On voter apathy and suppression

NOTE: this text was not written by me and is from user u/MaximumEffort433. The only changes were minor formatting for readability. I would merely link to reddit if they had a way to highlight comments, but they do not.

The original post.

I want to address a common misconception right up front:

“If voting changed anything they’d make it illegal.”

Now the misconception isn’t that voting is legal because it doesn’t change anything, the misconception is that people aren’t trying to make voting illegal.

If you’re an upper middle class White male, as most of us on reddit are statistically likely to be, as I am myself, then you may take for granted that people fought to win that privilege, women have not always had the right to vote, it’s barely a century old, and while Black Americans have technically had the right to vote since the end of the civil war, literacy tests, poll taxes, and poll watchers mean they only started getting something like a fair shake after the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. In 2013 the 5/4 Republican majority on the Supreme Court gutted the voting rights act that prevented confederate states from clearing voter roles, and mandated poll access, and required special consideration for redistricting, and wouldn’t you know it as soon as the law was gutted Confederate states sprang into action clearing voter roles, closing polling places, and gerrymandering with a sledge hamer.

So let’s just get that out of the way: Yes voting changes things, that’s why they’re trying to make it illegal. That’s why it was illegal for women to vote, and it was illegal for Blacks to vote, and why it was defacto illegal for humans to vote for the majority of our civilization’s history. Voting works, it changes things, and they are trying to make it illegal.

Furthermore I want to address the notion that your vote is “worthless.” This is an empirically and demonstrably false statement clear as day for anyone who looks at the billions of dollars spent trying to buy your vote every election season. All those super PAC ads about “Tell Democrats you won’t let them give school lunches to illegals this November!” are spending money trying to buy your vote. Fox News is a 24/7 propaganda network masquerading as legitimate commentary in an effort to sway and influence people to vote for Republicans, they are the most watched cable news network in the nation, and they have $21 billion in assets. If your vote was worthless we wouldn’t be seeing so many people spending so much money on trying to buy and influence it so many ways, if your vote was genuinely worthless then propaganda and political advertising would be a zero dollar a year industry.

Not only are there politicians trying to make voting illegal right now, not only has it been illegal historically, but billions of dollars and thousands of hours are spent trying to buy your vote every year. Not just by the United States, either, by the way, we know that Russian agents sponsored ad buys in the 2016 election all over Facebook in an effort to influence the election. (Before the Russiagate nutters get here, these are the results of the Republican investigation in the Senate.)

Likewise I’d like to make one more point about the importance of voting: The first thing Democrats did when they won the House in 2018 was pass House Resolution 1, the For the People Act of 2019, it’s an extensive an campaign finance, electoral reform, ethics standards, and anti-corruption bill, more than eight hundred pages of reforms, improvements, and protections for American democracy. In 2020 when Democrats held on to the House, won the White House, and won a tie with Republicans in the Senate, House Democrats passed the For the People Act again, and again as the first bill they acted on and then Republicans filibustered the bill in the Senate. Currently Democrats have 48 votes on the record in favor of reforming the filibuster, but they need 50; Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have decided that all legislation must have bipartisan support to pass in the Senate, and they decided on behalf of the other 269 Democrats in the federal government who are on the record as being happy to pass this legislation without Republican votes.

With the “Voting doesn’t matter and nobody actually cares” part hopefully addressed, I’d like to offer a novel take on politics: Voting is basic maintenance for a democracy just like changing your oil is basic maintenance for a well running car.

If you don’t change your car’s oil then eventually your car breaks down, if you don’t vote in your democracy then eventually your democracy breaks down. Currently our car is in a state of disrepair, Democratic voters didn’t show up for the 2010-2018 congressional elections, the House and Senate got gunked up with Tea Party Republicans, Democratic voters showed up in 2018 and 2020 and flushed a lot of the gunk out, we won back the House in 2018 and held it in 2020, we won the White House in 2020 and Joe Biden got more votes than any Presidential candidate in American history, and we won a 50/50 tie with Republicans in the Senate as well as 48 out of the 50 votes we need to reform the filibuster. Unfortunately the Supreme Court is currently hard packed with Republicans, it will take time and better tools to clean out our legislative filter, now there are ways to do that, but we have to keep the rest of the car running in the meantime and make sure that we prevent the problems from getting worse.

A $50 oil change once a year is far less expensive than unseizing a piston, it’s easier, it’s faster, it’s more convenient, your car is more dependable and more reliable, and you even get improved gas mileage which is good for the environment. Republican voters have been pouring sand in the crankcase for forty years, it’s going to take a while to dig all that out, it’s going to take a lot of oil changes, but it’s worth it, the car, our country, is worth it.

If you aren’t convinced, let me offer some thoughts on the 2014 election: Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, they had for four years at this point, and Democratic voters were disappointed with the lack of progressive legislation being passed in the Republican House for all that time, so they stayed home in 2014, they sat out the midterms. The 2014 midterms had the lowest attendance of any midterm election since 1942 years with just 36% of Americans going to the polls to vote.

