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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.

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rayiner 11 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.

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makeitdouble 10 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.

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xyzzyz 9 hours 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.

	▲	makeitdouble 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> we must distinguish between "good voter suppression", like banning votes from toddlers Banning votes from toddlers is not as clear cut a point as you make it look like. As a thought experiment: imagine an extreme society made 15% of childless adults, 5% of young parents and 80% of toddlers. Would it make sense/be fair if the 15% of childless adults could pass laws that remove voting rights for life from anyone that piss their pants in public whatever their age ? You could end up in a situation where 20 years later 90% of the adults of the country have no voting rights. Finding a way (setting the 5% of parents as representatives ?) to mitigate these kind of issues is generally important, which is why there's no cut and dry "good" voter suppression. Your preoccupations seem to be centered on protecting the system from demagoguery and outside influences, which is a valid POV, but that can't be the only angle nor the central focus. Even if 80% of the population was provably dumb, you'll still need a system that takes their voice into account to avoid the country getting overthrown or become a dictatorship. > universally Honestly I don't like that word, and it removes a lot of nuance that is utterly needed for politics and ruling systems. There is almost nothing universal, especially when it comes to "good" and "bad".