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Comment by mmastrac | Hacker News Reader

It's so strange to me that voting is so political in the USA (yes, I realize the phrasing). It really feels like fundamental voting rights are constantly under attack -- whether it's against felons in Florida that don't vote the way that the leadership likes, or disenfranchising minorities.

For a "bastion of democracy and freedom", America has some major problems with its most basic rights.

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The unfortunate reality is that this issue goes all the way back to the founding of the country, it’s by no means a new political battleground. From slavery, to women’s suffrage, to Jim Crow, to today, there are chapters of voter suppression and movements around voting rights throughout our history.

It’s easy to take my right to vote and ability to vote relatively easily for granted, and that’s a major lesson we’re learning in 2020.

This is intentionally done by one political party that does not care about democracy. They push policies that restrict individual voting rights, gerrymander districts for minority rule, and expand the influence of money over people. This has been their plan for decades, as they see the younger and more diverse America as a threat to their ideology. We have got to vote them out at every level.

> This has been their plan for decades,

Democrats controlled the house continuously for 40 years until 1994, due in no small part to gerrymandering. Republican-advantage gerrymandering (on a nationwide basis) dates to only about 2010.

> > This has been their plan for decades,

> Democrats controlled the house continuously for 40 years until 1994,

1955-1995, actually, and yet it is still true that the current Republican effort (which also includes gerrymandering, but also all the other factors list by GP) has been in place for decades. (1995 was two and a half decades ago, and the Republican strategy being discussed started before they took control of the House.)

And, yes, some of the other bits besides gerrymandering also used to be Democratic strategies, especially racially-targeted restrictions on voting rights before the parties switched sides on race issues in a process that included Johnson's embrace of civil rights followed by the Republican subsequent exploitation of that and pursuit of disaffected ex-Democratic racists as a core voting bloc.

Voting is unfortunately political in the U.S., but I wonder if it would be any different in France or Germany under similar circumstances. 90% of the German electorate are people who were born German citizens with two German parents: https://www.dw.com/en/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-german.... In the U.S., twice as many voters are first or second generation immigrants, and a further 10-15% are members of politically-distinct minority groups. (And of course, out of the people who are third-generation or higher, and not part of a politically-distinct minority, vast numbers are from groups that haven't been here that much longer, and voting was very political for them when they immigrated.)

Would voting in Germany be so non-political under the same circumstances? Obviously, voting shouldn't be political. We should pick voting rules without discriminating based on race, naturalization status, etc. That's the ideal we should strive to achieve. My point is different: human nature being what it is, it's worth asking whether anyone is really doing better under similar circumstances. And if they are doing things better, what are they doing that we could be copying?

If a party in Germany wanted to do the same thing, it would make voting more difficult in rural or urban areas, or east or west, or similar, depending on where its support was. This sort of manipulation of outcomes via some form of discrimination is _possible_ everywhere. The US does seem unusual for a developed country in that there are major organised attempts to _reduce the number of people who vote_, though. And possibly unique anywhere in that senior elected officials have mentioned this in the context of it being a good thing.

Generally, in a democracy, more voting is, at least publicly, considered better (in private, of course, some party officials might disagree, but the backlash if they tried to _do_ anything about it would be unthinkable).

I actually wonder to what extent this is a function of how democracy developed in the US vs everywhere. At least in the popular mythology, voting went from available to all male members of the ethnic majority, to all members of the ethnic majority, to everyone (this isn't actually quite true; a number of southern states had property qualifications for whites pre-civil war). Whereas a more common pattern of development elsewhere was the vote for practically no-one -> the vote for a very few (property qualifications) -> the vote for all men -> the vote for everyone. Most people in Europe will need to look back no more than a few generations to see where _their_ family wasn't able to vote, which may cause people to be more defensive of the institution.

There's also the example of history; most of Europe's 20th century totalitarian regimes screwed with voting early in their development.

You're glossing over my question. If Germany was more heterogeneous, with more political conflict between groups, would folks in Germany be trying such measures?

Half of Germany was a communist country until 30 years ago while the other half was a wealthy democracy. Not sure how much more heterogenous than that you get, politics-wise. There remain fairly dramatic political differences between the former east and west.

My second hand understanding, though, is that west Germans consider East Germans to be the same people and the integration was viewed as a reunification. Not quite the same as different groups who perceive themselves as distinct and with conflicting interests.

I think one of the greatest swindles in American politics is the redefinition of "freedom" to only mean freedom from the government's interference. As long as the government doesn't send troops to block you from voting, it satisfies their sense of righteousness - it doesn't matter if some people have to stand in line for five hours to vote, because (in this world view) the government has no obligation to actually make the "freedom" practical. In a perversion of language, it's now called "entitlement".

