Griping about Dems = Vote Suppression. Griping about voting machines = ???

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

A DU oddity that comes along every election cycle.

Say something bad about a Dem and it is vote suppression... you should be getting people excited about voting.

Post unfavorable polls and it is vote suppression... the only poll that matters is election day. Gloom and doom discourages voters.

But posts about how the system is crooked, votes are stolen, touch-screen machines are rigged, it's all about who counts the votes, etc. are not given the same treatment.

Why?

Nothing will more dissuade a person from voting than the belief that their vote will not be counted even if they are in the actual majority. (Except perhaps violent intimidation.)

It's like advertising that slot machines are programmed to pay-off 0.00%. Why would anyone bother to pull the handle?

The point is not that the system is or is not rigged in reality. The point is that saying it is rigged, even if it is rigged, is the ultimate enthusiasm dampener.

Can it make people more likely to vote so it won't be "close enough to steal"? Sure... about as much as unfavorable polling tells people it is more vital than ever to vote. But the poll posts are trashed every two years while the "system is rigged" posts are not.

I am not suggesting anyone should or shouldn't post whatever they want. I think people should say what's on their mind.

This post is sociological... just noting an anomaly.

[xchrom]

1. Losers - when suddenly victorious - can 'forget' about a lot of concerns. Nt

[McCamy Taylor]

2. Disagree. Americans are rugged (stubborn) individualists. Tell them their vote is being suppressed

and they will make up their minds to go to the polls in record numbers just to teach the sorry sons of bitches a lesson.

In order for the kind of despair and apathy you describe to work, voters have to have faced years of oppression, discrimination, disenfranchisement---like the Black voters in Florida 2000 who were illegally stripped for voters rolls.

When they tried to same thing in 2004 in Ohio, they triggered an enormous voter backlash. These were folks who were not used to being disinfranchised. The voters got mad. They voted out many of the Republicans whom they blamed for stealing their votes.

The record high turn outs in 2006 and 2008 were a direct result of many many Americans thinking to themselves Count this! You mother fuckers.

Is your op suggesting that the Obama DOJ not prosecute Republicans who suppress the vote? I hope not. The fear of being sent to federal pen is probably going to scare a lot of GOP operatives in staying clean this fall. I want to see lots and lots of prosecutions. Americans want to see it. They are still mad as hell over 2004.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

4. Not at all McCamy

"Is your op suggesting that the Obama DOJ not prosecute Republicans who suppress the vote?"

My OP is not saying anything about the real world. Only the oddity that stories about elections being rigged in advance are (whether true or not) as discouraging as unfavorable polls, but are received differently here.

Personally, I think people on DU are politically dedicated folks who vote no matter what and that the whole "you are discouraging people" thing is inappropriate here unless someone is honest to god saying "don't vote."

As to whether Americans will turn out more if they think the system is rigged... perhaps they do. But if such adversity is motivating it seems that a poll showing the bad guys ahead should also be motivating, if you see what I mean.

I wouldn't criticize anyone as a "discourager" for their vote-rigging posts or for posting bad polls or for criticizing policy unless they seemed obviously trollish.

(Like the real kind of troll we see here ever day and is quickly zapped like a bug.)

[griffi94]

3. even if they are rigged

the rigged voting machines do a lot of good by encouraging people to participate in the process.

maybe they purge some voters or don't count every vote but i'm sure they count a lot of the votes,
expecting the voting machines to be perfect is imho a bit unrealistic.

i try to look at this in a pragmatic way. probly most of the votes get counted, and most voters aren't purged from the polls. that said i don't see how it helps to to try to tear down the voting machines.

[Greyhound]

5. The "leadership" ignores it, therefore it doesn't exist.

Now we have to ask ourselves, "What possible motivation could the usual victims of this fraud have for refusing to even talk about it?"

Similarly, what would motivate a new opposition House Speaker to explicitly block a Constitutionally required investigation into blatant criminality by a sitting administration as one of her very first actions?