Hacker News Reader

Comment by TAForObvReasons | Hacker News Reader

That's a complete non-sequitur. Your question was:

> Which exact voting rights are missing at the moment?

And the answer, as reported in various places, is that the right to vote is for all intents and purposes non-existent for people in certain areas. Voter disenfranchisement is a real and documented thing. Polling places are shutting down, which puts an undue burden on people who don't have the luxury of taking the day off or getting out of work early.

You might appreciate a tech example: if Facebook doesn't actually remove all of your data, just "deactivating your account" while keeping the data stored on their servers, do you really have the option to opt out of Facebook?

View on HN

It's not a non-sequitur if you follow his chain of logic, which is focused on improving outcomes, and not simply on expanding voting for its own sake:

1. Are voting rights missing? (Gather information) 2. If they are missing, would adding these specific rights improve the quality of voting? 3. If the answer is no, then the fact that certain rights are missing is less relevant.

You clearly disagree with him, because you see expanded access to the vote as a good in and of itself. That's a tenable position, but not everyone agrees with it (I certainly don't), and so it's good to see where others are coming from.

tldr; Some people think that more voting always = good, some people are more consequentialist.

preommr asserted that we might see better outcomes with better voter rights.

AlexTWithBeard did not make the claim you seem to be making now. He specifically asked what rights are missing, as if the status quo allows everyone to vote.

I'm arguing that voter disenfranchisement and other roadblocks lead to a situation where technically people have a right to vote but in practice have difficulties.

You can argue about the quality of the vote, but we are currently not in a position where everyone who is eligible to vote actually has an opportunity to vote. Having to wait many hours on a business day to vote is malicious compliance.

The nonsequitur here is conflating "is it necessarily better if everyone can vote?" with "does everyone have the right to vote?", which are fundamentally different questions

Reply on news.ycombinator.com