Remix clone Hacker News

Voter suppression is the act of limiting the pool of voters. That includes putting large swaths of the population behind bars or flagged as non eligible to voting, putting barriers to voter registration etc.

It can never be 0 and every country will have a minimum requirement, but the degree to which it is done in the US is far ahead of most western country.

Gerrymandering has an effect on the criteria for voter eligibility, the voting rules in the state etc. It's not direct but who's in power has a sizeable effect on who will have an easier time voting.

▲

rayiner 12 hours ago | parent [-]

No, “voter suppression” is the act of preventing legitimate voters from voting. Society determining that categories of people shouldn’t vote (children, felons, non-citizens, etc.) isn’t voter suppression, it’s simply establishing qualifications for voting. The goal isn’t to get to 0 or try to get as close to 0 as possible. People who should vote should be able to vote, while people who shouldn’t vote shouldn’t be able to vote.

In the modern era, we should probably narrow the franchise, instituting civics tests and restricting voting to natural born citizens. Statistically, both of these would have hurt my party in 2024, so this isn’t self-interest speaking.

▲

makeitdouble 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Voter suppression is suppressing voters one way or the other. Your idea of restricting by birth rights is of course another form of it.

It's fascinating to look at that proposition for a country that mostly got rid of its indigenous population.

▲

rayiner 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Words have meaning. Setting qualifications is different than “suppression.” The former determines who are legitimate voters. The latter is an effort to keep legitimate voters from voting. Conflating legitimate qualification rules with “suppression” is fuzzy thinking in service of propaganda.

Restricting by birth right is simply an extension of the universal practice of restricting voting by citizenship. Every democracy decides who has sufficient stake in and familiarity with the society to be able to vote.

▲

makeitdouble 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> Words have meaning

Well, yes. At this point we could as well get back to Wikipedia for at least a common interpretation of the concept:

> The disenfranchisement of voters due to age, residence, citizenship, or criminal record are among the more recent examples of ways that elections can be subverted by changing who is allowed to vote.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression

> universal practice of restricting voting by citizenship

Citizenship restriction is not universal BTW, and going from a civil status (can be acquired) to a physical one is an incredibly huge leap that is nothing simple.

	▲	xyzzyz an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Look, if you insist on using this term like this, it will make conversation and mutual understanding more difficult. If banning toddlers from voting is "voter suppression", then now we must distinguish between "good voter suppression", like banning votes from toddlers, and "bad voter suppression", like for example tactics to mendaciously make it harder to vote for people who are otherwise eligible. The result is that "voter suppression" is no longer understood to be a bad thing. You lose the ability to drop this phrase and expect people to pick up that the implication is negative. For example, you said above: > Democracy is not 2 parties doing voter suppression and gerrymandering as a filter to pass the result to an electoral college. If "voter suppression" as a term now include things that are universally understood as good, like banning toddlers from voting, this sounds incoherent. Democracy very much is about doing voter suppression, and everybody agrees it to be a good thing! If you don't like how it sounds, you need to stop including good and proper things under the "voter suppression" label. Rayiner tried to help you with that, by distinguishing between mendacious voter suppression, and good and proper setting of voter qualifications, but you rejected that.

▲

myvoiceismypass 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> No, “voter suppression” is the act of preventing legitimate voters from voting.

Next you will tell us all how easy it is for all Americans to get drivers ids / similar licensing right?

> Statistically, both of these would have hurt my party in 2024, so this isn’t self-interest speaking.

Ah. There it is.

	▲	xyzzyz 40 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		This "IDs are hard to get by in US" narrative is really funny to anyone who lived in Europe, where IDs are harder to get by than in US, while being required for more purposes and activities. I have yet to see anyone saying that voter ID requirements are voter suppression to also bite the bullet and say that Europe is a totalitarian hellhole compared to the US, the land of the free.