What is Voter Suppression?

“There's very little tangible evidence of this whole voter-suppression nonsense that the Democrats are promoting.” -- Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, July 2020

“I don’t want everybody to vote. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” -- Conservative activist Paul Weyrich, 1980


Voter suppression is a partisan political strategy to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing specific groups of people from voting. The goal is to reduce the number of voters who might vote against a candidate or proposition. Over the last few years, conservative states have engaged in massive voter suppression efforts to favor GOP candidates and to try to re-elect the president. The GOP sees no voter suppression, while other observers see it very clearly. The GOP has been actively engaging in nationwide voter suppression at least since the early 1980s.

ProPublica reports on some of the voter suppression tactics the GOP has in place in Georgia to hinder or block voters from voting for Joe Biden. ProPublica writes:

“Why Do Nonwhite Georgia Voters Have to Wait in Line for Hours? Their Numbers Have Soared, and Their Polling Places Have Dwindled. 

The clogged polling locations in metro Atlanta reflect an underlying pattern: the number of places to vote has shrunk statewide, with little recourse. Although the reduction in polling places has taken place across racial lines, it has primarily caused long lines in nonwhite neighborhoods where voter registration has surged and more residents cast ballots in person on Election Day. The pruning of polling places started long before the pandemic, which has discouraged people from voting in person.

In Georgia, considered a battleground state for control of the White House and U.S. Senate, the difficulty of voting in Black communities like Union City could possibly tip the results on Nov. 3. With massive turnout expected, lines could be even longer than they were for the primary, despite a rise in mail-in voting and Georgians already turning out by the hundreds of thousands to cast ballots early.

The metro Atlanta area has been hit particularly hard. The nine counties — Fulton, Gwinnett, Forsyth, DeKalb, Cobb, Hall, Cherokee, Henry and Clayton — have nearly half of the state’s active voters but only 38% of the polling places, according to the analysis.

Georgia law sets a cap of 2,000 voters for a polling place that has experienced significant voter delays, but that limit is rarely if ever enforced. Our analysis found that, in both majority Black and majority white neighborhoods, about nine of every 10 precincts are assigned to polling places with more than 2,000 people. 

Georgia’s state leadership and elections officials have largely ignored complaints about poll consolidations even as they tout record growth in voter registration. As secretary of state from 2010 to 2018, when most of Georgia’s poll closures occurred, Brian Kemp, now the governor, took a laissez-faire attitude toward county-run election practices, save for a 2015 document that spelled out methods officials could use to shutter polling places to show ‘how the change can benefit voters and the public interest.’”  

Clearly, if one defines the public interest as doing whatever cheating and law breaking it takes to keep the GOP in power, then what is going on really is to benefit the public interest. 

Once again, the GOP in its self-righteous lust for political power, ignores existing law and suppresses minority voters as much as they think they can get away with. In Georgia, they can get away with a lot. That poisoned GOP attitude undermines respect for the rule of law, a key trait of demagogues and dictators. Also, as discussed here before, this data accords with the attitudes of GOP activists who are telling republicans and Trump supporters that they should not even worry about voter suppression or the racism inherent in it. As one activist, J. Christian Adams, put it, “Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor, you’re a racist and so forth.”

There you go, be not afraid to cheat, lie, be a racist and/or break laws. Be comfortable and just let it all hang out.

So, instead of denying that GOP voter suppression is real, as Mitch McConnell does, the on-the-ground GOP soldiers are telling the faithful to just blow the criticisms all off as if the underlying reality does not even exist. That is blind GOP tribalism at work, as Mitch McConnell so adeptly describes it. GOP voter suppression is also deep immorality at work in the name of the tribe. 

If the president wins the election in 2020 it will be, in necessary part, because of the influence of GOP voter suppression. In that case, the president would once again be as illegitimate a president in 2021 as he was in 2017 when he was elected with the necessary help of Russian influence.

Vote For Humanity

 By Best in Moderation

The year was 1940, in the month of June. The Netherlands had suffered a major defeat in the flattening of Rotterdam and surrendered to the German Army a mere five days after the invasion began. My grandmother was pushed out of her family house, which became a Nazi barracks and was later blown up. She and several other younger children were sent to Sweden on some of the last trains that would be allowed to leave the nation not headed for German labor camps.

My grandfather was not so lucky. As a member of the Dutch scouting program and a resident of Haarlem-Heemstede, he was considered a risk and carefully monitored and often brought in for questioning. While in German stations he witnessed families being separated from one another, with men going to labor camps, women going to lock up or serving the soldiers, and children being cast out into the street or orphanages if they were lucky. Many never saw their parents again, and many parents were not reunited with their children in time to save them from the post-war starvation.

I tell you this not to try to Godwin my way into a discussion of politics today, but to give context to the visceral reaction many people have to the forced separation of families with no plan to reunite them that you may hear today. Not a one of us who have experienced this before or have family who has experienced this before can hear this and not shudder. And that’s just from my family history. Try thinking about minorities who were separated and sold for generations. Try thinking of entire generations without families due to religious persecutions and genocides. When it comes to family and the forced separation of them, there is no event in history where the people who did this come out looking like any sort of moral person.