In 2015 Republicans immediately seated a House Select committee to investigate Hillary Clinton’s role in the Benghazi attacks, her favorability rating went from a high of 69% (nice) down to a low of 34% (not nice.) This also lead directly into the Comey email investigation, which was by far the most covered, most talked about news story of the 2015 and 2016 election season, Clinton got more negative coverage than any (Yes, any) other candidate. If Democrats had won control of the House in 2014 then Republicans never would have had the chance to run endless investigations into Hillary Clinton with the explicitly stated intention of hurting her chances of winning a general election.

But Republicans didn’t just win the House in 2014, they also won the Senate, and so in 2016 Mitch McConnell, now with a full majority in the Senate, just stopped voting on President Obama’s judicial appointments and vacancies. Since Republicans controlled the Senate, and the only power the minority party has is the filibuster, Democrats couldn’t force a vote when Antonin Scalia died, McConnell just chose not to schedule a vote for President Obama’s nominee. Republican voters care about the Supreme Court, they’ve been picking away at it for decades, and even though a fair number of Republican voters weren’t especially excited to vote for Donald Trump in 2016, by and large they just couldn’t resist that juicy Supreme Court vacancy swinging inchest away from their nose on Fox News every night. If Democrats had showed up and voted in 2014 and retained control of the Senate not only would we have at least four pro-choice Justices on the Supreme Court, it’s also unlikely that Donald Trump would have had the campaign issue he needed to win the election, so we could have had as much as a 6/3 pro-choice majority on the Supreme Court right now.

2014 was the lowest turnout midterm election in my lifetime, and statistically speaking it was also the lowest turnout midterm election in your lifetime, too. Voters didn’t show up to maintain their Congress and that gave fascism the crack it needed to get in, they didn’t think the midterms were important and took them for granted.

If you only change your oil when you’re excited, inspired, and motivated, you’re gonna’ have a bad time. Oil changed are not exciting, inspiring, or motivational, they’re work. If you go to a good mechanic an oil change can take a half an hour once a year, voting takes half an hour twice every two years, it’s roughly the same amount of actual exertion for most of us. If you don’t change the oil regularly it can lead to damages that require repair and buildup that can require more than one oil change.

If one or two flushes and a handful of repairs aren’t enough to fix everything at once doesn’t mean stop changing the oil and stop trying to do repairs, it just means it may take more time and more work than we’ve put into it so far, and electing Democrats in 2018 and 2020 is the equivalent of two oil changes when voters are decades behind on maintenance.

Now there are a few more complaints I hear and I just want to take a moment and address those too, before I go.

Democrats don’t even try to do anything!

Here are some bills that Democrats have written or passed with their House majority (remember that Republicans can’t filibuster in the House):

Here’s a full list of bills voted on in the House, it’s worth browsing, there’s a lot of good stuff in there.

Okay, so Democrats try to do things, but they never actually do things!

So here are some headlines from the past two years, a trip down memory lane:

The response to this is usually “Well it’s too little, too late, and bad things are still happening anyway, so what’s the point? If voting twice won’t fix things then why would voting in every election make a difference?” And that’s a tricky one. If it takes more than a single congressional term to earn your vote then what do you do, sit out the midterm and reset the clock to zero? In 2010 we reset the clock to zero on universal healthcare; Nancy Pelosi passed the full fat Affordable Care Act in the House of Representatives in 2009 complete with universal public option, the ACA lost the public option in the Senate but Democrats still made more progress on healthcare than in any Congress since the Johnson administration. Democrats were a handful of votes away from passing universal healthcare in 2009, but in 2010 Democratic voters were more disappointed in the party’s failure to pass a public option than their success in reforming and expanding healthcare, so they stayed home and Tea Party Republicans won the biggest electoral victory in their party’s history; in 2009 we were three votes away from universal healthcare, in 2011 Democrats couldn’t even bring healthcare legislation to the floor for a vote, in fact the second bill the Republicans passed in 2011 was House Resolution 2: The Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act, and it passed in the Republican controlled House along almost perfect party lines by 245-189 when two years earlier the public option had won by 220-215.

We voted in 2018 and kicked the fascists out of the House of Representatives for the first time in eight years.
We voted in 2020 and retained control of the House of Representatives, kicked the fascist out of the White House, won a 50/50 tie with Republicans in the Senate and 48 out of the 50 votes we need to pass filibuster reform.
If we show up in 2022 the way we showed up in 2018 the Democrats will win big, at the least we keep our local and state and federal government out of the hands of fascists and buy more time to fix our problems, at the best we pick up the two votes we need for filibuster reform and then stuff like the For the People Act and the Women’s Health Protection Act have a real chance at becoming law.
If we show up in 2022 the way we showed up in 2010 and 2014 then we’re back on the road to Trump; or if you’re a bit older it’s like 1994 and we’re back on the road to Bush.

