Noemie Emery of the Washington Examiner challenges arguments that rely on claims of voter suppression.
In one of their brave bursts of rage at the police state they live in, Democrats are now up in arms about voter suppression. They compare it to the days before the Civil Rights Acts and the civil rights movement. …
… Today, the supposed problem is people in the state of Ohio, who have been on the rolls but failed to vote once in a span of six years and three cycles. Having failed to respond to a series of notifications and having failed to confirm they still live in the address at which they were registered, they may now be removed from the rolls.
One does not have to approve of this act in itself to notice two things that make it unique in the long train of acts that fall under the heading of things called suppression. First, if we insist on calling it “punishment” to be removed from the rolls because you probably moved to another state, voters are “punished” not for trying to vote, but for not voting. People who value the vote show it by voting, since when they do that, no action can be taken against them. People who don’t vote show by their acts they don’t think it important. They voted to silence themselves.
Second, registration purges like this are always described as “helping Republicans,” as Democrats tend to “lose” their own voters at rates twice as high. … Given the state of the world, one would expect their voters to be more intense, more loyal, and more intent upon voting in every election. But the opposite seems to have happened.
Democrats thus claim that these voters must be more hampered by the lack of identity cards, transportation, and time and travel constraints than are others.
And this claim may have merit, but another reason might be that these voters really don’t care. They are unimpressed by the programs and candidates that Democrats offer and consider it a false premise that it does them much or any good to elect Democrats.