So what then must we think about an entire administration who not only willingly did this, but did this to a zero tolerance degree with no intention of reuniting anyone, no matter the age, circumstance or needs of the people? What can we possibly think of the people who while a pandemic rages through the nation still cram in hundreds of asylum seekers into detention camps, without proper hygiene? What should we think about an administration who ignores or even tries to justify alleged medical experimentation on women, literally mutilating their bodies by removing their ovaries? And what should we think about a group of people who would ignore all those things because it might save them a few dollars somewhere down the line?

Where is the moral outcry over throwing honorable serving soldiers out of the military just because of their gender identity?

Where is the moral outcry over a woman getting shot in her own home because someone thought a door open in the middle of the day was suspicious?

Where is the moral outcry over a woman getting murdered by police in her apartment because of a person she dated?

Where is the moral outcry over all the blatant and useless lies and hypocrisy?

Where is the moral outcry over supporting leaders who imprison, starve, and murder their own people?

None of this is necessary. We do not need to accept any of it. None of it helps our nation one bit. There is no benefit to be had in selling our souls.

This election stopped being about political ideology a long time ago. It was always going to be a referendum on who we are as a people. What we are willing to accept. What we punish. Whether there are consequences and whether those consequences are just.

It’s not a game. It’s not about teams. This is about the basic question of right versus wrong.

Children should not be permanently separated from their families and abandoned. It should never happen to one, let alone 545.

If you cannot agree on this, then you are not a part of any society that is fit to lead. Every single group who accepted this before has gone down as the example of evil in our history.

Don’t support it any longer, or anyone who would push for it.

I would never ask you to abandon your conservative principles. I am pleading with you not to abandon your human principles.

Do not stain your soul for one more day by supporting this kind of thing ever again.

Some Thoughts on Psi Phenomena or Supernatural Events (and Politics)

Steven Novella at the NeuroLogica blog posted a great discussion about what is going on when science finds what appears to be solid evidence of Psi phenomena or something supernatural. Novella writes:

“In 2011 Daryl Bem published a series of ten studies which he claimed demonstrated psi phenomena – that people could “feel the future”. He took standard psychological study methods and simply reversed the order of events, so that the effect was measured prior to the stimulus. Bem claimed to find significant results – therefore psi is real. Skeptics and psychologists were not impressed, for various reasons. At the time, I wrote this:

Perhaps the best thing to come out of Bem’s research is an editorial to be printed with the studies – Why Psychologists Must Change the Way They Analyze Their Data: The Case of Psi by Eric Jan Wagenmakers, Ruud Wetzels, Denny Borsboom, & Han van der Maas from the University of Amsterdam. .... They hit the nail absolutely on the head with their analysis.

Their primary point is this – when research finds positive results for an apparently impossible phenomenon, this is probably not telling us something new about the universe, but rather is probably telling us something very important about the limitations of our research methods.

.... Bem had previously authored a chapter in a textbook on research methodology in which he essentially advocated for p-hacking. This refers to a set of bad research methods that gives the researchers enough wiggle room to fudge the results, enough to make negative data seem statistically significant. This could be as seemingly innocent as deciding when to stop collecting data after you have already peeked at some of the results.

Richard Wiseman, who was one of the first psychologists to try to replicate Bem’s research and came up with negative results, recently published a paper discussing this very issue. In his blog post about the article he credits Bem’s research with being a significant motivator for improving research rigor in psychology:

Several researchers noted that the criticisms aimed at Bem’s work also applied to many studies from mainstream psychology. Many of the problems surrounded researchers changing their statistics and hypotheses after they had looked at their data, and so commentators urged researchers to submit a detailed description of their plans prior to running their studies. In 2013, psychologist Chris Chambers played a key role in getting the academic journal Cortex to adopt the procedure (known as a Registered Report), and many other journals quickly followed suit.”

Novella goes on to note that Bem actually participated in a large scale replication of his experiment using preregistration of his protocol to prevent p-hacking. Bem truly believed that his data proved ESP (extrasensory perception) was real and this major replication would confirm it. Unfortunately for Bem, the preregistration of the protocol did prevent p-hacking. It showed that the existence of ESP was not supported by the data as analyzed by the method specified in preregistered protocol. In short, ESP did not exist based on the research and data analysis protocols that were used in the replication experiment.

Bem had spent most of his research life trying to show that ESP was real. He refused to accept the results. Instead, he broke the analysis protocol and used a different statistical analysis on the data. That exercise resulted in a finding that the evidence showing the existence of ESP as a real phenomenon was ‘highly significant’. Bem had reverted back to p-hacking to get the result he desperately wanted.

This is a clear example of a trained scientist like Dr. Bem who is aware of the subtle pitfalls of doing science and coming to the wrong conclusion. He could not escape the trap his mind created. He wanted very much wanted ESP to be real. So, what chance does the average American non-scientist have in escaping the trap that relentless political dark free speech can so effectively create in their minds?

