Voting Reform Initiatives Probably Doomed For All The Typically Dumb And Cynical Reasons: via HuffPost

Voting Reform Initiatives Probably Doomed For All The Typically Dumb And Cynical Reasons: via HuffPost http://huff.to/WPciao The problem with the views in the article, if they are the republican views, is that they view voting patterns as immutable and voting totals as inherently limited. But it completely ignores that the dominant approach of republicans to have a political philosophy of asshol-ism is much of what is turning those voters off. If more reasonable measures increase voting of those groups by ten or twenty percent, you don’t need a much higher share before loosening the voting pays off. If there is a group of ten million voters that you get one million of, it represents a voting deficit of 8 million. If that expands to a voter pool of 12 million of which you get 3 million, that’s a reduction of the voting deficit to 6 million votes. If you get two million of the votes you broke even. And that doesn’t account for the millions of voters of other races who may be voting against you because you’re being dinks. So it does not follow that increasing the voting groups that vote against you will automatically put you further behind. It could easily result in a net gain. Note also the psychological impact on voters you would have had from that group. The favorable members of the race will be the least motivated to stay in line or get out to vote. Why waste all day hanging out to vote because the political party you would vote for decided to double your wait times because they hate you for your skin color and assume you will vote the other way? The voter suppression almost certainly has the greatest effect on blacks and latinos who were going to vote republican. I’m surprised they got any of those votes at all. When on voting day itself your party is twisting the knife on you, you’ve got to swallow a lot of pride to go vote for them. If Romney hadn’t lost blacks and latinos that voted for McCain but not him the vote would have been closer, he might have even won one or two more states. Again, that doesn’t include the whites who thought the voter suppression was idiotic. It also motivated blacks and latinos who were angered. Query whether some of those might not have voted if the lines were shorter- without being attacked for their race some may have not been interested. There’s a good chance that the voter suppression increased the republican’s voting deficit in the past election, contrary to the intended effect.