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dustyleary | 4 years ago
Is it, though?
My belief is that voter fraud is basically a non-issue, that it doesn't really happen very much at all, and that it is a bogus argument put forth by the Republicans to give an excuse for why they are so consistently fighting to not allow people to vote.
Google search "does voter fraud really happen", and "how bad is voter fraud":
https://www.google.com/search?q=does+voter+fraud+really+happ...
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+bad+is+voter+fraud
I can't find any results that don't back up my belief. Can you?
The Heritage Foundation, a far-right think tank, has a page on voter fraud: https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud
But, in my opinion, it's kind of amazing that they leave the page up. The purpose of this page is to document and expose how bad voter fraud is, and they provide a searchable database on all the cases they have found and confirmed. Their database goes back to 1982, and they have found... 1340 cases of voter fraud.
This is an embarrassingly low number, isn't it? A few thousand fraudulent votes over the last 40 years?
Also, it's not like these cases are cases of people manufacturing thousands of votes. You can check for yourself, the entire list is here:
https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud-print/search
These are overwhelmingly on the order of "a single extra vote was cast" because someone voted in two districts, or mailed in an absentee ballot for a deceased relative.
Meanwhile, do Republicans work to suppress votes? I think it's hard to argue otherwise in good faith:
https://www.google.com/search?q=do+republicans+suppress+vote...
Why does Mitch McConnell say that the idea of making election day a national holiday is a "naked power grab" for Democrats? Shouldn't making it easier for people to vote be a "good idea that strengthens our democracy"?
https://www.google.com/search?q=mitch+mcconnell+election+day...
Another belief of mine is that it's common knowledge in politics that the more people who vote, the worse Republicans fare in elections.
The Republican professional politicians are usually better at not openly admitting such things, but Trump gave us another example of "saying the quiet part out loud" with his usual eloquence: "They had levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again"
https://www.google.com/search?q=They+had+levels+of+voting%2C...
Why would Trump say that?
The Republicans are trying to reduce democracy. They lost the support of the people. They have only won the popular vote once in the past 30 years. Rather than changing their platform to try to appeal to more voters, they've decided that the people are their enemy.
PathOfEclipse|4 years ago
From what I read, McConnell thinks most federal workers vote democrat. This makes sense in that if you work for the government you are probably pro-big-government. If they got a week off, they would just use that time to campaign for democrats, giving democrats an extra advantage. Also, it would result in an undue burden on the taxpayer, apparently to the tune of 4 billion a year: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/04/18/new...
Here is a more comprehensive rebuttal of this H.R. 1 bill: https://republicans-cha.house.gov/democrat-politician-protec...
And here is the an op-ed written by McConnell himself: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/call-hr-1-what-it-is...
I'm not going to claim McConnell is right, but I will claim that from a quick search I can find there is a reasonable other side to this story different from "Republicans want less voters".
Since I've already spent too much time on this thread, I'll just say I have convinced someone to be more open-minded in the future and be willing to research more than one side of the issue.
8note|4 years ago