The point here is to try to exemplify how the human mind can effectively but subtly lead people to believe things that are false, even in the face of powerful contradictory evidence. It happens to scientists. It also happens to everyone else, me included.

The best defense? Adopting and applying critical thinking skills is probably about best one can do. It imposes a high cognitive load and I suspect that most people are unwilling to engage in it. That appears to be the case despite the fact that most people already do believe they are critical thinkers. That mostly false belief is yet another persistent illusion that dark free speech creates and maintains in the minds of many people, probably including me at least sometimes. 

False Conservative Talking Points

The GOP, the president and at least some of his supporters are making various false allegations in advance of the election. That is no surprise. It continues what has been going on at least since the 2016 election.

One false allegation is that democrats hate American because they are unwilling to compromise on a coronavirus relief bill. In fact, senate republicans are unwilling to compromise because they fear political blowback in the election. The New York Times writes:

“Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, privately told Republican senators on Tuesday that he had warned the White House not to strike a pre-election deal with Speaker Nancy Pelosi on a new round of stimulus, moving to head off an agreement that President Trump has demanded but most in his party oppose.

Mr. McConnell’s remarks, confirmed by four Republicans familiar with them, threw cold water on Mr. Trump’s increasingly urgent push to enact a new round of pandemic aid before Election Day. They came just as Ms. Pelosi offered an upbeat assessment of her negotiations with Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, telling Democrats that their latest conversation had yielded “common ground as we move closer to an agreement.”

The cost of their emerging compromise on a new round of aid to hard-pressed Americans and businesses has steadily climbed toward $2 trillion, inching closer to Ms. Pelosi’s demands even as it far exceeds what most Senate Republicans have said they can accept.”

Other republican lies include the false allegation that Joe Biden is a criminal and that Biden has, as one crackpot put it, taken a $1 billion dollar bribe from China. No source for the billion dollar bribe was given, but the president is now hinting at some evil afoot between Biden and China. As we now know, he source for the Biden is a crook, LOCK HIM UP!, allegation is the treasonous crackpot liar Rudy Giuliani, the always liar Russians and the radicals at the lies and propaganda New York Post. 

On the other hand, people are now starting to question the president's previously hidden financial ties with China. The New York Times writes:

“As he raises questions about his opponent’s standing with China, President Trump’s taxes reveal details about his own activities there, including a previously unknown bank account.

President Trump and his allies have tried to paint the Democratic nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr., as soft on China, in part by pointing to his son’s business dealings there.

Senate Republicans produced a report asserting, among other things, that Mr. Biden’s son Hunter “opened a bank account” with a Chinese businessman, part of what it said were his numerous connections to “foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe.”

But Mr. Trump’s own business history is filled with overseas financial deals, and some have involved the Chinese state. He spent a decade unsuccessfully pursuing projects in China, operating an office there during his first run for president and forging a partnership with a major government-controlled company.

And it turns out that China is one of only three foreign nations — the others are Britain and Ireland — where Mr. Trump maintains a bank account, according to an analysis of the president’s tax records, which were obtained by The New York Times. The foreign accounts do not show up on Mr. Trump’s public financial disclosures, where he must list personal assets, because they are held under corporate names. The identities of the financial institutions are not clear.  

Mr. Garten would not identify the bank in China where the account is held. Until last year, China’s biggest state-controlled bank rented three floors in Trump Tower, a lucrative lease that drew accusations of a conflict of interest for the president.”

Once again, the president (i) at least has possible conflicts of interest that he hid behind his tax returns until they were leaked to the NYT, and (ii) tries to smear Joe Biden as a crook by pointing to Hunter Biden’s past business dealings. So far, the allegations against Biden have no authentic evidence to support them. One can conclude it is all lies, something that Trump and the GOP is very comfortable with using against political opposition. No moral qualms there.

What is amazing about this is the fact that the president himself, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump all have ongoing for-profit business dealings and conflicts of interest in the US and some other countries. No republican in office or any Trump supporter I am aware of complains vigorously about any that. They all just complain about how awful Biden is. GOP and Trump supporter hypocrisy on this point is just way off scale, off the hook and off the charts.

Other GOP crackpottery includes bogus reasoning based on red herring logic flaws, some of which are themselves lies. For example, one enraptured Evangelical claimed online that because the president tries to fulfill his campaign promises, he cannot be a liar about anything. That poor enraptured soul apparently did not realize that a person can fulfill promises and still be a liar about everything else.

Use by conservatives of the Motte and Bailey logic fallacy to deny climate science has been discussed here before. That false talking point is still going strong among the CCC (conservative crackpot cognoscenti). The lie that we do not know what is causing climate change is a real hit with conservative talking heads and cranks.

And, despite the false GOP claim that we are turning the corner on the pandemic and things are getting better, things are getting worse. Maybe we turned a different corner than the one that the president and his lying enablers had in mind.