5 ms·

The republicans purged a lot of people from voter rolls. They're going to do the same in 2026. If you want to vote, anticipate dozens of hours over several mon

The republicans purged a lot of people from voter rolls. They're going to do the same in 2026. If you want to vote, anticipate dozens of hours over several months making sure you weren't removed from the register. Why are they so against people voting? The number of actual fraudulent vote cases prosecuted was very, very small, but the measures taken against voter fraud have been disproportionate.

sanderjd 2y ago
They benefit from more people voting, not fewer. The valance of that issue flipped over the last few cycles.
- kccoder 2y ago
  Then why did they purge a lot of voters in 2024? And take other actions to suppress voter turnout?
  - mostertoaster 2y ago
    Does blocking non citizens from voting count as “suppressing voter turnout”? It’s all just politics and words, and we’ve picked our side and so we use the language that best supports it. Is someone pro-life, or are they anti women’s rights? Is someone pro-choice, or are they pro-baby-murder. How does one actually convince someone of the “rightness” of their side? It somehow starts with love your enemies, though if I say that to my more right wing friends it means capitulate to whatever the progressives want. All I know is the spirit of the age is evil.
    - qqqwerty 2y ago
      That is not what they did: https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/ https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/ Passing laws to make it harder to vote, and easier to challenge a persons voter registration and ballot, and then running an operative campaign to specifically target voters on the other side of the political spectrum is a bit different than "just politics". Legal, sure. Ethical, moral, fair, absolutely not.
      - mostertoaster 2y ago
        Eh, it’s all politics. I’m sure they are trying to win however they can, don’t sit there and be so naive to think the other side wouldn’t be perfectly happy to let illegal immigrants vote if it benefited them. I’m all for fairness. For example I think we should weight votes, where everyone gets one vote for each dollar of taxes they pay. I also want to see all landlords structure rental contracts so that the renter pays the property taxes, if rent was 2k a month but there are $500 in property taxes a month, rent would become $1500 plus $500 property taxes. That way the immediate effects of voting for tax increases is felt acutely and their blame can go on themselves instead of their “greedy landlord”.
        qqqwerty 2y ago
        > I’m all for fairness. For example I think we should weight votes, where everyone gets one vote for each dollar of taxes they pay. You are joking right? Honest, question, what life experiences have you had that make you think that this would be a good idea. It would effectively mean a handful of billionaires would control the country. > I also want to see all landlords structure rental contracts so that the renter pays the property taxes It is a free market. Outside of a handful of places with rent control, nothing is stopping them from doing that. And if you think splitting out property taxes as a separate line item will somehow make tenants think that landlords, the vast majority of whom increase their rents to the absolute maximum that the market will bear, are somehow not greedy, I think you have a pretty bad handle on what it is like to be in the renter class.
        mostertoaster 2y ago
        > It would effectively mean a handful of billionaires would control the country. Is that not what we have already. Do you really think your vote matters? I don’t think my tenants ever thought I was greedy. And I don’t think a vast majority of landlords who aren’t some big corporation are. Though people will think they are regardless, so just want them to sure the accusation of greed with that of the bureaucrats, and the public schools who simply flush money down the toilet. I think if landlords structured rental contracts that way (and maybe give a $50 discount if you choose that option), you will see a huge amount of school levies fail which is a net win for society.
    - Hikikomori 2y ago
      Non citizens cannot vote for presidents.
      - mostertoaster 2y ago
        Oh but they have tried. And if you listen to the progressive left, if we try to make sure that remains true, then we are suppressing the vote.
        Hikikomori 2y ago
        Why are you bringing up nonsense hypotheticals when there's real voter suppression. Trumps stolen election ignited states to create many new restrictive voter laws and threw out millions of votes in swing states alone.
        mostertoaster 2y ago
        You sound like those who voted for Trump in 2020. But you might be right, but then so they may have been. Trump won because enough people were sick of the garbage they heard from the progressive left being crammed down their throats. How people can think a billionaire like him relates to the average guy, is quite crazy, but just shows how incredibly bad the democrats are at actually relating to the people. I didn’t vote for him the first two times, but after I saw his immediate response to the assassination attempt, I knew I would this time. There are millions like me. I’m all for making it more difficult to vote. Let’s just be ruled by a set of elites like we already are, but at least be honest about it. If I get what I truly want it won’t really matter as much who is president because the federal government would have like a 1/10 of its power and a 1/10 of its budget, and states and local municipalities would have far more say. Ultimately I think the 18th century anti-federalists were right. I hope Trump just lays waste to the federal government agencies and completely neuters it.
        ModernMech 2y ago
        > I hope Trump just lays waste to the federal government agencies and completely neuters it. That would be completely illegal and unconstitutional. If that's the way things are going to go, you're definitely not going to like what will happen when the power is wielded by someone who doesn't align with you politically. And I've got a brand new shipment of bridges to sell you if you think Trump is out here about to neuter the power of the federal government. He is consolidating power.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > why did they purge a lot of voters in 2024? Because the GOP isn't a monolith. Lots of them are still operating under a playbook 2024 proved obsolete. Race is no longer an almost-perfect proxy for partisan affiliation [1]. [1] https://www.npr.org/2024/11/22/nx-s1-5199119/2024-election-exit-polls-demographics-black-latino-voters https://www.npr.org/2024/11/22/nx-s1-5199119/2024-election-e...
- rtpg 2y ago
  There's a good amount of evidence that more turnout would help Republicans in general, even before (at least if you applied the "socio-economic voting preference determinism" logic that one tends to apply). It's good to be against voter suppression because voter suppression is bad, even if in theory it doesn't help "your side". One would hope that doing that work would convince some people you're on "their side", but it's quite nebulous.
  - sanderjd 2y ago
    Agreed.
- robinei 2y ago
  The question is who is suppressed.
- bagels 2y ago
  There was an effort to purge minorities from rolls in swing states. It matters where the more votes come from.
  - sanderjd 2y ago
    I think that's bad, but I also think it is less likely to be an effective strategy for the current regime than a lot of other things.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- pchristensen 2y ago
  They're not removing people randomly.
yellow_lead 2y ago
Is there a source on this? I haven't heard of it and it sounds undemocratic
- qqqwerty 2y ago
  This is a link I stumbled on earlier today: https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/ https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/
batushka5 2y ago
Just voter ID finally and lets forget this blame game.
- ddulaney 2y ago
  When government IDs are universal, we can require them to vote. Here's a study from about a year ago: [0]. Upshot is that 21% of Americans 18 and older don't have an ID that matches their name and address. Disenfranchising a fifth of Americans isn't something I'd accept. Note also that it's 23% of Democrats, 16% of Republicans, and 31% of independents. You can see why Democrats are anti-ID-check while Republicans are pro-ID-check as a general rule. [0]: https://cdce.umd.edu/sites/cdce.umd.edu/files/pubs/Voter%20ID%202023%20survey%20Key%20Results%20Jan%202024%20%281%29.pdf https://cdce.umd.edu/sites/cdce.umd.edu/files/pubs/Voter%20I...
  - mkoubaa 2y ago
    I am totally fine with disenfranchising people who don't have up to date IDs. The cost of a perception of illegal ballot stuffing is high and the benefit of these voters is marginal at best.
  - golergka 2y ago
    I'm not from the US, but all the countries I've lived in require some form of ID. As far as I know, US is the only country in the world that doesn't. So, I have an honest question: why would you want people who don't bother to have a valid ID to vote at all? Do you expect them to be responsible people, good members of society? People who pay more in taxes than they receive from the government? I don't know enough about US to be sure. But in any country I've lived in, the answer would be no.
    - ddulaney 2y ago
      That’s a super good point. Part of the issue is that ID’s are expensive. When I moved from one state to another a couple years ago, a new driver’s license was $50. There’s a long history of poll taxes used for voting suppression in the US, so any kind of pay-to-vote concept is tough. (The easy answer, of course, is to make ID issuance free.) Then there’s the issue that states have widely different levels of competence regarding ID issuance. The REAL ID Act [0] required states to start issuing IDs based on more robust requirements by 2008. That deadline has been delayed through 2025, and is likely to get pushed back again. When I lived in Kentucky (stereotypically poor and rural), there was a major issue that birth certificates were handwritten and never digitized, and existing driver’s licenses had been issued based on what you claimed your name was. When they started validating birth certificates as a part of REAL ID, people ran into issues when the name they had been using for their whole life didn’t match what was handwritten on their birth certificate. Basically, identity documents are local (and often hyper-local; my own birth certificate is certified by my county, not even my state). Dragging the whole country into something resembling modernity is a major project that will exclude big chunks of people that are otherwise “responsible”. Making the right to vote dependent on that whole system happening to work out OK for you just doesn’t seem like a good idea. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ID_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ID_Act

sanderjd 2y ago

They benefit from more people voting, not fewer. The valance of that issue flipped over the last few cycles.

kccoder 2y ago
Then why did they purge a lot of voters in 2024? And take other actions to suppress voter turnout?
- mostertoaster 2y ago
  Does blocking non citizens from voting count as “suppressing voter turnout”? It’s all just politics and words, and we’ve picked our side and so we use the language that best supports it. Is someone pro-life, or are they anti women’s rights? Is someone pro-choice, or are they pro-baby-murder. How does one actually convince someone of the “rightness” of their side? It somehow starts with love your enemies, though if I say that to my more right wing friends it means capitulate to whatever the progressives want. All I know is the spirit of the age is evil.
  - qqqwerty 2y ago
    That is not what they did: https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/ https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/ Passing laws to make it harder to vote, and easier to challenge a persons voter registration and ballot, and then running an operative campaign to specifically target voters on the other side of the political spectrum is a bit different than "just politics". Legal, sure. Ethical, moral, fair, absolutely not.
    - mostertoaster 2y ago
      Eh, it’s all politics. I’m sure they are trying to win however they can, don’t sit there and be so naive to think the other side wouldn’t be perfectly happy to let illegal immigrants vote if it benefited them. I’m all for fairness. For example I think we should weight votes, where everyone gets one vote for each dollar of taxes they pay. I also want to see all landlords structure rental contracts so that the renter pays the property taxes, if rent was 2k a month but there are $500 in property taxes a month, rent would become $1500 plus $500 property taxes. That way the immediate effects of voting for tax increases is felt acutely and their blame can go on themselves instead of their “greedy landlord”.
      - qqqwerty 2y ago
        > I’m all for fairness. For example I think we should weight votes, where everyone gets one vote for each dollar of taxes they pay. You are joking right? Honest, question, what life experiences have you had that make you think that this would be a good idea. It would effectively mean a handful of billionaires would control the country. > I also want to see all landlords structure rental contracts so that the renter pays the property taxes It is a free market. Outside of a handful of places with rent control, nothing is stopping them from doing that. And if you think splitting out property taxes as a separate line item will somehow make tenants think that landlords, the vast majority of whom increase their rents to the absolute maximum that the market will bear, are somehow not greedy, I think you have a pretty bad handle on what it is like to be in the renter class.
        mostertoaster 2y ago
        > It would effectively mean a handful of billionaires would control the country. Is that not what we have already. Do you really think your vote matters? I don’t think my tenants ever thought I was greedy. And I don’t think a vast majority of landlords who aren’t some big corporation are. Though people will think they are regardless, so just want them to sure the accusation of greed with that of the bureaucrats, and the public schools who simply flush money down the toilet. I think if landlords structured rental contracts that way (and maybe give a $50 discount if you choose that option), you will see a huge amount of school levies fail which is a net win for society.
  - Hikikomori 2y ago
    Non citizens cannot vote for presidents.
    - mostertoaster 2y ago
      Oh but they have tried. And if you listen to the progressive left, if we try to make sure that remains true, then we are suppressing the vote.
      - Hikikomori 2y ago
        Why are you bringing up nonsense hypotheticals when there's real voter suppression. Trumps stolen election ignited states to create many new restrictive voter laws and threw out millions of votes in swing states alone.
        mostertoaster 2y ago
        You sound like those who voted for Trump in 2020. But you might be right, but then so they may have been. Trump won because enough people were sick of the garbage they heard from the progressive left being crammed down their throats. How people can think a billionaire like him relates to the average guy, is quite crazy, but just shows how incredibly bad the democrats are at actually relating to the people. I didn’t vote for him the first two times, but after I saw his immediate response to the assassination attempt, I knew I would this time. There are millions like me. I’m all for making it more difficult to vote. Let’s just be ruled by a set of elites like we already are, but at least be honest about it. If I get what I truly want it won’t really matter as much who is president because the federal government would have like a 1/10 of its power and a 1/10 of its budget, and states and local municipalities would have far more say. Ultimately I think the 18th century anti-federalists were right. I hope Trump just lays waste to the federal government agencies and completely neuters it.
        ModernMech 2y ago
        > I hope Trump just lays waste to the federal government agencies and completely neuters it. That would be completely illegal and unconstitutional. If that's the way things are going to go, you're definitely not going to like what will happen when the power is wielded by someone who doesn't align with you politically. And I've got a brand new shipment of bridges to sell you if you think Trump is out here about to neuter the power of the federal government. He is consolidating power.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > why did they purge a lot of voters in 2024? Because the GOP isn't a monolith. Lots of them are still operating under a playbook 2024 proved obsolete. Race is no longer an almost-perfect proxy for partisan affiliation [1]. [1] https://www.npr.org/2024/11/22/nx-s1-5199119/2024-election-exit-polls-demographics-black-latino-voters https://www.npr.org/2024/11/22/nx-s1-5199119/2024-election-e...
rtpg 2y ago
There's a good amount of evidence that more turnout would help Republicans in general, even before (at least if you applied the "socio-economic voting preference determinism" logic that one tends to apply). It's good to be against voter suppression because voter suppression is bad, even if in theory it doesn't help "your side". One would hope that doing that work would convince some people you're on "their side", but it's quite nebulous.
- sanderjd 2y ago
  Agreed.
robinei 2y ago
The question is who is suppressed.
bagels 2y ago
There was an effort to purge minorities from rolls in swing states. It matters where the more votes come from.
- sanderjd 2y ago
  I think that's bad, but I also think it is less likely to be an effective strategy for the current regime than a lot of other things.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
pchristensen 2y ago
They're not removing people randomly.

yellow_lead 2y ago

Is there a source on this? I haven't heard of it and it sounds undemocratic

qqqwerty 2y ago
This is a link I stumbled on earlier today: https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/ https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/

batushka5 2y ago

Just voter ID finally and lets forget this blame game.

ddulaney 2y ago
When government IDs are universal, we can require them to vote. Here's a study from about a year ago: [0]. Upshot is that 21% of Americans 18 and older don't have an ID that matches their name and address. Disenfranchising a fifth of Americans isn't something I'd accept. Note also that it's 23% of Democrats, 16% of Republicans, and 31% of independents. You can see why Democrats are anti-ID-check while Republicans are pro-ID-check as a general rule. [0]: https://cdce.umd.edu/sites/cdce.umd.edu/files/pubs/Voter%20ID%202023%20survey%20Key%20Results%20Jan%202024%20%281%29.pdf https://cdce.umd.edu/sites/cdce.umd.edu/files/pubs/Voter%20I...
- mkoubaa 2y ago
  I am totally fine with disenfranchising people who don't have up to date IDs. The cost of a perception of illegal ballot stuffing is high and the benefit of these voters is marginal at best.
- golergka 2y ago
  I'm not from the US, but all the countries I've lived in require some form of ID. As far as I know, US is the only country in the world that doesn't. So, I have an honest question: why would you want people who don't bother to have a valid ID to vote at all? Do you expect them to be responsible people, good members of society? People who pay more in taxes than they receive from the government? I don't know enough about US to be sure. But in any country I've lived in, the answer would be no.
  - ddulaney 2y ago
    That’s a super good point. Part of the issue is that ID’s are expensive. When I moved from one state to another a couple years ago, a new driver’s license was $50. There’s a long history of poll taxes used for voting suppression in the US, so any kind of pay-to-vote concept is tough. (The easy answer, of course, is to make ID issuance free.) Then there’s the issue that states have widely different levels of competence regarding ID issuance. The REAL ID Act [0] required states to start issuing IDs based on more robust requirements by 2008. That deadline has been delayed through 2025, and is likely to get pushed back again. When I lived in Kentucky (stereotypically poor and rural), there was a major issue that birth certificates were handwritten and never digitized, and existing driver’s licenses had been issued based on what you claimed your name was. When they started validating birth certificates as a part of REAL ID, people ran into issues when the name they had been using for their whole life didn’t match what was handwritten on their birth certificate. Basically, identity documents are local (and often hyper-local; my own birth certificate is certified by my county, not even my state). Dragging the whole country into something resembling modernity is a major project that will exclude big chunks of people that are otherwise “responsible”. Making the right to vote dependent on that whole system happening to work out OK for you just doesn’t seem like a good idea. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ID_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ID_Act