Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

As American children, we are indoctrinated with the powerful mythology of voting, so every time we hear about someone trying to deny others the Right to Vote, we experience a visceral, almost irrational negative reaction. In fact, it's actually difficult for us to believe that people would be so selfish as to deny others the right to express their opinion, but that's because we all have a candy-coated view of society: the reality of voter suppression is much realer than any of us want to think. The most ubiquitous example of insidious voter suppression is continuing to use Stone-Age technologies like voting booths & polling places that are only open for one day, with limited capacity. Washington State lets us Vote-by-Mail for 2 weeks: Oregon too. But gerrymandering seems to be the most effective voter suppression strategy.

Overt voter suppression, though it gets all the press, doesn't really play a big role in determining elections. Tactics like ID laws, citizenship & residency requirements only affect a tiny percentage of potential voters in most places. Even those regions with high concentrations of disenfranchised people, such as Illegal Immigrants, usually have voting populations with similar opinions, such as Hispanic immigrants living where there are lots of Hispanic voters, so the outcomes aren't affected much. And any election that turns on 1% of the vote was too close to be decisive anyway; random chance played a bigger role in determining the winner than any suspected voter suppression. Fake News & dirty tactics are much more effective.