Reminds me of the famous quote: "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread."

Same. We can talk about security all day, but nobody should just be against (either openly or with thinly veiled excuses) getting everyone who wants to vote the easy ability to vote.

Personally I think that the US should go the route of a national voting holiday.

> Personally I think that the US should go the route of a national voting holiday.

Agree. Voting is important, and a voting holiday calls that out.

The history of this is actually really interesting and goes back to the founding of the country itself.

I'm about a quarter of the way through this book which tackles this issue in detail throughout US history: https://www.amazon.com/Fight-Vote-Michael-Waldman/dp/1501116...

I'd recommend it so far if it's something you're interested in.

I found it from this interview which is also good, might be worth listening to this first before deciding to pick up the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgVuJiMxOb4

Some quick tidbits:

- Initially the public couldn't vote for senators who were chosen by state legislature.

- Initially the public couldn't vote for president.

- Initially the 'public' was white men with property (this one is more widely known), but there was a lot of arguing between states about this. In some states the vote was originally available to more people before being restricted.

- Early on candidates persuaded people to vote with booze filled parties. A lot of early anti-women voting arguments were originally about protecting them from these parties (bizarrely).

- Lots of long discussions between founders about what it would mean to having a voting public, fear of the public vs. aristocrats, potential abuse of government, and the rise of a tyrannical leader, etc.

I liked this argument from Ben Franklin:

“Imagine that a man owns a donkey, and so he gets the right to vote. And in the next four years, he learns a lot more about politics and current events and becomes a more equipped citizen, but his donkey dies, and you want to take his vote away because he no longer owns property? So who, pray tell, does the right to vote reside in? The man or the ass?”

It's because there are political incentives to make voting difficult. President Trump has even said that the GOP is hurt when it's easier to vote [1].

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/30/trump-vot...

Voting was never intended to be so important.

Can you expand on this?

Grandparent might be referring to the fact that the founders' vision of limited government was of a government much smaller than what we have today with much less interference in people's lives. If they were alive today the founders would likely be shocked at just how much the (federal) government does and how much it impacts daily life. Since the government was expected to do much less than it does today, voting would have a much less significant impact on people.

Concrete examples that did not exist at founding include:

- social programs (welfare, social security, unemployment benefits)

- high levels of military spending/military industrial complex

- income tax

- many of the executive branch regulatory and other agencies

etc.

George Washington's cabinet had only five members: himself, the secretary of state, the secretary of the treasury, the secretary of war (now defense), and the attorney general. Nothing else - no Department of the Interior, no Health and Human Services, no Department of Education, no Department of Energy, no Small Business Administration (just to name some that come to mind).

It's what happens when the focus becomes on power rather than trying to improve the country

It isn't really as bad as it looks. A lot of it is just aggravating people to make them more likely to actually go out and vote.

I've lived in the USA for over half a century. I have never seen a single person denied a vote, not even once. I have white friends, black friends, friends of all kinds. I have never had one of my friends or family 'disenfranchised'.

Okay, but in those 50 years has there ever been a pandemic that necessitated the use of universal mail in voting? And during that pandemic, did the incumbent President explicitly use his authority over the post office to prevent mail in voting? The USPS sure seems to think these measures will lead to disenfranchised voters:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/usps-states...

I'm sure the objections to mail-in voting would disappear if positive Id were a reality.

Maybe fingerprints, a PIN, anything. As it sits, it does look susceptible to fraud. Pandemic or not, we shouldn't make major changes without ensuring integrity, IMHO.

Felons don't have their voting rights removed because people don't like how they vote - they have them removed because the idea is that if you don't follow the law, you shouldn't be allowed to take part in making the laws. Voting rights are restricted for the mentally incompetent and non-citizens as well, for different reasons though.

If you look at the map, you see not a very strong correlation with the idea that Republicans remove voting rights from felons because they lean democrats(which I assume is what you were getting at). Literally only two states don't restrict felon voting rights, and that is Maine and and Vermont. If there was some voter suppression operating against Democratic leaning felons, one would assume states like California, New York, and Massachusetts would not restrict felon voting - but they do.

Setting partisan politics aside, I don't agree with the idea that you committed a felony == you're mentally unfit to vote.

Once people have served their time they deserve to rejoin society. They are imperfect human beings, but human beings nonetheless. Plus stuff like drug offenses count as felonies and I don't think those people deserve to be ostracized for a lifetime.

I agree - most states simply restrict felons from voting while they are serving their sentence or while they are under parole/probation. Only after that are their voting rights restored.

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