Voter Suppression: Legalized, Rationalized, and Self-inflicted

Voter Suppression: Legalized, Rationalized, and Self-inflicted

Right-wing extremists have been promoting voter suppression since the founding of America.

Since Brown vs Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act, it was started anew with the Nixon’s war on drugs and using three strikes to get more convictions on felony charges. Now, after SCOTUS killed part of the Civil Rights Act, we’ve seen Voter IDs laws, shorter early voting periods, the end of same day registration, closed polling locations in minority neighborhoods, malfunctioning voter equipment sent to poor neighborhoods, lost voter registration forms, shutdown of minority voter registration efforts, and most recently voter roll purges of millions of minority voters in 30 states with the Interstate Cross Check actions.

And behind all this is Kochcash (any funds from right-wing billionaires) to pay for getting state laws written via ALEC, funding of the Tea Party to inspire right-wing extremist voters, and compilation of minority voter lists for purging those with similar names.

This and MORE has helped to bring Democratic legislative losses to almost 1,000 since 2008, with the largest jump in 2010.

The ‘MORE’ includes a profit-centric media that puts profit before public service. As the CEO of CBS said, DJT may be bad for the country, but he’s great for the company’s bottom line. This is a media that ignores those who discuss issues, gives free air time to those who lie fabulously, and helps suppress the vote further as voters tire of political waring.

The ‘MORE’ includes decades of right-wing messaging that promotes tax cuts for the wealthy to cripple government functions and then blaming government for failures. Messaging that promotes privatization of the government they have broken. Messaging that promotes me over we. Messaging that justifies inequality by promoting greed, individualism, self-discipline, self-made, and direct causation. Messaging that promotes war (punishment) on women, on poor, on LGBTQ, on people of color, on nations with dirty energy sources, on non-Christians, and on all those not like the right-wing ideal of white, successful, authoritarian men. All of this messaging makes voter suppression acceptable. ‘Those people’ don’t deserve to vote. They are morally inferior.

The ‘MORE’ includes excessive reductions in citizenship dues for those who meet this white, successful, authoritarian male ideal which means less funding for government to protect and empower its human capital. Their tax rates are reduced, especially for investment income. They also receive corporate welfare and can externalize corporate costs which maximizes both their profit and the harm done to the world’s citizens. The result of this wealth transfer it that most citizens spend all their time working. They don’t have time to vote and may lose their job if they take the time.

The ‘MORE’ also includes Democrats using Republican-lite messaging, https://www.thenation.com/article/jon-ossoffs-loss-should-be-a-lesson-to-corporate-democrats/. Right-wing voters have replaced most moderate Republicans with the more extreme brand of Republican or Libertarian by using effective messaging to support their extreme agenda. These voters have a mindset that affirmatively responds to this language. Democrats using Republican-lite, right-wing messaging, will only reinforce the mental frames that inspire right-wing voters to vote for the right-wing candidates. If the right-wing extremists won’t accept their moderate brothers and sisters, what makes Democrats think these voters will vote for a Republican-lite Democrat?

The ‘MORE’ includes suppressing Dem-leaning voters by ignoring the issues by which these voters are harmed. Issues are set aside in favor of speaking Republican-lite, sounding like your opponent, or asserting that you’re not your opponent, http://freebeacon.com/politics/study-nearly-all-hillary-clintons-tv-ads-didnt-discuss-policy/. As analysis of the 2016 election, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/21/opinion/move-left-democrats.html, shows there are far more Dem-leaning voters who either didn’t vote or voted third-party, than there are voters who switched from Obama to DJT.

Bottom line is: The right has fine tuned massive voter suppression and the left needs to stop helping them suppress the vote by imitating them.