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> Voter ID laws have different outcomes based on economic status. It’s especially difficult for poor people to exercise their rights. Increasingly, Republicans

> Voter ID laws have different outcomes based on economic status. It’s especially difficult for poor people to exercise their rights. Increasingly, Republicans are the party of the poor and Democrats the party of the rich. In the 2020 election, "the wealthiest parts of the country overwhelmingly voted for Biden and the poorest overwhelmingly for Trump". [0] In 2016, "the Republican Party won almost twice the share of votes in the nation’s most destitute counties — home to the poorest 10 percent of Americans — than it won in the richest". [1] If voter ID requirements are all about suppressing the vote of the poor, does this mean that Democrats will start supporting them and Republicans start opposing them, now that the vote of the poor skews increasingly more Republican than Democratic? Or, could it be, that very many poor Americans have no trouble getting ID, and even support voter ID requirements? Increasingly, even many poor minority voters vote Republican. Trump made significant gains in the 2020 election in Hispanic majority counties of southern Texas – which are also among the poorest areas in the state. [2] [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-2020-election-revealed-divide-in-american-dream-2020-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-2020-election-reveal... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/27/business/economy/republican-party-voters-income.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/27/business/econ... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/28/republicans-south-texas-primary/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/28/republica...

mulmen 4y ago
Or maybe the Republicans are better at voter suppression and that's why you don't see the poor Democratic voters?
- skissane 4y ago
  I cited a NY Times article on how poor Americans are increasingly voting Republican. Given the overall political lean of the NY Times, I expect they'd be very happy to promote your theory if there was any evidence for it. Yet they didn't mention it, because there doesn't appear to be any.
  - mulmen 4y ago
    Maybe this NY Times article isn't biased and is simply reporting on the data. I don't find "NY Times liberals" to be a compelling refutation of the assertion that the Republican party might be good at voter suppression. I'm not even claiming they are better at it but it is certainly possible and would explain the data.
    - skissane 4y ago
      > Maybe this NY Times article isn't biased and is simply reporting on the data. I don't find "NY Times liberals" to be a compelling refutation of the assertion that the Republican party might be good at voter suppression. I don’t think you understand my point about bias. Let me put it this way - the fact that the conservative majority of SCOTUS failed to endorse Trump’s claims about the 2020 elections - in spite of the fact that their own bias would lead them to be sympathetic to them - is good evidence that his claims suffer from a serious lack of supporting evidence. Or, similarly - while Fox News hosts such as Tucker Carlson have expressed some sympathy for the members of the QAnon movement as individuals, nobody at Fox News has publicly endorsed their outlandish factual claims - and if there was remotely any evidence for them, surely Fox News would have done so, which is good evidence there isn’t. This is what I am talking about here - everyone is biased, but when a person whose bias would naturally lead them to support some position fails to do so, that is in itself a form of indirect evidence against the position. And I’m sure some voter suppression happens. But, let me put it this way - no doubt some fraud occurred in the 2020 election (just like every other), but it seems unlikely it occurred on a sufficient scale to change the outcome, and there is no good evidence that it did. Similarly, no doubt voter suppression sometimes happens, but it seems unlikely it happens on a sufficient scale to change national demographic trends in voting, and there is no good evidence that it does.
      - mulmen 4y ago
        > Similarly, no doubt voter suppression sometimes happens, but it seems unlikely it happens on a sufficient scale to change national demographic trends in voting, and there is no good evidence that it does. This is where we disagree. There is longstanding evidence for exactly this. It stretches back literally centuries. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud. There is clear, established evidence of ongoing, large scale, material voter suppression. It looks like you are not an American so consider that this is a thing in living memory here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965 Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States#Modern_examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite...

mulmen 4y ago

Or maybe the Republicans are better at voter suppression and that's why you don't see the poor Democratic voters?

skissane 4y ago
I cited a NY Times article on how poor Americans are increasingly voting Republican. Given the overall political lean of the NY Times, I expect they'd be very happy to promote your theory if there was any evidence for it. Yet they didn't mention it, because there doesn't appear to be any.
- mulmen 4y ago
  Maybe this NY Times article isn't biased and is simply reporting on the data. I don't find "NY Times liberals" to be a compelling refutation of the assertion that the Republican party might be good at voter suppression. I'm not even claiming they are better at it but it is certainly possible and would explain the data.
  - skissane 4y ago
    > Maybe this NY Times article isn't biased and is simply reporting on the data. I don't find "NY Times liberals" to be a compelling refutation of the assertion that the Republican party might be good at voter suppression. I don’t think you understand my point about bias. Let me put it this way - the fact that the conservative majority of SCOTUS failed to endorse Trump’s claims about the 2020 elections - in spite of the fact that their own bias would lead them to be sympathetic to them - is good evidence that his claims suffer from a serious lack of supporting evidence. Or, similarly - while Fox News hosts such as Tucker Carlson have expressed some sympathy for the members of the QAnon movement as individuals, nobody at Fox News has publicly endorsed their outlandish factual claims - and if there was remotely any evidence for them, surely Fox News would have done so, which is good evidence there isn’t. This is what I am talking about here - everyone is biased, but when a person whose bias would naturally lead them to support some position fails to do so, that is in itself a form of indirect evidence against the position. And I’m sure some voter suppression happens. But, let me put it this way - no doubt some fraud occurred in the 2020 election (just like every other), but it seems unlikely it occurred on a sufficient scale to change the outcome, and there is no good evidence that it did. Similarly, no doubt voter suppression sometimes happens, but it seems unlikely it happens on a sufficient scale to change national demographic trends in voting, and there is no good evidence that it does.
    - mulmen 4y ago
      > Similarly, no doubt voter suppression sometimes happens, but it seems unlikely it happens on a sufficient scale to change national demographic trends in voting, and there is no good evidence that it does. This is where we disagree. There is longstanding evidence for exactly this. It stretches back literally centuries. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud. There is clear, established evidence of ongoing, large scale, material voter suppression. It looks like you are not an American so consider that this is a thing in living memory here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965 Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States#Modern_examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite...