, even better.
As far as sufficient upside, I’m not seeing it. If there is it would only be temporary. This goes back to the post yesterday about rhetoric. The lying and b.s. can only take them so far. It’s just another arm of the monster that is the GOP. After the Great Depression they were sent wandering in the wilderness, all the while planning the return, until people forgot about what they did and got comfortable with the messaging, now they’ll do anything to hang onto that power. It is my hope that the populace awakens from it’s coma and sends them wandering to extinction.
Disenfranchisement is something that occurs when a party is capturing single-party control of a jurisdiction. And it is not just the other party’s voters who are targets; it is also possible primary constituencies that might challenge the establishment of the majority party.
It is a symptom of an establishment close enough to a one-party state in that jurisdiction and trying to consolidate a permanent grip on power.
It worked for Democrats in the South for 90 years. Republicans in the South and elsewhere are trying to lock in their gains even as those gains start receding.
Labor laws have had the same effect in disenfranchising workers in elections about representation.
Canada’s conservative party is running disenfranchisement efforts straight from the GOP playbook:
A party that tries to make voting rights as universal as possible cares about Democracy.
A party that tries to suppress any many voters who don’t support them is a party that is attempting to bring back aristocracy/feudalism and the divine right of Kings.
The way to tell that the media is conservative is that they don’t report on this every single time one of these laws are brought up and voted upon, or ruled unconstitutional time and time again.