If voting is more difficult, e.g., due to USPS shutdown, shouldn’t that favor the Democrats?

by philg

My Facebook feed remains alive with those who are convinced that Donald J. Trump will win the election via making it more difficult to vote, e.g., by shutting down the U.S. Post Office and/or discouraging voting by mail. Donald Trump is literally Hitler and nobody will vote against him unless voting is extremely convenient.

Some New York Times articles:

In other words, Trump is the biggest danger to the U.S. in the history of U.S. politics. But if lines at the polling station are longer than usual, Democrats, who are smart enough to recognize Trump as the dictator he is, will simply walk away. “Yes, Trump is a dictator and the U.S. is turning into Nazi Germany, but I can’t spare a whole hour or take a 1 in 100,000 risk of contracting coronaplague to save democracy.”

(Conundrum: if masks work, why is there any risk at all in masked adults gathering in a wide-open polling place? if masks don’t work, why are we demanding that elementary school children wear them?)

At least for the moment, I am not interested in the truth of these propositions. I am just fascinated by how it is possible for people to believe that (1) a second term for Trump will cement a U.S. descent into a dictatorship, and (2) the people who recognize this will not bother to vote against the dictator if there is any obstacle in their path.

Related:

15 thoughts on “If voting is more difficult, e.g., due to USPS shutdown, shouldn’t that favor the Democrats?”

  1. My proposal is that you have to show as much ID to vote for the leaders of the free world as you have to show to get on a flight to Las Vegas.

  2. The people who spread the propaganda are not by and large the people who are voting. The hope is that if you feed enough propaganda to the chaotic and irresponsible in the inner cities and make it fashionable & get some community organizers out there maybe the chaotic and disorganized will fill out a ballot by mail & maybe this will make a difference. Though it seems that Biden thinks if you are Black your vote should automatically be counted for the Dems and you shouldn’t even have to bother to go to the polling both or fill out some form. Maybe that is an improvement he can make in our constitutional system if he becomes President. By the way, you mean “figuratively” not “literally” — the literal Hitler committed suicide a long time ago.

  3. Korea held a national election on 15 April with massive turnout. Their extensive testing before and after confirmed that their procedures avoided measureable spread of the disease. They published two papers in English covering this in detail. The links are kind of funky, so it’s better to go to the National Election Commision of the Republic of Korea and search.

    “Maintaining Safety and Trust in Elections During the COVID-19 Pandemic” describes the overall results.

    “Election Management in Response to COVID-19 and the 21st National Assembly Elections in the Republic of Korea (Draft Version)” describes the voting process in detail. It’s many more steps and details than just “wear a mask” but everything is straightforward and easy to understand.

  4. A year ago the USPS was a dinosaur that needed to die off and be replaced by technology and new synergies. Now it’s the bedrock of our democracy and the only thing standing between us and the Fourth Reich.

    FWIW, I commented here in March or April that we’d be looking at a full-blown crisis by August, and it arrived right on time.

  5. Socialists (er, Democrats) are always accusing others of what they are themselves are doing or being.

    That has been the major propaganda tactics of the left for at least a century now. It is well documented and is explicitly stated in writings of their ideologues like Gramsci. Somehow people still fall for it.

    People need to pay more attention to what the death cultists are saying within their own inner circle. Not only all of them are Hitler wannanees, the actual real-life Hitler was one of their own.

  6. General consensus is that anything that makes voting easier favors the Democrats, while anything that makes it more difficult favors the Republicans. Even if the Democrats are rabid to go to the polls, the rabid ones would have gone anyway. They are more concerned about the voter who is “tired” after working a 4-hour shift, and now it is drizzling out.

    • It is to put down Sunday’s anti-vaxx rally. Or cover a false flag at the same time. They need to move the well educated liberal anti-vaxx mothers into the white supremacist bad guy bucket.

  8. Today’s Google Doodle is devoted (and is incredibly elaborate in its devotion) to another enormous French scumbag, Alexandre Dumas. While kids are sitting at home during the Plague and national guard troops are being marshaled to defend something or other, they can read about one of France’s most famous playwrights:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Dumas

    Though married, in the tradition of Frenchmen of higher social class, Dumas had numerous affairs (allegedly as many as 40). He was known to have had at least four illegitimate children, although twentieth-century scholars believe it was seven. He acknowledged and assisted his son, Alexandre Dumas, to become a successful novelist and playwright. They are known as Alexandre Dumas père (‘father’) and Alexandre Dumas fils (‘son’). Among his affairs, in 1866, Dumas had one with Adah Isaacs Menken, an American actress then less than half his age and at the height of her career.

    Dumas’s novels were so popular that they were soon translated into English and other languages. His writing earned him a great deal of money, but he was frequently insolvent, as he spent lavishly on women and sumptuous living. (Scholars have found that he had a total of 40 mistresses.[15])

    He’d be in #MeToo trouble today! But maybe not!

    Despite Dumas’s aristocratic background and personal success, he had to deal with discrimination related to his mixed-race ancestry. In 1843, he wrote a short novel, Georges, that addressed some of the issues of race and the effects of colonialism. His response to a man who insulted him about his partial African ancestry has become famous. Dumas said:

    My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends.[18][19]

Comments are closed.