Primary elections are happening now and turnout is abysmal. If you’re angry at some party establishment or another, now is your chance to make your voice heard and influence the direction of your party. There’s one single anti-choice Democrat on the record in the House of Representatives, his primary was held in Texas earlier this year and his more progressive, pro-choice primary opponent lost the election by 300 votes…. in a state with 18% turnout. California mailed every single one of their registered voters a ballot and after all the votes were counted only 33% of their electorate participated in the primary. What that means is that your vote counts more because you’re voting in a smaller pool!

At best voting is free and easy, most of you reading this will be able to request a free mail-in ballot from your state board of elections; at worst voting is a righteous pain in the ass, the irony being that the harder your state has made it for you to vote the more important it is for you to cast a ballot. Voting doesn’t have to be emotionally dramatic, it doesn’t have to involve sacrifice and suffering, it’s paperwork. Two times every two years you go online, request a ballot, do ten minutes of research on the candidate’s platforms, check some boxes, and mail your ballot back in. People say “vote harder,” but for most of us voting isn’t hard, and if voting isn’t hard for you then it’s important to make the best use of that vote because your vote can help protect the votes of others.

Recapping:

Voting was illegal for most people for most of human history, and yes they’re trying to do it again right now.
Your vote isn’t worthless, billions of dollars and thousands of hours are spent trying to buy, influence, or suppress your vote every election season and every day.
It takes longer to build and repair things than to tear them down, lifetimes worth of work burned in an hour’s time when fire came to Alexandria.
Voting worked in 2018 and 2020, choosing not to vote in 2010 and 2014 caused major problems that will take years of consistent work to fix.
Democrats have both tried to achieve change and succeeded at achieving change, but it will take more than a 50/50 tie with Republicans in the Senate and 48 votes in favor of filibuster reform to get the really big stuff.
48 out of 50 Democratic Senators are on the record voting to reform the filibuster, Manchin and Sinema are the only two Democrats who voted against it. If you have a Democratic Senator and you live anywhere but Arizona or West Virginia then your Democratic Senator is on the Record voting in favor of reforming the filibuster.
218 out of 219 Democrats in the House of Representatives are on the record voting in favor of nationally codifying abortion rights. If you have a Democratic Representative and you live anywhere but Loredo, Texas then your Democratic Representative is on the record voting in favor of nationally codifying abortion rights.

One last try, for the cynics in the audience:

“Both sides are the same.”

Then vote for Democrats. If both sides really are the same then there’s no reason not to vote for Democrats.

“My vote doesn’t matter!”

Vote anyway, it’s just paperwork.

“I’m not excited/inspired/motivated/informed enough to vote!”

Vote anyway, you don’t have to be excited to vote.

“Nobody perfectly represents me!”

Democracy is a form of compromise by its very nature, vote anyway.

“It’s just a choice between the lesser evil and the greater evil!”

Then vote for the lesser evil anyway, if only to diminish the overall amount of evil in your government.

“Nothing ever changes!”

Vote anyway, for most of us it takes fifteen minutes, that’s a small investment of time and if you’re wrong about nothing changing it can actually help accomplish more good!

“Voting is too slow!”

It’s easier to vote today and try to keep making progress than to skip elections and try to make up for lost time.

“Voting doesn’t work and we need to try something else.”

We tried not voting in 2010 and 2014, it was a disaster. Voting works better than not voting, and consistent voting works best of all.

“It’s too late to fix everything we need to fix!”

If you stop trying to fix things then more stuff gets broken, the best time to plant a tree is thirty years ago, the second best time to plant a tree is right now.

“Democrats don’t do anything when they’re in power!”

Republicans do fascism when they’re in power. Even if I agreed with you that Democrats do nothing (and I don’t actually agree with that), that’s still better than empowering fascists by skipping the elections.

Look: I’m sorry, okay? I wish we had a better system of government, I wish we weren’t dragging around the oldest democratic constitution in the world, I wish voting was easier, more exciting, faster acting, and more permanent, but it’s not, it’s just not, that’s not how democracies work, that’s not how any democracies work. Voting is basic maintenance for a democracy, when we don’t show up things break, things backslide, rights and freedoms that we took for granted get lost, and when the wrong people are in office we are denied any chance whatsoever to fix the problems that they create. The government is a tool, if we show up to elections then we choose how we want that tool to be used, if we don’t show up to elections then other people are allowed to choose for us, and the fascists never miss an election.

“Nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent changes of treatment.”
-Lucius Seneca

I’ve never seen Democrats show up to three elections in a row in my lifetime, not once. Democrats vote twice, don’t get the results they hoped for before the next midterms roll around, and they stay home, Democratic voters don’t stay the course. Republicans voted hard in every primary election, and midterm election, and general election, and local election, and state election, and special election for the past forty years, Republican voters put in the work, they showed up to every election they could vote in and several that they couldn’t, it worked for them, but Democrats have never tried that, at least not as long as I’ve been alive.

“Vote twice then go down to the pub and wait for this all to blow over” isn’t a working strategy.